An American lady once asked one of my friends attending the 2006 WAHO conference in Syria whether I was a real person, or just an alias used by some other guy. She had apparently read a few of my writings on Asil horses here and there, and seen my name on the programs of a number of events, including that WAHO conference (which I eventually did not attend), but had never met anyone who had ever seen me. Well, I do exist, and guess what, some of you have even seen me! For those who haven’t, I am the guy on the right in the picture below. The guy on the left is more famous.
A previous post gave me the occasion to mention Zanoubia, which is something I have been looking forward to for some time now. Zanoubia was my first mare. Rather she was the first mare from my father’s horses in Lebanon that I considered mine. She did not make it in my recent top ten of the best Asil mares ever bred; she would have ten years ago, before I become acquainted with the wonderful Asil Arabians bred in the USA. Dad had bought her as a yearling in 1977 0r 78. At that time, he owned some 15 mares and a couple stallions, not all of them Asil. There were few Asil Arabians left in Lebanon, and Zanoubia was one of the them. She was a ‘Ubayyah Sharrakiyah from the horses of the Dandashi landowners of Western Syria, who were famed for the beauty and purity of their horses. The strain came from the Sba’ah tribe. A couple of the Dandashi horses made their way to Europe and the USA. The Dandashi were the owners of the 1880 black Babolna stallion O-Bajan, who’s left such an imprint on Asil breeding in Europe. They were also the breeders of the Saqlawi Jadran, sire of the Asil mare *Muha, imported by Ameen al-Rihani to the USA. That Saqlawi Jadran was a gift from…