Daughter of the Wind: Edouard Al-Dahdah’s blog on desert arabian horses, past and present

This one has an “artistic” touch to it. Still, the grey horse leading the pack has an impressive tail carriage.

Note the well-built grey horses with the high-tail carriage in the video.

These are some of the horses of the Bedouin tribe of Yam, who lives in the area in and around the famous historical city of Najran, in the province of same, which lies in South-Western Saudi Arabia.

Pure Man tells me that the Yam Bedouins in this area of Saudi Arabia, while now settled, are known to have preserved ancient horsemanship traditions. He also tells me that they have preserved Arabian horses pure since the time of their grandfathers, and that they are deeply attached to their horses and very proud of them. They should be.

Yam’s horses mostly belong to the two strain of Kubayshan — an ancient strain originating from that area, with the Qahtan tribe, Yam’s northern neighbors — and Khumayssan — a strain I had never heard of before. They are reportedly asil, but have never been registered in WAHO by the Saudi Government authorities in Dirab (and it’s better like this - who is WAHO anyway to tell Bedouins what standards of purity are?).

Below is the picture of a sunset in Najran

Now this one is asil. This is al-Sakb, a desert-bred Hamdani from Saudi Arabia, bred and owned by Pure Man. His sire: Suhayl, an Ubayyan; his dam: Wajjabah, a Hamdaniyah, by the stallion al-Harir, an Ubayyan out of Wassamah, by Qays, a Suwayti.

Tiwaiq is the head stallion at al-Khalediah Farm in Saudi Arabia. Al-Khaledia, the property of H.R.H. Prince Khalid ben Sultan ben Abd al-Aziz Aal Saud, is one of the largest horse farms in the Middle East, with more than 500 Arabian horses.

Judging from pictures such as this one and others (here), Tiwaiq, described on the website as a ‘pure desert horse’, does not look like an Arabian to me, but like a good English Thoroughbred. I wish there was a pedigree to look at.

I am back in the USA after more than a month in Morocco, Yemen, Lebanon (home) and France. It’s good to be back. There’s lot to catch up on, including news on the upcming Al Khamsa 2009 Convention in Redmond, Oregon. Check the website here, and if you haven’t registered yet, click here to do so.

Louis Bauduin just sent me this older photo of the masculine stallion Jazour, a Kuhaylan al-’Ajuz, by Saadi out of Izarra. Jazour was bred in France by Robert Mauvy, and reflects a blend of Tunisian and Algerian breeding.  Too bad Izarra, bred by Admiral Cordonnier at Sidi Bou Hadid in Tunisia, never left a female line. A young Louis is holding the bridle..

Jazour is the sire of Kerak, bred in the Netherlands, by the late Dr. Foppe Klynstra, a friend of Mauvy’s out of the striking desert-bred mare Nijmeh, herself from the Majali Bedouins of Jordan. Both Nijmeh and Kerak are pictured in Klynstra’s beautiful book “Nobility of the Desert“. More on Nijmeh later.

A famous verse from a long poem by Beduin prince and poet Imru’ al-Qays al-Kindi (501-544 AD), where he describes his Arabian horse:

Lahu aytala zabyin wa-saaqa na’amatin wa-irkha’u sarhanin wa-taqribu tatfuli

In English (translation mine):

“He has the flanks of an antelope, the legs of an ostrich, the trot of a wolf and the gallop of a young fox.”

“He” refers to the poet’s horse, of course. Below is a picture of an Arabian wolf (Canis Lupus Arabs) from the Saudi Arabian desert reserve of Uruq Bani Ma’arid.

This magnificent white stallion is not a show horse but a desert bred stallion that took part in a halter competition organized in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. His name is Ruzayq, and he was sired by Haleem, a Hamdani. Ruzayq stands at the Saudi government stud in Dirab. He traces to Saqlawi mares bred by the Bani Sakhr tribe (now settled in both Jordan and Saudi Arabia). The Shaykhs of this tribe, Aal Fayiz, were famous for their Saqlawis.

Thanks Pure Man for forwarding this beautiful photo. What a horse. What a HORSE.

This is a famous photo. The masculine stallion pictured is a Hamdani from the Bahrain Royal Stud, by al-Jallabi al-Mashoosh al-Thani (Specked Jellabi II) and out of “the Hamdaniyah of Fatis”. Fatis was the old “Master of the Horses” (stud manager) who was in charge of the stud from 1942 to 1974, according to this website that also has a picture of Old Fatis. 

