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

The desert-bred ‘Ubayyah Suhayliyah mare Reem al-’Ud, bred by the Shammar tribe in northeastern Syria, also known as “the mare of Mattori” from one of her past Bedouin owners, was featured several times on this blog. Here is yet another photo of her in extreme old age, which shows well the black skin around her eyes. Her last owner was Sh. Mayzar al-’Ajil al-’Abd al-Karim al-Muhammad al-’Abd al-Karim al-Jarba, a descendant of the great Shammar hero ‘Abd al-Karim al-Jarba known as “Abu Khudah”.

I have always admired the bright bay horse pictured on Jackson Hensley’s Bedouin Arabians website (one photo below, with Jackson’s daughter), without knowing who the horse was. Jackson, as an artist, emphasizes the essence of the Arabian horse more than it’s official identity, and this is perhaps why he does not mention the names of his horses on his website.  I always thought this stallion was a nice combination of masculinity and sweetness, like a stag, or a male gazelle..

I just found out from a comment Jackson left below, that the horse is actually mine, one I own jointly with Darlene Summers, Monologue CF. I confess I felt a little out of touch.. but then again, I only saw Monologue twice, once at Pamela Klein’s and once at Craver Farms, where he is currently stationed.

Kathy Busch and Crista Couch kindly took a day trip to see the stallion Rahim Regency WAF (Regency CF x Dakhala Sahra) near Kansas City, MO, of which here is a video (click on rahim).

Sired by Regency CF (Ibn Alamein x Bint Antan by El Alamein) and looking very much like his sire, Rahim is the son (and otherwise the only offspring — so far) of my new acquisition, the 26 year old Ma’naqiyah Sbailiyah Dakhala Sahra (Plantagenet x Soiree by Sir). He is some 88% Davenport, with a tail female to Miss Ott’s Sirrula, all the way back to Major Upton’s Naomi.

His owner Joseph Walters, has been breeding him to Polish mares, and was not aware of his Al Khamsa, asil status.

The book these pictures come from was published in the Hungarian language in 1904 and was translated  into Arabic language in 2004 by Mr. Tha’er Saleh with the support of the Hungarian Translation Fund. The original photos are at the Museum of Hungarian Agriculture in Budapest. The book is about the travels of Austro-Hungarian government envoy Fadlallah Mikhail el-Haddad to the Arabian desert just a few years before the trip Homer Davenport took there.

The purpose of the trip of Mikhail el Haddad to Ottoman Iraq (Mesopotamia) was apparently to access alternative sources of desert blood than the ‘Anazah blooflines that Babolna already had access to. His trip first followed the Damascus-Palmyra-Deir-ez-Zor axis, then it followed the Euphrates valley to down to Fallujah  and Baghdad. From there, Haddad went along a large circular route south of Bagdad that included Najaf, Kerbala, the ‘Amarat Bedouin (a branch of the ‘Anazah) pastures and then crossed the Euphrates river eastwards until he reached the Tigris river.

From top to bottom, and left to right: Photo 1: In Tell Kalakh, which is west the city of Homs (my mother’s town by the way) in Syria, with Abdallah Agha al-Dandashi from whom the stallion O’Bajan was bought in 1885; photo 2: with some ‘Anazah Bedouins, top, and at the Sultan stables at”Al Waziria” near Bagdad, bottom; photo 3: the mare Ferha of the Shammar; photo 4: Mikhail’s three uncles, all Maronite clergymen in Beit Shebab, in the Mountains of Lebanon.

Teymur sent this picture of the other foundation sire of the Turkish Arabian breeding program, the 1928 bay stallion Sa’d (Kuheylan Cietni x Kuheyletul Sade Tukan), also known as Baba Saad, a Kuhaylan Sa’dan al-Tuqan, by a Kuhaylan Ju’aytni. He was Turkey’s most famous racehorse.

Marie Arthur sent these photos of the nice Kuhaylat al-Krush mare IV Shtika Al Krush (CL Hi Ned x Tika Al Krush by Krushan Al Krush), who Hi Ned’s only Krush daughter.  If you scroll down you will see a photo of this impressive stallion.

The day before yesterday was my daughter’s fourth birthday, and also Daughters of the Winds fourth anniversary.

