Daughters of the Wind: a blog on desert arabian horses, past and present

Carrie Slayton of the Al Khamsa Preservation Task Force has succeeded in placing the blind 1998 mare Jadah Kerasun (ASF Raphael x ASF Ubeidiyah by ASF Ezra), a rare Hamdaniyah Simiryah tail female to the Ibn Saudi mare *Samirah in the hands of preservation breeder Marge Smith of Oregon. The mare just got there yesterday.

In related news, Carrie sent the following two pictures of the other remaining Samirah tail female mares: 1993 Jadah Samirah (ASF Hercules x ASF Ubeidiyah by ASF Ezra) and her 2008 daughter Samirahs Adlayah (by Jadah Echos Amir).  Pictures are the mares’ owner Stephanie Theinert McCloud. Both look very good. By the way, this is the same tail female as some of the Rushcreek Endurance horses.

Does anyone know which mare Major Upton is referring to in this section of his “Gleanings”, Chapter 4, “Visit to the Sabaah”?

“Towards the close of a long and trying day, we made repeated offers for a bay mare, five years old and unblemished; she was a beautiful creature, just under fifteen hands in height, very bloodlike, but wildly excitable, glared at us like a tigress, and resented our approach even. Crowds gathered round as we frequently repeated our offer. The Shaykh indicated she was not to be taken away, and we thought we were on the eve of obtaining her, but suddenly, among the sound of many voices and loud talking, the mare was taken off by her owner. [...]  It was Sulayman ibn Mirshid who put the halter rope in my hands; her price was told out on the table, exactly that which I had offered, and handed over to her former owner, and the mare was picketed at our tent. A very simple certificate of the mare’s breeding and family was written out at my request, in the presence of the two Shaykhs, to which they placed their seals, one as a guarantee, the other as a witness.”

This nice portrait of the Syrian desert-bred stallion Nimr Shabareq unfortunately sold on Feb. 2013. I wish I had know about it.

Nimr

The horses of Mustafa Jabri, located in rebel-held areas, were stolen and sold to Turkey, and so were the horses of Fouad al-Attar and other breeders. Half of the horses of Radwan Shabareq have died, not from starvation (plenty of grass there) but from inhaling strange and suspicious gases. The other are sick. Their caregivers has to endure countless ordeals to prevent the remaining horses from being stolen or confiscated. Sigh.

I am now told that the two horses offered by the King of Bahrain to the Queen of England are stallions, not mares, and that the Bahrainis brought over 7 or 8 stallions which were displayed at the Royal Windsor Horse Show, partly as Bahrain was sponsoring the big FEI Endurance ride at the same venue. Each of the 7-8 stallions appear to be from a different strain. You can see amateur photos here, here and here.  The one below is my favorite (URL copied and redirects to website, with credits to “AnnaMaisy25″ who took the picture). He appears to be one of the two offered to the Queen.

Bahrain stallion

Another piece of good news from preservation breeder Jeannie Lieb yesterday, with new hope for the Davenport *Hadba rare and endangered tail female.

“RL Thunder Cloud x RL Bilquis delivered a beautiful chestnut filly with a perfect blaze, 3 white anklets and 1 white sock, last night around 11:00pm. Mother and daughter are doing great and this little gal is a firecracker!”

*Hadba was the war mare of ‘Ajil ibn Zaydan al-Jarba and was taken by the Ottomans when this Shammar rebel Bedouin leader was killed. She was later resold and ended up with Homer Davenport who imported her to the USA in 1906. This is the same tail female line as the racing legend Kontiki.

It’s that time of the year again, and Arabian foals are popping up here and there. One of the newborns I chose to feature is little Niinah Nufoud (AEP Kamar x AB Dafiinah by HHA Manabi), a 2013 bay Kuhaylat al-Ajuz tracing to *Nufoud of the Saudi Royal Stud. This little filly traces twice to *Nufoud as her sire, Monica Respet’s AEP Kamar is also from this line. She is her dam’s and her owner Linda Uhrich’s first filly and represents a ray of hope for this precious tail female line. Congrats to both Linda and Monica.

Read the story here. Hopefully these would end with Jenny Lees of Pearl Island Stud, and be bred to the Bahraini stallions already there (thanks Jeanne Craver for the link).

