What do the Balkh Hound, Galanday Hound, Da Kochiyano spay, Baluchi Hound, Sage Balochi, Eastern Greyhound, Shalgar Hound, Ogar Afghan, Kabul Hound, Kuchi Hound, Barakzai Hound, Tazhi Spay, African Hound, and Persian Hound have in common?

They are all the breed we know as the Afghan Hound.  Indeed, the area to which the breed is native is so large that at one time, there were as many as thirteen different strains of Afghan Hound developed by different native tribes of Afghanistan, all known by different names, and each belonging to different regions of Afghanistan and adjoining lands. In the Pashto language, the Afghan Hound is called “Tazi” (تاژي سپی‎),  and the next most commonly used name is “Sag-e-Tazi” (سگ تازی) as it’s called in the Persian language.

The modern Afghan Hound is made up of two main lines (or strains):  The Bell-Murray strain was a group of hounds brought to Scotland from Balochistan by Major and Mrs. G. Bell-Murray and Miss Jean C. Manson in 1920. These dogs were less heavily coated as they were from the lowlands and steppes.

In 1925, a second strain was made up of a group of dogs acquired from a kennel in Kabul and shipped home by Mrs. Mary Amps. The foundation stud of Amps’ kennel in Kabul was a dog named Ghazni, and this second strain took its name from that dog, a more heavily coated mountain type of Afghan Hound. Most of the early Afghans in the United States were developed from the Ghazni strain from England, as well as from descendants of hounds that were given as gifts by King Amanullah of the Afghan Royal Family in the 1920s.

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