While digging through old pictures, I came across this headshot of the asil Saqlawi stallion al-Abjar, which I took in the mid 1990s, at the studfarm of the late Hajj Amin Yakan near al-Bab, not far from Aleppo. He was a tall stallion of tremedous style, carriage and presence. My father is the man in the picture.

I have already written about al-Abjar here. He was a Saqlawi Jadran of Ibn Zubayni, from the marbat of al-Dali’ (like his relative *Mirage), later in the marbat of the Mudariss family. There is still a thin tail female line running through his sister, in Damascus.

Today, preservation breeders of asil Arabians in the USA breed on a small scale. They are fewer breeders than before and they are far between. Many of these breeders don’t always have the stallions their mares need, whether in their barns of just around the corner. Some breeders have the stallions but not the mares. Some have stallions who are sons and brothers of their mares, and don’t want to inbreed.

There needs to be a good supply of (non-Egyptian) Al Khamsa stallions registered to ship semen from. When I wanted to breed Jadiba to a Davenport stallion this past summer, the only ones I could find who were ready to ship were Triermain CF in Illinois, Vice Regent CF in Georgia, and Pal-Ara Sensation and Mandarin in Oregon. Mandarin died last year, and Triermain is getting old. I opted for Vice Regent but now I have more mares and I wish there are other stallions to choose from.

There is no shortage of outstanding Davenport and BLUE STAR and other asil stallions, who ought to be registered to ship. I wish Davenport stallions like Regatta CF, Daedalus LD, Porte CF, Silverton CF, Indie Star, Eldar HD, Shiraz CF, Clarion CF, Firebolt, Chancery CF, Popinjay, Bah-Rani, Pulcher Ibn Reshan, Cobalt KH, Quantum LD, Aurene CF, were available to ship semen from. These and others are the sires of the future.

I realize registration for shipping is expensive, but there must be way to recoup the costs, and perhaps a collective effort can be undertaken, will several breeders cooperating to pool funding and get stallions of common interest frozen or registered to ship. It is well worth the effort, and there is no other way forward for the future of the asil Arabian in the USA.

The Abbas Pasha Manuscript [1993, edited by J. Forbis and G. Sherif], which is essentially the transcription by Abbas Pasha’s envoys of Bedouins’ testimonies about their horses, is the foremost primary source on the Bedouin-bred Arabian horse available today. Its hundreds of testimonies is the precious remnant of an oral culture, now long gone. No wonder modern Saudi families and clans who have nothing to do with horses anymore are relying on it as a bargaining chip to ask for favors from the Saudi royal family, or to ascertain their social status (things along the lines of: “Your Highness, my ancestor gave your ancestor a precious mare, they were close, it is written in the horse book, so now I need… from you in return”).  

However great the legacy of Judith Forbis as a breeder of Arabian horses of the show type has been, her most enduring legacy, IMO, is to have made this book available to Western audiences. Page after page, the information in the Manuscript debunks many Western misconceptions about Bedouin horse breeding. Really, the only thing missing from the book is an index of the individual horses, strains and Bedouins mentioned.

Check out this quote, page 439 [notes between brackets are mine]:

“The Sheikhs of Subayah [actually, Subay', a Bedouin tribe long allied to the Aal Saud] came and they were asked about their horses of the ‘Abeyya strain [in context, 'Ubayyan al-Suyayfi]: Baddah al Saifi [actually, al-Suyayfi] and Shafi the son of Fuhayd al Saifi [ditto] and Mesud ibn Ghadir, the sheikhs of Subayah [Subay'] replied: She is ‘Abeyya Sherrakiya of al Sherrak [...]. And we [in context, Fuhayd al-Suyayfi, Shaykh of Subay'] mated the safra, Hosayna, to a Kuhaylan Saada [actually Sa'dan or Sa'd] Tuqan, the horse of Hubaylis of al Qublan of Mutayr. And she gave birth to a shaqra filly whose name is Barissa who is with Shafi, the son of Fuhayd.”

Here you have a Bedouin shaykh, the son of the tribe’s leader, talking about the horses he and his father bred. They mention having bred one of their mares to a Sa’dan Tuqan stallion, and refer to that strain as a branch of Kuhaylan, like the Kuhaylan Hayfi, Rodan, or Mimrah. There is another instance of a breeding to the same Sa’dan Tuqan stallion on page 430.

