Carol Monkhouse and the quest for the last asil Crabbet lines
By Edouard Aldahdah
Posted on September 4th, 2009 in Uncategorized
I finally got to meet Carol Monkhouse at the Al Khamsa Convention in Oregon. Carol was visiting from the UK, with her husband Terry Lee. She has a couple mares, Maloof Habiba (Maloof Habibi x Maloof Sahara by Subani) and Maloof Hadiya (Parnell x Devlin), and their offspring, which she keeps at the Doyle ranch, in Alfalfa, Oregon.
I had corresponded with Carol some fifteen years ago, after a mutual friend, Tzviah Idan, had introduced us to each other, at at time all three of us happened to be looking at remaining old Blunt lines (i.e., no Skowronek, who is so ubiquitous as to have his own Wikipedia page) around the world. I was delighted to finally meet her in person.
We had identified the 1978 asil stallion Arabesque Azieze (Hansan x Orilla by Oran) in New Zealand (last asil Wadnan al-Khursan stallion in the West, also last asil line to Oran); some asil descendants of the 1950 mare Rozina (Saoud x Ruth II by Bendigo) in South Africa, by the asil Kuhaylan al-Mimrah stallion Gordonville Ziyadan (more on this precious line later, it is still there); the two asil Courthouse Hamdani Simri full sisters Sappho and Sceptre (Bleinheim X Selima by Bahram, more on those twi later as well), and a few very old horses in the UK, of which the 1975 stallion Alfadir (Algolson x Fedora by My Man, non-Skowronek, but still non asil) was one. Nothing concrete came out of this, except the realization that something needed to be done before more bloodlines were lost. Arabesque Azieze was actually the nearest miss, by far. I wrote about him here.
If you know more of these lines, please let us know.
September 8th, 2009 3:54 pm
From a UK Crabbet breeder I heard that she exported several Crabbets to Pakistan, including a stallion that she bought from Crabbet as a yearling when the stud was dispersed. Have to look up his name. I guess they all had Skowronek in them, but it is worth to try and find out if there are any left. I can try and find out if she still has an address or anything to go from.
Monique