I have always been intrigued by some of the early sources of RAS foundation horses, and wanted to learn more about them. I am not only referring to the Princes (Mohammed Ali, Ahmad Kamal, Yusuf Kamal, Kemal el-Dine Husayn, etc) and Lady Anne Blunt, but also by the more minor sources. One of these is “H.E. Lewa Ibrahim Khairi Pasha”, the owner of the mare Badaouia (RAS), the dam of Kheir and grand-dam of Gassir.

Lets deconstruct that name for a second: “H.E.” is obviously “His Excellency”, a senior mark of respect for ministers and other high level officials. Lewa, as I once told Joe Ferriss and Jeanne Craver who reflected it in the revised entry for Badaouia (RAS) in Al Khamsa Arabians III, means “Major General”, and is a senior army rank. My father, General Salim Al-Dahdah, a retired two-star army general, is a Lewa, in Arabic. Pasha is the title of nobility we all know. This yields “His Excellency, Major General Ibrahim Khairi Pasha”.

Armed with this new understanding, I looked up his name in Arabic in Google, for starters. Here is what I found:

1) In one source: 19-year old Gamal Abd al-Nasser (Egypt second military ruler in the post-Kingdom era), after failing the oral examination test for entering Egypt’s military cadets’ college in 1936, appealed to Major General Ibrahim Khairi, then Under-Secretary (equivalent to deputy minister) of Defense, explained his situation, and was readmitted the next year.

2) In another source: that the father of Anwar al-Sadate (Egypt’s third miliatary ruler in the post-Kingdom era and Nasser’s successor), following the rejection — again — of his son’s application to the military college before of his low social status– begged before Major General Ibrahim Pasha Khairi, “head of the commission for accepting applications, horsemanship instructor for King Faruq, Under-Secretary of Defense, in addition to being married to a lady from the royal family, and  of the stars of high society”.  The rest of the anecdote, and the way General Ibrahim Khairi reportedly agreed to the request, is interesting, but I don’t have time to translate it now.

3) In a third source, the oldest living Egyptian army general, 97 years old, in an April 2013 interview, recounts his first encounter with General Ibrahim Khairi Pasha, head of the military college at the time.

4) This is an English source, a 2005 article from the Ahram newspaper: check it out yourself.

5) Here is another English source about the Nasser anecdote.

6) A list of the residents of the upper class  neighborhood of Koubbeh Gardens in 1936, including him.

and there is more..

I am extremely impressed with the structure and conformation of Jenny Krieg’s filly, Ubayyat al-Bahrain, one of two daughters of the twenty seven year old desert-bred Bahraini stallion Mlolshaan Hager Solomon, out of the Ubayyah mare DB Kalilah. I don’r think she is even two years old.

To be honest, I have never seen such depth of girth, shortness of back, strength of musculature, and length of ear (all marks of an asil ware mare) in any Arabian horse in the USA before. She reminds of war mares I have seen in Syria including Mari a Shuwaymah Sabbah at Radwan Shabareq and Nawwarah a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah at Abdel Mohsen al-Nassif.

That’s how war mares in the desert were like. Really. Seeing this photo encouraged me to breed to this Bahraini stallion and I will do it as early as this spring, even if I would have preferred not to have to fork out 1,000 USD in breeding fees.

The image below is copy of Loan Oak Photography.

This is one of the foundation stallions for the Blue Star program, he is a Hamdani Simri, a son of the imported Sindidah, and of the Ibn Jalawi stallion Jalam Al Ubayyan. The more I look at this picture, the more he reminds me of old Lebanese asil horses. The photo was posted by Susan Whitman on the Blue Arabian Horse Catalog Facebook page.

Alwal Bahet

The stunning AAS Haizum (Desert Dhellal x Hawla Al Badia by Ibn Taamri), owned by Edie Booth of Canton, TX.

AAS Haizmoum

Susan Whitman recently sent me this picture of a promising and very correctly built 2011 colt from her tail-female Turfa program, MD Turfairan (MD Ibn Hattairan x MD Bint Turfaira by El Rabih). I especially like the photo of his maternal grandsire El Rabih (Al Felluje x Sharifa Abkar by Famaje), a Ubayyan stallion, with prominent facial bones, a sign of authenticity in Arabian horse breeding.