Now according to Carl Raswan, the Sa’dan strain is Ma’naqi related, and is not a branch of the Kuhaylan. In his (totally arbitrary, IMO) strain categorization, the Sa’dan is one of the strains a purist Bedouin breeder should avoid breeding his asil mare to. If that were true, why would the leader of the Subay’, a major Bedouin tribe in the area of Riad in Najd, breed his mare to a stallion of this strain? and why the Mutayr, another major Bedouin tribe from Najd, maintain a Sa’dan Tuqan as a stallion, which means the strain is shubuw (to be mated from) to both the Mutayr and the Subay’?

Who would you believe in this case? the documented Bedouin primary source, or the undocumented western secondary source?

The thread below contains very interesting and valuable observation by Joe Ferriss on Western need for a systematic classification of Bedouin strains, and by Lisa on the value of written versus oral information in Bedouin culture.

Let me add the following general principles: The Bedouins’ culture was an oral one; information was transmitted orally between people of the same generation and from generation to generation. They did not need anything in written when dealing with each other. The truthfulness and probity (‘adl in Arabic, a value depending on honor) of the man ensured the trustworthiness of the information, and it was confirmed by other men who acted as witnesses.

When dealing with outsiders, whether non-Bedouin Arabs like the town people or Aleppo, the Cairo-based missaries of Abbas Pasha, as well as Westerners, there arose the need to have this information put in writing, for two reasons :first, the system of values that bound Bedouins to each other did not apply to outsiders. Conversely, the outsiders did not trust information that was not put in writing.

So, as far as Arabian horses were concerned, the hujjah was the transcription in writing of information that was originally shared and transmitted orally. I am not sure it was designed for Westerners first. Rather I think the Cairo based Mameluk Sultans and the Istanbul based Ottoman Sultans were likely the first to request written hujaj for the horses they bought. The Abbas Pasha Manuscript is essentially a compendium of hujaj.

Of course, when trade in horses reached a larger scale, and foreigners who did not speak Arabic became involved as clients, a whole industry of agents, intermediaries, translators, guides and businessmen arose, who made sure that if a foreigner employing them wanted a piece of paper with Saqlawi Jadran written on it, well, they would create one for him. The Bedouin who was made to sign on the piece of paper, either did not know what he was putting his seal on, because he was illiterate (oral culture again), or he did not feel concerned, because the transaction involved non-Bedouins, and hence fell outside his value system.

I am in Lebanon for the holidays with the family, and have been catching up on some Arabian horse reading. All the important books are here, and I only quote from memory when in the USA. Just finished re-re-reading “The Crabbet Arabian Stud” by R. Archer et al, and have started Lady Wentworth’s “The Authentic Arabian Horse”. Can’t help lamenting how she messed with her mother’s “Book of Fragments” each time. Someone ought to reconstitute that book from scratch and republish it.

I also flipped through Raswan’s “Black Tents of Arabia”. Somehow I never feel safe with Raswan. There is some good information, in the middle of a sea of misleading and often wrong statements. I really feel I could fill an entire new blog at the rythm of a post per day documeting these, and I know I eventually will some day. Meanwhile, I have learned to respect him as a passionate advocate of the preservation of the asil Arabian in the USA. He must have been a really nice person, too.

I think there are two ‘golden rules’ about Lady Blunt and Raswan, concerning information about horses, strains, tribes, etc. I have said this before, and will continue to say it: I would consider her generally right unless proven wrong, and him generally wrong unless proven right.

Speaking of jewels (Confetti CF is on the left, Provance CF on the right):

Edouard, take this out if you want — but their owner, Mary Ann Brewer, has decided to stop breeding, and is offering these two Kuhaylat, and Tokens Ceelen (a straight Davenport mare, tail female to Schilla) on a free lease to interested Davenport breeders. Contact her for details — she’s in Texas.

One of the few asil Tahawi mares left in Egypt is this old Kuhaylah Nawwaqiyah owned by Helga al-Tahawi, the wife of the late Shaykh Soliman al-Tahawi. She is one of those which the Board of Directors of Al Khamsa recently recognized as tribal “horses of interest”. I think the photo is from Bernd Radtke, but it might directly from the Tahawis.

