Interview of Princess Badiaa of Hijaz

A fascinating and nostalgic interview in Arabic of Princess Badiaa, daughter of King Ali of Hejaz (1924-1925), sister of regent of Iraq Abd al-Ilah, sister of Queen Aalia the wife of King Ghazi of Iraq, with beautiful memories of then-enchanting Bagdad. Please, never forget that Bagdad was at that time (together with old Aleppo now gone, old Jeddah now gone, and old Sanaa still standing but for how long?) one of the most beautiful cities of the Middle East. It was not the sprawling jungle of concrete and backwardness that it is today.  

The ultimate goal

Of course, the ultimate objective of tallying and identifying the horses of Ali Pasha Sherif breeding not owned by the Blunts would be to be able to put a reasonably solid pedigree on horses like Saklawi I, Sabha El Zarka, Roga El Beda, Farida El Debbanie, Muniet El Nefous (the old one), Nader El Kebir, Bint Yemama, and perhaps above all, El Dahma. I don’t despair of being able to do this some day.

Other Ali Pasha Sherif stallions not owned by Lady Anne Blunt

There are not many of these. Lady Anne reviews four of them in a letter to Wilfrid Blunt, dated December 13, 1914: “Up to last year Yusuf Bey was the only one of the sons owning a stallion from that Stud [APS’s] — a beautiful white horse about 15 years old. But its name was ‘Kaukab’ not ‘Valentino’… Ibrahim Bey had a horse but that was done away with two or three years ago when the glanders scare occured. Of outsiders Moharrem Pasha and Ahmed Fathi, formerly wakil of the Daira, each had a stallion. I know Moharrem P. still has his. A. Fathi’s was not remarkable and would hardly fetch 500 pounds but that can be found out without much difficulty. Mutalk is pretty sure there is nothing else…”  — The first one with Yusef Bey is clearly Kaukab (Ibn Sherara x Bint Nuar El Shakra) and is identified by name here. Lady Anne saw in 1914 and described him. See earlier entry. — The second one, the one that was with Ibrahim Bey Sherif but died a few years before, appears to have been the horse mentioned in a February 24, 1902, entry of Lady Anne’s Journals: “He…

Johara and Kaukab from Ali Pasha Sharif

As I continue perusing Lady Anne’s Journals and Correspondence and what was published of her Sheykh Obeyd Studbook looking for information on those horses of Ali Pasha Sharif breeding she did not own, I came across this conclusion, which others might have already reached before. Excerpts from the Sheykh Obeyd Studbook published in Pearson and Mol (1988) list an entry for the mare Bint Helwa Es Shakra (Johara), which was purchased from Ibrahim Bey Sherif, son of Ali Pasha Sherif, on April 19, 1897, and sent to England the same year, after having been covered by “Ibn Bint Nura Es Shakra (white about 7 years) by Ibn Sherara in Cairo and barren“. I was wondering who that stallion could be. He obviously was not one of Lady Anne’s horses. He stood in Cairo, not in its outskirts where the studs of Prince Ahmed (in Matarieh) and of the Khedive Abbas Hilmi (in Qubbeh) lied. Downtown Cairo was the location of one or more of the palaces of Ali Pasha Sherif — who had died earlier in the same year. Could this stallion have been of the few horses that remained with Ali Pasha Sherif’s sons, for riding purposes, when the stud…

Welcome, Ginger

I recently acquired DA Ginger Moon (DB Destiny Moniet x Kumence RSI), a 1998 Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah, from Sheila Harmon of Destiny Arabians, Idaho. She is tail female to the Blunts’ desert-bred mare Basilisk through Rabanna, and has lots of Blunt/Ali Pasha Sharif blood throughout the pedigree. Photos below, taken by Sheila in 2009. I have long been a fan of these highly authenticated Blunt and Ali Pasha Sharif lines, which, a hundred and fifty years after their importation from the Arabian Desert to Europe then the US, continue to produce high quality horses from time to time, close to the original Arabian type. These lines also do very well in endurance (cf. Bint Gulida and Linda Tellington Jones, see photo), and are being increasingly recognized and celebrated in this field. Her pedigree is composed of three lines to Rabanna (Rasik x Banna by *Nasr, 75% Crabbet/SO), three lines to Ghadaf (Ribal x Gulnare, 100% Crabbet/SO), three to the Doyle foundation mare Gulida (Gulastra x Valida, 100% Crabbet/SO), three to *Rashad (Nazeer x Yashmak II who was out of the Crabbet mare Bint Rissala, almost 50% Crabbet/SO), and three to *Bint Moniet El Nefous (Nazeer x Moniet El Nefous, low percentage Crabbet/SO), as well as one line to…

Okba son wins Tevis Cup 100 miles endurance ride

Kina Murray just wrote to me that a gelding son of the asil Tunisian Arabian stallion Okba, out of a Polish/French/Russian mare, won the 100 mile Tevis Cup endurance ride.  Kina tells me that “the winner, ridden by experienced endurance competitor Heather Reynolds, is called  French Open (Okba x Selma Croixnoire, by Ala Croixnoire) – he raced for 7 years, earned over $78,000  and was stakes-placed 3 times.” This is great news and bodes well for Tunisian and Algerian asil lines in the USA in the future.