El Rabih

The Al Khamsa Preservation Task Force is just done with the re-homing of two mares from the rare and precious Ma’naqi Sbayli strain tracing to Lady Anne Blunt’s desert bred import Ferida: the 1997 CSA Amira Kista (Sharif Zaraq x Takelma Rosanna by Prince Charmming), and the 2000 CSA Zaraqa (CSA Maneghi Amir x Takelma Velours by Prince Charmming), which is not registered, but a full sister of this horse.  I am happy these mares are getting a second chance at leaving offspring, after the good work Carol Stone has done with this strain over the past twenty five years.

Yesterday, Carol shared pictures of their two dams which I post here: Takelma Rosanna is the chestnut, and Takelma Velours is the grey, and their common maternal grandsire, the Egyptian stallion Prince Charmming (Ibn Alaa Eldin x Egyptian Charm by Shamruk), which I found to be impressive.

This is the asil Hamdani Simri stallion AAS Najl Enan (AAS Enan x AAS Ardal Rafiqa by Ibn Taamri) bred by Edie Booth of Antique Arabians Stud for Canton, TX. A promising young stallion.  He is very reminiscent of some of Lebanon’s asils of the 1940s and 1950s.

AAS Najl Enan

This morning I was looking up “Ibn Duwayhiss” , owner of an excellent marbat of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak in my notes — why? I will tell you later; this is more like a note to myself at this stage — and I found the following:

“Ibn Duwayhiss, a family from al-Mawazin, from al-Jabbar, from al-’Umayrah, from al-Husayn, from al-Bteynat, from al-Sba’ah”

Few passages from Lady Anne Blunt’s (LAB) Journal and Correspondence have left me thinking more than this one, from May 14, 1906:  

“Saw Mutlak for some time going through old list I had of families in various tribes, owners of special strains of blood. Found most of them correct.”

How I wish I had access to LAB’s list.  Over the past twenty years I have been compiling from various sources and updating a list of Bedouin sheykhs, notables and rank-and-file warriors and trying to match these to strains of blood (marabet) associated with them. The list is pretty extensive for the Shammar and ‘Anazah (in all its branches) tribes of Northern Arabia, but thinner for the other tribes.

I will be publishing this list progressively here.

I am sure I have said this here before, but here it is again: Lady Anne Blunt’s Jauza is my favorite Arabian mare of all time.

I am so fond of this picture of Lady Anne’s Radia/Ghadia (Feysul x Ghazala) and can’t stop looking at these eyes and muzzle. Why did so many of today’s Egyptian horses, as beautiful and pretty as they are, lose these soulful eyes? Their eyes now have the size, the sparkle, the stare, the dark skin, but not the soul. Where has the soul gone? From time to time, it makes a comeback in a few individuals, and then it vanishes again.

Ghadia

There are a couple of hypotheses that could be tested. If anyone has a horse that is tail female Bint Kareema or knows someone who has one, please contact me: ealdahdah@hotmail.com

The Institute of the Desert Arabian Horse has undertaken a study of the following US and international asil maternal lines of Arabian horses. A lot of us are eagerly awaiting the results.

The other day I spent a most beautiful day between Abu Kebeer and Geziret Saoud in the Sharqiyah province of Egypt with the Tahawis. Yehia Abdelsattar al-Tahawi, Mohammed Abdallah Saoud al-Tahawi and Yasser Ghanem Barakat, their friends and I spent hours talking about horses and looking at them. One can hardly find people with a richer and better preserved equine tradition. As always with them, I learned new and interesting things that could benefit Egyptian horses.

It is about the Kafr Ibrash farm, which is where the Inshass foundation mare  Bint Kareema was purchased from by the Inshass Stud.

Here’s what we know about Bint Kareema:

– She was a roan grey mare, born in 1935 and purchased from the “Kafr Ibrash Farm” by the Inshass Stud of King Fouad and his son King Farouk;

– She was by Lady Anne Blunt’s Rasheed (Jamil Blunt x Zareefa), out of Kareema, a mare by a “Dahman” out of an “Obeya”;

– She was sold to a Abd el Samad el Gayar on July 5, 1953, according to Pearson and Mol, first edition, page 1928.

– According to Judith Forbis’ Authentic Arabians, Volume 1, page 274, her strain was ‘Ubayyah’; this is perhaps an inference from her grand dam’s name “Obeya”;

Here’s what I could infer about Bint Kareema, from the information above:

– her sire Rasheed being an Inshass stallion (he sired the Inshass mares Ragaa out of Saada in 1937 and El Zahraa out of Zahra in 1934), the Kafr Ibrash Farm where  Bint Kareema was purchased from must have had a close connection with the Inshass Royal Stud.