A collective effort on three continents is under way to get these 15 or so remaining Tahawi horses recognized by the EAO in Egypt, and as a result, by WAHO.

This morning Jeanne Craver shared with some of us this picture of my young Wadd (Triermain CF x Wisteria CF by Triermain CF), who at 5 months old, shows real potential as a stallion, and I wish the best for him. That inbreeding to Triermain really paid off, and I would repeat it if I could. Behind him stands his sister Wadhah (Javera Thadrian x Wisteria CF), who is now 18 months old.

By the way, I have chosen the suffix Al Arab for my (very much virtual for now) stud. So he will be registered as Wadd Al Arab (“Wadd of the Arabs”), and his sister as Wadhah Al Arab.  When I was younger, I was really impressed by racehorse names like Shaykh al-Arab, Shatt al-Arab, Wahid al-Arab, and used to think horses with such names were to be reckoned with.

From a purely linguistic perspective, Wadhah really should have been registered as “Wadhat al-Arab”, since a final “t” in Arabic is silent unless followed by a noun in the possessive case (e.g., Kuhaylah Rodaniyah and Kuhaylat Rodan, which translate respectively as “Rodanian Kuhaylah” and “the Kuhaylah of Rodan”; another example is Saqlawiyah on it’s own as opposed to the possessive case as in Saqlawiyat al-Abd).

The two Saqlawiyat Jadraniyat full sisters Haraka and Bint Hamida (Kenur x *H.H. Mohamed Ali’s Hamida) have founded a dynasty of their own in the USA. Their dam Hamida (Nasr x Mahroussa) was bred by Prince Mohamed Ali and was a half sister of *Zarife, *Fadl, and *Maaroufa; their sire Kenur (*Sunshine x *Tairah) was the offspring of two Albert Harris’ Saudi imports to the USA.

Both photos are from the archives of Billy Sheets, but I have seen them before in a Khamsat magazine issue too.

A few months ago, I posted a photo of the stallion Hallanny Mistanny (Zarife x Roda) from the Billy Sheets photo collection. Here is another one, taken at the same. It’s less good, and he shows his extreme old age here (I think 28).

Recently uploaded on the website of the Davenport Arabian Horse Conservancy website is this photo of the beautiful 1975 Kuhaylan Hayfi stallion Irade (Ibn Alamein x Iras), bred at Craver Farms.

Raed Yaken, who lives in London but is originally from Aleppo, Syria, sent me these pictures of his asil mare Zohoor (“Flowers”), a Kuhaylah Hayfiyah bred by Alaa al-Din al-Jabri.

Zuhur is by Mahrous (of Mustafa al-Jabri, his nephew) out of the small bay mare Durra whose photo was one of the first ones posted on this blog in 2008. Some time ago I also posted photos of Zohoor

I saw both mares at Alaa al-Din Jabri’s back in 1991, and I also saw Durra’s dam Freihat; I remember all three of them very well. They are from the most asil, authenticated marbat of K. Hayfi in Syria, that of Wawi al-Kharfan of the Fad’aan. Theirs is one of the best marabit in Syria, and it is now with the Yakan family.

His name is mistakenly spelled “Wadi” (which is not a man’s name, but means ‘valley’ in Arabic) in the Syrian Studbook and the error was picked up by others since. No one seems to remember who that Wawi al-Kharfan was, but he seems to have been one of the men of the Fad’aan Bedouin leaders Muqhim (Mijhim) al-Mayahd close circle. There is a lingering story, which I was not able to verify, that these horses actually trace back to Muqhim’s own horses.

Jeanne Craver has sent a number of precious photos of the Kuhaylat al-Krush mare Asara (Kasar x Badia by Jadaan) to be uploaded on the Davenport Arabian Horse Conservancy website.

Asara is one of the Second Foundation Davenport mare, whose is the tail female of a number of favorites featured on this blog, such as the Krush stallions Janub Al Krush, CL Hi-Ned, and Indie Star.

Below are are some of these photos, which you can click on to enlarge. What a mare.

The status of the 1921 French Arabian racehorse Denousté is a thorny question with which I have been grappling for a long time. I believe I have now reached closure on the issue, and I feel relieved, even if no new information has surfaced on the horse.

There were always two issues about this horse: the first concerned a distant antecedent in his pedigree; and the second was about some French breeders breeding their Arabian mares to part-bred Arabian stallions and claiming the offspring were by Denousté.

The issue of his pedigree is easier to get a grasp of: Denousté was born in 1921 at Mr. Lalague in South Western France, and was by the desert-bred stallion Latif, a Hamdani Simri from the Fad’aan Bedouins, and out of Djaima, who was  by Khouri, a desert-bred Ubayyan Sharrak also from the Fad’aan, and out of Dame Tartine, who was by Burkeguy (see below) out of Déesse, who was by the desert-bred Emir Selim and out of Berthe, who was the offspring of two desert-bred imports: the stallion Nahr El Kebir and the mare Merjane, a Mukhalladiyah by strain, imported from the Naqab (Negev) desert near Gaza. It’s a pedigree that’s relatively close to the desert, in general, with the exception of Burkeguy.

The 1899 stallion Burkeguy, bred by Mr. Horment, was the only French bred stallion in Denouste’s pedigree, at a time when French breeders favored imported desert-bred horses over home bred ones. Burkeguy’s ancetress Aissa, who was the maternal grand-dam of his sire Fez, is the main culprit in his pedigree.

If you follow Burkeguy’s pedigree on allbredpedigree.com (which is fairly accurate in this case), you will notice some line-breeding to the mare Kalifa, of the respected Souberbielle breeding program, but also to the desert-bred stallion Djerash, a Saqlawi Jadran. You will also notice his great grand-dam Aissa, an 1870 grey mare.

Aissa was bred by Friar Houneau, in Algeria, by Adjali out of his mare Fatouma, and brought to France in 1873, where she was registered and bred on. Her entry is in the French Stud Book Volume IV, page 487.

Her sire Adjali is not registered, however, and only appears in his daughter registration entry, as imported (to Algeria) in 1868, presumably from the Arabian desert. At that time, French authorities in colonial Algeria did not maintain formal studbooks until Volume V (1874);  the Arabian horses that were bred in Algeria before that date were never registered, except when they were imported to France, only their progeny were registered.

Aissa’s dam Fatouma is not registered in the French Studbook either, and is only recorded in her daughter’s entry, and that’s because she, too, was not bred in France, but in Algeria. In her daughter’s entry, she is recorded as being born in 1862 by “Bou Maza et Kebira, Arabes”. The word “Arabes” in the context French horse-breeding activities in Algeria typically means “from Arabia” or “Original Arab”.

There is a Bou Maza active as a stallion at that time, not in Algeria but in France, bred in 1847 by famous French breeder Mr. De Nexon by Hussein out of Amine. There are several Kebiras, though, the best match being the one bred by Pompadour in 1844 (Mesrur x Furette by the grand Massoud, founder of the Anglo-Arabian breed); this Kebira would have been 18 when she foaled Fatouma.

The most likely scenario here is that Kebira left Pompadour when the Stud’s broodmare band was dispersed, in foal to Bou Maza; that she was taken to Algeria by this Friar, or someone else (Nicole de Blomac argues that the trip to Algeria may have taken place in the context of Empress Eugenie’s visit, when lots of people and horses went back and forth between France and its new colony);

Kebira’s daughter Fatouma was then foaled in Algeria (that’s a fact) in 1862; and when she became an adult mare, she was bred to Adjali by the Friar, and foaled Aissa in 1870; the friar then took Aissa back to France in 1873, where she was registered.

It seems to me like one of these stories so common to Arabian (and other breeds) registries in their early days, when horse registrations fall between cracks because of clerical errors, where changes in registration systems and procedures mean that some horses are registered posthumously, and in the absence of export documents between a country and its colony, some information is lost in the way.

Context here needs to be taken into consideration. It’s not too different a situation from that of some of the Hamidie imports in the USA, or that of *Abbeian 111, or more recently some of the Inshass horses in Egypt.

On top of this, according to Jean-Claude Rajot, both Admiral Cordonnier and Robert Mauvy went through the above research and documents when they chose to breed from select Denousté offspring. Jean-Claude testified that both men were so thorough and systematic in their research that they had no qualms about cutting out horses that did not match their standards of purity — and they put the threshold very high.