Below are three beautiful verses from famed pre-Islamic Arab poet al-Nabigha al-Dhubyani (535 AD -604 AD) about the desert Arabian horses of the Bedouin tribe of Asad. Al-Nabigha praises the tribe in this poem, and part of this exercise consists in praising its horses:

fihim banatu al-’asjadiyyi wa-lahiqin, wuruqan marakiluha min al-midmari 

yatahallabu al-ya’didu min ashdaqiha, sufuran manakhiruha min al-jarjari 

tushla tawabi’uha ila ullafiha, khababa al-siba’i al-wullahi al-abkari

 which in English, approximately translates into the following: [translation mine]:

“Among them are the daughters of al-’Asjadi and Lahiq, their flanks are grey from training

Daisy juice drips from their cheeks, their nostrils are yellow from chewing on groundsels

They call their young, who trot back to their mothers like worried adult leopards”

It’s notoriously difficult to render the beauty of Arabic poetry in other languages, but these lines are particularly challenging to translate because they describe events and things tied to the particular context of pre-Islamic central Arabia. 

Some further explanation is due: “Them ” in the first verse refers to the Asad tribe. Al-’Asjadi and Lahiq are famous pre-Islamic desert Arabian stallions from some 1500 years ago. This verse is proof of their actual existence. More about them later. The reason al-Nabigha writes in the first verse that the horses’ flanks are grey from training is because of the constant spurring by the riders’ feet, which caused the flanks hair to fall, and new, grey hair to grow in its place. The phrase is a metaphor to describe mares that are always in training condition. It praise riders whose horses are always ready to go to war. In the third verse, ya’did is the arabic name for skeleton weed, a subspecies of daisies; and jarjar is the arabic name for Jaffa groundsels. Both are desert plants regularly found in the steppes of Arabia and other parts of the Middle East. Below, a Jaffa groundsel or jarjar plant in Kuwait. 

I have written a lot about the Kuhaylan Krush strain recently, more particularly on the branch of that strain that has been associated with the Dawish leaders of the Mutayr tribe. The mares Dafina (to the UK in 1926) and probably El Kahila (to Egypt in 1927) are both representatives of this branch, and so are the three Blunt imports to Sheykh Obeyd: the mares Aida, and Jauza and the stallion Krush.

Below are two modern day representatives of that famed strain. The two mares Sharidah and Ma’yufah were bred at the stud of Prince Turki Ibn Fahd Ibn Muhammad Aal Saud in Najd, Saudi Arabia, then exported to the Nujaifi stud in Mosul, Iraq.

PS — I wonder what an mtDNA test would show, if samples from these two mares were compared to the Dafina and El Kahila lines, or to some of the Krush Al-Baida horses with the Shammar Bedouins in Syria. The latter are known to trace to the “white Krush” of Ammash Raja al-Dawish of Mutayr, through a mare that had gone to Ibn Rashid. Read more about the Krush of Shammar in Syria here.

Strain: Ubayyat al-Suyayfi.

[Edouard's note: the story below was sent to me to Pure Man in Arabic, and is posted here under his name. Translation mine]

These horses, al-Musinnat [plural form of Kuhaylat al-Musinn or al-Musinnah] are very ancient. They are from the horses of ‘Abdallah ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Faysal ibn Turki Aal Saud, the brother of King ‘Abd al-Aziz Aal Saud.

Prince Abd Allah, the brother of the king, had kept his horses in a private, separate farm. Upon his death, the horses went to his son, Prince Abd al-Rahman, and then to his grandson, Prince Faysal. And Prince Faysal is now aged. Then the horses went to Prince Turki Ibn Fahd Ibn Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Faysal ibn Turki, who is now preserving what remains from the asil horses, per God’s will.

Some of the Musinnat horses of Prince Abdallah, the brother of King Abd al-Aziz, participated in the Hedjaz campaign [i.e., the takover of the Hedjaz region from the Sharif of Mecca by the army of Ibn Saud in 1924].  Two men from Ibn Saud’s army fought particularly well in some episodes of this campaign: the first was Badi ibn Dhubyan from the tribe of Subay’, and he was riding a Musannan stallion that belonged to Prince Abdallah, the king’s brother. The second was Ibn Wareek, a Qahtan Bedouin from an ancient horsebreeding family.

Both fought pitched battles on horseback against one of the Sharif’s toughest warriors: Kharbush al-Dhuwaybi of the Harb tribe, who was riding a black stallion. Badi killed Kharbush in one of the battles, and the Sharif’s troops and Bedouin auxiliaries were defeated.

The two warriors came back to the camp of King ‘Abd al-Aziz, and announced to him that Badi had killed  Kharbush in battle, in front of a large assembly of people. Abdallah, the king’s brother, was in the assembly, and said jokingly: ”You mean Musannan killed Kharbush”.. Abdallah meant that the horse Musannan’s strength and courage in battle helped kill Kharbush and defeat the enemy.

