"I corresponded with Ingrid for several years and while she felt Tazi
and Saluki were two separate breeds, she was not happy about the idea
of dividing different types of Tazt into different breeds."

Off course one thing is knowing about it and the other is accepting it.
I am very sure she knew about the tendencies of spliting tazi to
different breeds as it has been widely discussed amid tazi owners and
breeders.

I guess, it has much in common with the fact that new countries joining
the FCI (Kasahstan, Usbekistan and maybe Turkmenistan in the future)
are willing to have their own national breed wich would make their
national feelings complete. It has a lot to do with people's ambition,
not much with the canine genetics.

In Poland we have restored our national sighthound which was aimed at
brining back the old-time traditions and going back to times when we
were not under the Soviet rule. It was a kind of national manifestation
against communist regime. The result of it is an established breed,
which is a Polish sighthound (chart polski) registered by the FCI.
Therefore I am far from critisizing anyone trying to establish tazi as
a separate breed. It only makes the canine world more interesting and
colourful.

There are some pairs of very similair breeds existing in the FCI
register. Let's take lhasa apso/shih tzu or Polish Tatra mountain
shepherd dog/Cuvas from Slovakia or Polish hound/Kopov (=Slovak
hound). I cannot see any reason why canine ambition of Middle Asia's
nations should be blocked just because the Europeans have different
opinion. Let's say it clearly - tazi belongs to them, not to us.

"I've read several translations on the subject - which of them are
you referring to?"

I have reffered to Mr Beregovoy.

"We'll just have to agree to disagree there ;) This is a new
invention - in the past hunters made no distinction between types and
it is sad that that is now changing."

I guess you right there was no distinction in the past, as long as
modern canine science entered Middle Asia.
But also in the past there were thousands of tazis hunting as it was
one of main ways of getting food. Now people go to the supermarkets and
get their food using their credit cards, not their sighthounds. :-) The
middle Asian countries have modernized in comparison to what they were
150 years ago and that is one of the main reasons the tazi population
is declining. I guess we should not expect there will be more hunters
to use tazi as hunting dog. The working population will be still
declining and I myself accept that in the future most of the tazis will
be used as accompanying dogs or coursing dogs - the same way we use our
saluki, greyhounds or sloughis in Europe. If we expect that all tazi
are working dogs in the future empazising the rights of tradition, it
would be more or less as expecting that every owner of German shepherd
dog buys a herd of sheeps for his dog just in order to keep tradition
alive.
To summ up I find it nice there are people who try to preserve the old
hunting tradition but one should not believe that the purified version
of tazi preservation will be the only one. Keeping taigans in Kirgistan
has been relatively popular and it is not because hunting with them has
been more popular, but because some people see it as a national
identity sign. This aspect has not been widely discussed by those who
are so much orientated on pure version of breeding taigans only for
hunting purposes.

"Tazi (and Saluki) hunt by scent as well, and have for ages (I just
wrote an article on this from a manuscript written in the 12th
century), they are still PRIMARILY sighthounds, i.e, it is their
primary sense in terms of hunting."

I guess Sludky had different opinion. At the moment I have problems to
find the correct link to his works, but if it is important to you I can
look for it later. But to reward this, I have found the link on hunting
with tazi at night which points out the scent abilities of the tazi.
http://www.hunter.ru/dogs/articles/tazy.htm

Hope you like the link,
Martin