This connection to the Inshass Royal Stud was furthered when I found out some three years ago that the current village of Kafr Ibrash was only six miles away from the town of Inshass, the Egyptian Delta town where the King’s Stud was located, in the Sharqiyah province. Back in 2010, this geographical proximity had already led me to hypothesize that the owners of Kafr Ibrah Farm ”were closely associated with the Egyptian Royal family in some way or another”.

Today this hypothesis is confirmed.

While at the Yehia al-Tahawi’s farm in Sharqiyah, I met a young journalist, Saeed, who writes a column in the Saudi equine magazine “al-Jawad al-Arabi”. Saeed mentioned that he was from a village in the Sharqiyah province that is very close to Inshass and its Inshass Stud, which is now used as a government warehouse. I asked him whether he knew Kafr Ibrash. He said it was a village next to his. I asked him whether there was an old stud there from the 1930s. At this point Saeed picked up his phone, and called the former Member of Parliament from Kafr Ibrash, Mr. Mohii Rafaat Rabie, who promptly told him that in Kafr Ibrash was the farm of the Egyptian Queen Mother Nazli and that of her brother, Sherif Pasha Sabri, and that Nazli’s farm house was still to be found (about the stables, he promised to check and get back to me).

So the “Kafr Ibrash Farm” was really the stud farm of Queen Nazli, the Queen Mother..

This not only means that Bint Kareema was from one of the Royal Studs, which brings her closer to being authenticated, it also means that Joe Ferriss’ hypothesis that her and the Queen Mother’s 1947 stallion *Ibn Farhan  (registered as being by a “Dahman” out of an “El Obeya”) are related is probably correct.

Here is a photo of a stallion from this line, the handsome Hakeel Ibn Kaisoon.

hakeel ibn kaisoon

Here is a comment from Gerd, from Chile:

“Three friends, readers of his blog, also inspired by the Blog, joined forces to try to keep the line of a Tahawy Arabian mare who arrived in Chile. So they found 3 mares.The only Arabs asil there are in chile are Egyptian, so they must continue in that line. Dreaming,they hope someday import semen from some asil stalion. It shall be from France as health formalities are easier for chile.”

(This post will remain on the top of the page of Daughters of the Wind for  a month. Fore more recent posts, scroll down please)

If you want to support the goals of the Al Khamsa Preservation Task Force of rescuing, rehoming and advocating for Al Khamsa Arabian horses from rare, precious and endangered lines, you can now make donations by PayPal, by visting this page (click here). Over the past week alone, we raised 2,450 USD from generous Al Khamsa supporters, and the goal is to reach 5.000 USD by the end of next week.

You can also get there by going to to the Al Khamsa website site main page (www.alkhamsa.org) and click on the “Donations” banner to the right. There, you can either chose to support the Al Khamsa General Fund, the Preservation Task Force, or the Al Khamsa Endurance Award.

The goals of the Al Khamsa Preservation Task Force for 2012 are to:

1) identify bloodlines in danger of being lost, and classify them in order of most urgent to less urgent (Code Red and Code Orange lists); write about them and advocate for them; search for horses from these bloodlines and their owners; establish a database for these bloodlines; the task force is limited to endangered Ancestral Elements and Foundation horses, plus some rare and significant tail females that are not otherwise endangered when found in the middle of the pedigree. For example, it’s about preserving the *Aire tail female, rather than the line of *Aire in the middle of the pedigrees.

2) reach out to owners of horses from above bloodlines to encourage them to preserve these horses, and if they can’t find new preservation homes for them, help them find preservation homes;

3) provide assistance with registration issues faced by owners of such horses;

This past week alone, the task force has been focusing on finding new homes for two mares of the precious Ma’naqi Sbayli strain tracing to the Blunt’s Ferida, and a Kuhaylat al-Krush mare tracing to Davenport’s *Werdi that has a rare line to the stallion *Azra.

Black Sambo (Mahroun x Biroufa by Khebir) was the sire of the two Managhi Sbayli mares Milanne and Velours who are the source of the asil Ferida tail female in the USA, through the excellent mare Fejr (Rijm x Feluka out of Ferida), also photo below. You’ve go to love that powerful Crabbet hindquarter on Fejr.