The Musinnat have been owned by the House of Saud for a very long time, since the time of Faysal Ibn Turki, and are some of the best horses found in Saudi Arabia today. In the past, the Musinnat were owned by the House of Saud only, then they passed to Ibn Rashid in Hail, and then back again to the House of Saud in the early 1920s after the House of Rashid was defeated. The Musinnat of Bahrain are second to these Musinnat.

As to other Musinnat elsewhere, and only God knows, because from what I know the Musinnat belong to Ibn Saud and Ibn Rashid. 

Below is a picture of a Musinnah mare from this precious line. Her name is Mirath. Sired by Qais, a Suwaiti stallion, out of Bint Bariqah, a Kuhaylat al-Musinn (or al-Musinnah). Also at Prince Turki’s.

[Note from Edouard: the photo is not very good, but you can see the substance of the mare].

Another picture of the masculine Hamdani stallion Haleem, a senior stallion at the Stud of Prince Turki ibn Fahd ibn Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman Aal Saud at Zurayq, near al-Kharj in Saudi Arabia. Prince Turki’s grandfather Muhammad is the brother of King Abd al-Aziz, the founder of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. You’ve already seen a video of Haleem here.

This is old Nader, a senior stallion at the Dirab government stud in Saudi Arabia, a Hamdani Simri by Eidan (# 263 in the Saudi Studbook) out of Nadra (#400).

Nader is from that same Hamdani line that was kept at the Royal Saudi stud of al-Kharj, and from which several of the 1960s desert-bred imports to the USA (*Amiraa, *Halwaaji, *Rudann) trace to. Notice that this would mean that these imports are Hamdani Simri, too as a result. Only the Hamdani strain information was available before. 

Pure Man (translated from Arabic by Edouard)

A previous entry (here) on the strain of Kuhaylan Krush al-Baida mentioned the mare Dafina, a 1921 Kuhaylat al-Krush, sent by King Abd al-’Aziz Aal Saud to Lady Wentworth of the UK in 1927, through Mr Gilbert Clayton, the British Representative in what was not yet called the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Dafina was apparently bred by the Mutayr tribe, and sired by a Kuhaylan al-Krush from the same marbat. An asil line tracing to Dafina in the tail female survived until at least the mid 1950s, when the last asil mare was bred: this was the oddly-named and heavily inbred Foum Tattoene (by Flame of Reynall x Yaronda by Flame of Reynall), born in 1954.

Had it survived, this precious line would have also safeguarded rare lines to the Blunt desert imports Jilfa (a Jilfat Sattam al-Bulad from the Shammar), Ashgar (a Saqlawi Ubayri from the Shammar), and Meshura (a Saqlawiyat ibn Derri from the Anazah).

Below is another picture of the regal Dafina, from an old article on the Krush strain, (fraught with faulty assumptions, by the way, including the wrong assumption that the Lebanon-bred Krush Halba is the Blunt Sheykh Obeyd desert stallion Krush):

In 1953, K.M. Kelly, an American working in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia, received a gift from Shaykh Khalifah bin Muhammad Aal Khalifah, the chief of police in the neighboring emirate of Bahrain (then a British protectorate), and cousin of Bahrain ruler Shaykh Salman ibn Hamad Aal Khalifah, who ruled the country from 1942 to 1961. See the family tree here.

That gift was a chestnut mare, *Sawannah, born in 1948. She was later imported to the USA, and she still asil descendents in the USA and Canada. A September 1975 letter by Danah Aal Khalifa, gives some information about *Sawannah, in response to an inquiry about the mare:

“The mare Sawannah pictured above was identified by Fatis, the old studmaster of H.H. Shaikh Issa bin Salman Al Khalifa, as a Dahmah, belonging to Shaykh Khalifa bin Mohammed Al Khalifa, (chief of Police). Dahmeh was bred by Shaykh Salman, Ruler of Bahrain at the time, out of one of his mares of the Dahman strain, and sired by one of his stud stallions serving at the time.”

Whether *Sawannah was a Dahmah Shahwaniyah, a Dahmat Najib, a Dahmat Kunayhir, or a Dahmat Umm Amer is not mentioned. That is where an MtDNA comparison with the lines still in Bahrain today, and maybe even with the Egyptian line of the Blunt mare *Bint el Bahreyn, would come in handy. Any sponsor volunteering?

Meanwhile, here is a video of the an unidentified descendant of *Sawannah, most probably from Edie Booth’s collection: