Missed connections: Ibn Ghalabawi, Soniour and their links to the Tahawi

This entry is a follow up on an earlier entry on the Egyptian stallion Ibn Ghalabawi, sire of the 1971 mare Azeema out of Naglaa 1963  (Azeema’s photo is below, thanks Timur Hasanoglu for sharing it with me), which was exported to Germany. While implicitly included in the Pyramid Society’s definition of a Straight Egyptian Arabian, Ibn Ghalabawi is explicitely left out of the Asil Club’s otherwise wholesale embrace of the Egyptian Agricultural Organization’s Studbook. He shares that distinction with two other stallions, Sharkasi, and Registan (Skowronek x Riz). In 1978, WAHO accepted Ibn Ghalabawi’s daughter Azeema as purebred, based on the testimony of Sayed Marei of Al Badeia Arabians. That testimony identifies Ibn Ghalabawi as by Ghalabawi out of the mare “Bint Nabras”, by Nabras out of “Bint Soniour”. Soniour is only identified as a “desert-bred horse”. Assuming that pedigree information is correct, further research is needed on the following four horses before the credentials of Ibn Ghalabawi can be bolstered: the three stallions “Ghalabawi”, “Nabras”, “Soniour” and the great-granddam in the tail female, about which nothing is known. “Ghalabawi” is said to be by Balance x Bint Magboura by Ibn Rabdan, and to be bred by the RAS. I…