Unpublished *King John photo

Bill Cooke gave Jeanne Craver permission, who gave me permission to use this previously unpublished *King John photo, courtesy the Arabian Horse Trust collections at the International Museum of the Horse in Lexington. He was a Saqlawi Jadran from the marbat of Dari al-Mahmud, Shaykh of Zawba’ Shammar in Abu Ghraib. This was the best marbat of Saqlawi Jadran in Arabia in the 1920s/30s. Please use proper credit (above) when using. The line died out in Al Khamsa with the death of Beau Nusik (Nusik x Reshan Azab by Janeo, a son of *King John) in 1984. Thanks, Bill and Jeanne.  

Pre-Islamic Arabic Names

I am very fond of these, because Arabic names in the period before Islam did not yet have a religious connotation. One of my favorites is the masculine name Mu’awiyah. It’s the name of the first Ummayyad Caliph, Mu’awiyah Ibn Abi Sufyan (661-680 AD), as well as that one of the kings of the ancient South-Arabian kingdom of Kinda in the third century A.D, whose capital was Qaryat al-Faw, in south central Arabia.  It’s also my cousin’s name.. Interestingly, although a masculine name, it means something like “barking bitches”, or better still, “whining bitches”. By the way, the article I linked to above mentions a number of Arabic inscriptions from the collection of Sam Roach of ARAMCO. I wander if that’s the same as the importer of four Roach Blue Start horses to the USA.