Chapter 3 Purity, Nobility, Beauty and Performance: Past and Present Construction of Meaning for the Arabian Horse Christoph Lange Introduction The Classic Arabian Horse 1 is generally seen as the result of breeding activities of Arab Bedouins from the northern Arabian Peninsula and Syrian steppe desert over hundreds of years. While the exact origin of the breed is vague and still a matter of controversial discussion, it is broadly accepted that the breed was already fixed in the middle of the second millennium B.C. and from then on mostly bred by Bedouin tribes, with Nejd in the northern Arabian Peninsula as “the most significant center” (Derry 2003, 104). Therefore, talking about the Arabian horse in terms of ancestry and origin generally refers to the Bedouin horse or desert horse of the Bedouins who managed to hold the traditional breeding monopoly for centuries. With the beginning of the 20 th century the centers of Arabian horse breeding have mostly shifted to Western Europe 2 and the United States. There, new breeding programs were established, based on direct and indirect imports of Arabians from the Arab Middle East, and evolved into a global Arabian horse industry. European and US horse breeders and traders created a transatlantic commodification system of registration and certification for their modern Arabian horses, resulting in the separation of Arabian horses into a Western certified closed group of Arabian pedigrees. These were recognized as the only authentic Arabian purebred horse and distinguished from the group of horses with unaccepted or unreliable Arabian bloodlines. This directly connects to an enormous cultural production: The medial