Bint Rammah, desert mare from the Kuhaylan Khallawi strain at the Tahawi clan in Geziret Saoud
As I was telling you in an earlier entry, last Friday I spent a most delightful day as a guest of Yehia Abd al-Attar al-Tahawi in Geziret Saoud in the Sharqiyah province of Egypt, along with Mohamed Osman al-Tahawi and Yasser Ghanim al-Tahawi and a number of others. I took tons of pictures with my i-phone, but I am having trouble downloading them on the laptop, so that will have to wait a bit.
However, I did take some pictures with Mohamed’s camera when my phone’s battery was dead, including the following ones of a wonderful speckled Kuhaylah Khallawiyah mare. She is not registered, and she is one of the few remnants of their old tribal horses, 11 mares and one stallion in total. Her name is Bint Rammah, and she was born in 2003. Her dam is by the tribal Tahawi stallion Marhaba and her grand-dam by the “Straight Egyptian” Tahawi stallion Marshall (Amlam x Bint Fulla), who is her only link to registered Egyptian horses.
According to the oral histories I heard during my visit, the Kuhaylan Khallawi strain of the Tahawi clan traces to an original mare brought from the Syria desert by one of the Tahawi shaykhs. From there she spread among various members of the Tahawi clan, including to Sh. Abd al-Hamid Rageh al-Tahawi, the breeder of the mare Futna, later owned by Ahmad Pasha Hamza of Hamdan stables. The line of Futna is where the strain comes to us in modern Straight Egyptian breeding.
There is another Tahawi line also tracing to this root mare, and this one went to another Tahawi sheykh, Saad Farjani al-Tahawi. The mare Bint Rammah in the picture below traces to this branch of the strain. Click on the photos to enlarge them, and if you want to enlarge them even more, click again on the ones you just clicked on..
In any case, I took DNA samples from this mare, as well as from a Straight Egyptian Kuhaylah Khallawiyah mare tracing to Futna and owned by Yehia, to do mtDNA analysis and compare both lines, to confirm the Tahawi oral histories. Yehia al-Tahawi is in the pictures.
I like this mare.
Any chance to registration?
There is a LOT of nasty politics going on here.. but we are hopeful.
Just to say here that the mtDNA analysis of the two Khallawi lines of the Tahawi produced matching results. The two Khallawi lines indeed trace to the same original mare.
Oh, exciting! Does that mean there is hope for the Tahawi horses to be recognised, now that there is hard scientific evidence that they are related to registered horses? Or has the scientific evidence been there for a while, but conveniently swept aside?
The latter. Al Khamsa does recognize them now.