Don’t ask me how this ancient line made it into the 21st century. It’s a near miracle. Lady Anne Blunt imported the Hamdani Simri mare Sobha (Wazir x Selma) from Egypt in 1891, from a certain Mahmoud Bey who got her dam from the Abbas Pascha collection. Sobha’s line was one of the most represented lines at Crabbet Stud, after Rodania’s and Dajania’s. It produced a stallion at the first generation: Seyal (Mesaoud x Sobha), despite the latter’s grey color (the Blunts were not big on greys). Lady Anne also used Sobha’s other son Antar at her Sheykh Obeyd Stud in Egypt. Seyal’s sire line is still in existence today: Seyal -> Berk -> Ribal -> Ghadaf -> Jadib -> Ibn Gulida -> Omagh -> Dib -> Huntington Doyle, a chestnut 1990 stallion I saw at the Doyle Ranch in Oregon last August. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about here. Sobha had a daughter at Crabbet, Siwa (by Ahmar), who had Somra by Daoud, who had Safarjal by Berk. Safarjal was Lady Wentworth’s gift [purchased Thanks for the correction RJ] to Musgrave Clark of the Courthouse stud, which I wrote about in an earlier entry. Clark bred Safarjal to…
In an earlier post, I had written about an asil Kuhaylan Rodan line that seems to have miraculously survived in South Africa. This was the line of Rosina, tracing to Lady Anne Blunt’s Rodania through the latter’s daughter Rosemary. There is another asil line tracing to Rosemary that also survives in the USA. I stumbled upon it while browsing through the Al Khamsa Roster. This is the line of Rayim (Abu Zeyd x Roshana), a 1927 bay mare bred by W.R. Brown. Just follow this breath-taking genealogy of Crabbet mares from the “R” line: Rodania –> Rosemary, 1886, by Jeroboam –> Rabla, 1899, by Mesaoud –> Rokhama, 1906, by Astraled –> *Rokhsa, 1915, by Nasik –> Roshana, 1920, by *Berk –> Rayim, 1927, by Abu Zeyd. At this point the line is bred to old American bloodlines, as Rayim produces Amirat by Arafat (Ameer Ali x Serije, a Saqlawi al-Abd tracing to *Wadduda) in 1947. Amirat in turn produced Nuqat, by Nasir, a son of Rayim, hence doubling the Rosemary line. Nuqat is bred to Abu-Talib, another Kuhaylan Rodan son of Rayim, to produce the 1960 mare Salsalet (3 close crosses to Rayim). Salsalet is bred to the Egyptian stallion Saba…