Kara-Jal (Horse)
Kara-Jal (Iradi: "black mane") was a black stallion of the Chong-Talas Stud Farm on the upper Talas River, taken with 41 mares in a raid on the stud in October 1925 and never recovered. The raid is the source of Ormon Satarov's novel The Rider from Kenkol (1964), and the horse is remembered both in the record and in the stories of the Kenkol traders.[1][2]
The raid
The stud had been founded in 1924 to breed riding horses for the Red Army cavalry. A militia report of October 1925, kept in the State Archives of Irad (Fond 21), records that riders drove off the stallion and 41 mares by night and took them up the valley toward the Kenkol Pass. A militia detachment followed the tracks into the passes but lost them, and none of the horses was recovered. The report does not name the raiders; it describes them as a band "from beyond the passes".[1]
In literature and tradition
Satarov, a veterinary surgeon who wrote Westerns for the Irad State Publishing House under a pseudonym, based The Rider from Kenkol (1964) on the raid. In the novel a Red cavalry scout follows a stolen herd of mares over the Kenkol Pass. It appeared in English in 2022 (see Arsha Books).[2]
Traders of Chong-Kenkol and the Kenkol valley say that Kara-Jal's blood runs in the Chongtor herds of the Chatkal, where a black horse with a heavy mane is still called "one of Kara-Jal's". Breeders regard the claim as tradition; no stallion of the Chatkal herds has been traced to him (see List of notable horses of Irad).[3]
References
- ^ State Archives of Irad (Talas), Fond 21: Militia Reports of the Talas Uezd (1925).
- ^ Arsha Books (2022). Introduction to Ormon Satarov, The Rider from Kenkol, tr. Aidana Mukash kyzy. Talas.
- ^ Zhumabaeva, Cholpon (2016). Horses and Herders: The Pastoral Economy of the Talas Alatau, 1930–2010. Talas: Talas State University Press.