Jean-Claude also told me that both Cordonnier and Mauvy researched that Friar’s credentials, and found nothing that would justify breeding his mares to non-Arabian horses (e.g., Barb or English TB) for any reason; that innocuous Friar was not involved in racing, and he was not breeding horses for profit, or to sell them for that matter.

He also mentioned that while Cordonnier and Mauvy did not consider Denousté to be a prototype of the classic Arabian horse they liked, they thought he was a good horse, with bona fide origins, and they selectively used his progeny in both their breedings. In Mauvy’s case, it was the stallion Saadi (Ourour x Oureah by Ghalbane Or.Ar.), whose sire Ourour was out of Denousté grand-daughter (Gafir in Ourour’s tail female was sent from Tunisia to France for a breeding to Denousté); In Cordonnier’s case, it was the stallion Kriss II (Denousté x Kenia by Kerro).

As to the mention in Mauvy’s little book that the “use of [the stallion] Abel (Denousté x Alicante by Kerro) [by Pompadour] was unfortunate”, Jean-Claude said it was a reference to his progeny having disappointed Mauvy, rather than a remark on Abel’s pedigree origin.

That said, Jean-Claude mentioned that both Mauvy and Cordonnier were aware of at least three or four specific instances where horses registered as sons and daughters of Denousté were in reality by part bred Arabians, and that they were careful to stay away from these.

All in all, I am rather satisfied with Denousté’s status as a bona fide Arabian horse, and hence with his descendants purebred Arabian status.

While looking up ancient Arabian art over the Internet, I was struck by the expression of these two steles from a village near Hail, in Central Arabia. They were dated to the 4th millenium BC.  These were displayed for the first time outside Saudi Arabia at an exhibition in the Louvre in Paris, then in Barcelona. I think the exhibition will be coming to the USA at some point soon.

This mare, Al-Shumuss, was at the stud of Mustafa al-Jabri in Aleppo in the 1990s, and her dam was at Radwan Shabareq’s. She was a Kuhaylat al-Krush, by a Hamdani Simri who was himself by the black Saqlawi Marzaqani stallion of al-Anoud, Princess of Tai; the mare’s dam was by the same black Saqlawi Marzaqani.

The line came from the Shammar, from Rakan al-Nuri al-Mashal al-Jarba, but before that it was his maternal uncles the Tai chiefs; and while most everyone among the horse breeders in Syria thought this line traced back to the Krush al-Baida marbat of Mayzar ‘Abd al-Muhsin al-Jarba of the Shammar (it is even registered as Krush al-Baida in the Syrian studbook) which ultimately goes back to the Mutayr Bedouins, it turned out, following questioning of the elders and leaders of the Tai Bedouins in the late 1990s that this Krush marbat actually came from the Fad’aan Bedouins of the ‘Anazah.

There are two distinct lines of Kuhaylan Krush in North Arabia: one going back to the Fad’aan ‘Anazah (like Krush Halba below, like the Davenport import *Werdi, like the mare in this picture), and another line, known as Krush al-Baida (the white Krush) going back to the Mutayr through the Shammar (like Mokhtar, the Syrian stallion in France). I am still not sure how the two relate to each other. I haven’t able so far to trace one marbat to the other, or both to a common root marbat.

Below is another picture of the same mare, a few years later.

This is the mare I thought was reminiscent of the Davenport Second Foundation mare Asara (who traces to *Werdi) in body structure, although this photo does not show it well. The grey mare behind the Krush mare in the photo just above, with the dark hair, is the ‘Ubayyat al-Hunaydis mare Muna. Both photos taken by me at different times in the 1990s.

While re-reading the excerpt from the RAS’s Dr. Ahmad Mabrouk below, I realized that this man did not seem to know that the Arabian horses are transmitted by the dam.

He recognizes that the horse he bought for the RAS was out of “El Nowagia”, and “by Krush”, yet not only does he name the horse “Kroush“, but he also says he was “a Krush”.  The horse was obviously a Kuhaylan Nawwaq like his dam.

And these were supposed to be the best horse experts of their time. I mean, it’s like a US constitutional expert saying that the President is elected by Congress, and getting away with it. I just don’t get it.