Another photo of SAFRAN (*Shahwan x Safra), Hamdani Simri

          An 1893 grey Hamdani Simri stallion. His dam, Safra, was by the Ali Pasha Sharif stallion Shueyman and out of the Mahmud Bey-Ghezireh mare Sobha. His sire, *Shahwan, has been featured on this blog before, and you can read about him here. Safran was used by the Blunts for breeding, although his influence ended up being pretty much negligible, and he was sold at the 1898 Crabbet Park sale. He had actually been bred to his 2nd dam, Sobha, who produced a grey colt in 1899, “…died immediately, a loss as [Safran] had been sold in 1898.” A description of him, Country Life Illustrated, 7 August 1897: “…but the pick of the basket was a really beautiful four year old named Safran, by Shahwan – Safra (Hamdani Simri). He is quite a pony, only 14h., I think , but a perfect little gentleman, with wonderful power and substance for his size, on the shortest of legs, with long sloping shoulders, short powerful back and loins, the most bloodlike head and neck imaginable, and all quality. He is a perfect little picture, and worth a big price, if only to look at, though I was told…

Busima: the Egyptian racehorse that Raswan wanted?

On Bogdan Zientarski and Carl Raswan’s expedition to Syria and Iraq, to find horses for Prince Roman Sanguszko’s Gumniska Stud, one of their first stops was Egypt. There, they saw a number of horses from different studs and stables, including the Astraled son Rustem, the Crabbet-bred mare Bint Riyala, a grey son of the Sheykh Obeyd mare Serra, the dark chestnut Ibn Rabdan, and a desert-bred stallion, Schammar. They also toured the racing stables of Cairo, and found there a filly which Raswan thought very beautiful. He wrote about her in glowing terms to Prince Sanguszko, hoping for extra funds to buy her: From the beginning I said, that I do not expect to find a stallion or mare in Egypt (or Syria) which might “suit” Mr. Z. (& consequently you too). However, we “discovered” an unusual mare. – She seems to be the “sister” to Nedjari. A mare of the very same type & breeding. – From among several hundred (perhaps 600) horses which we have seen this one mare is outstanding. She is the type which, when brought to Poland, people will point to her & say: “What an Arab!” and neither Mr. Z. nor I would be…

The Abbas Hilmi Archives at Durham University

Did you know that Mohammed Ali Foundation had deposited the archives of Khedive Abbas Hilmi (II) at the University of Durham? Michael Bowling, who had know this for years, suggested one of us visit at the first occasion, and I had the chance to go there last February, and spend 2.5 hours looking for references about Arabian horses. One of the more interesting things I found were the veterinary records of all Khedivial Studs (Montazah, Qubbeh, Ras El Tin, Ismailia, etc). These are handwritten, and are available for four years: 1898, 1900, 1904, and 1907. Records of veterinary visits cover horses, donkeys, cows, buffaloes, small cattle, and birds. Horses include Arabian horses, but also horses imported from North Africa, Switzerland, and Austria, among other places. I copied the sections relevant to Arabian horses, and came back with a wealth of information that, if analyzed in the context of existing information from other sources, can add to our – scant – knowledge about the Stud of Abbas Hilmi. I will be writing about some of these discoveries in subsequent posts. Stay tuned.

Bushra, Kuhaylah Ju’aytiniyah from the Tahawi

Republishing this beautiful post, which I first published on October 7th 2013 after a visit to my friend Yasser Ghanem Barakat in the Nile Delta. We were chatting today and he confirmed to me the original ‘Amarat provenance of that line (see below). In the 1950s, Shaykh Mahrooth Ibn Haddhal, Shaykh of the ‘Amarat Bedouins, had responded to an inquiry by Shaykh Tahawi Said Mejalli al-Tahawi about the origin of the Tahawi Ju’aythini line with a hujjah that the line belonged to his Ibn Haddal clan. Yasser tells me he thinks the line came from the Syrian desert to the family of Mejalli al-Tahawi then to Sh. Soliman Eliwa al-Tahawi, but that is to be confirmed. Original post follows. Last weekend I was Yasser Ghanem’s guest at his countryside farm in Abu Kebir in the Nile Delta area of Egypt, and I took this photo of him and his powerful Kuhaylah Ju’aytiniyah mare Bushra (Malek El Khayl x Bint Bombolla by Najm Tareq). It shows the quality and strength of some of these Tahawi desert bred Arabians. While there, I learned from Yehia Abdel Sattar al-Tahawi that his grand father Abdel Hamid Eliwa got the original Ju’aytiniyah mare from the Mawali Bedouin tribe of Syria…

Origin of the Egyptian Kuhaylan Khallawi strain of Futna

Sheykh Tahawi Saeed Mejalli al-Tahawi who is in his nineties was interviewed recently by Yehia Abdel-Satar Eliwa al-Tahawi. The old man, who is the memory of the Tahawi clan of Egypt, told him that the original Kuhayla Khallawiyah mare had come to Shaman Ghumah al-Tahawi from the Mawali Bedouins. I had hypothesized this connection of the Futna line to the Mawali tribe some seven years ago on this blog, here. It is now confirmed. This makes the Egyptian Kuhaylan Khallawi strain of Bint Futna one of the most prestigious strains of Northern Arabia, that of Khallawiat al-Nesswan [“of the women”, not sure why they are called this way]. A branch of the Mawali leading family, the Aal al-‘Aabed, who had settled in Damascus, and provided Syria with its first president, Muhammad ‘Ali al-‘Aabed, owned a Khallawi line that survived in Asil form until the late 1990s, in both Lebanon and Syria.  I owned the last such mare in old age. These were quite the race horses. When Ottoman Sultan ‘Abd al-Hamid was on his way from Istanbul to Mecca on pilgrimage, he was hosted by the leader of the Mawali Bedouins near Hama, in central Syria, and presented with a Khallawia mare. In Syria,…

Lady Anne Blunt’s grave

Today was an important and solemn day of my two-year stay in Egypt. I found the Cairo cemetery where Lady Anne Blunt is buried and the old lady who guards it led me to her tomb. The “noble lady of the horses” was right there. I had a thought for many of you, and wished you were there with me. Few minutes of silence and then I walked back to the car. I did not take pictures.

Two Dahman Shahwan stallions at Ahmed Pasha’s?

The long-held hypothesis that Prince Ahmad Pasha Kamal had two grey Dahman stallions at the same time, developed by Pearson and Mol in a seminal footnote of their Arabian Horse Families of Egypt gets a boost when one carefully reads this passage of Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals, March 9th, 1904, where she first describes the stallions she saw (numbering mine): To Ahmed Pasha’s stud. Of the horses, there was first (#1) the old bay like Mabruka, in color shape and mark on nose, blind of near eye, a Keyhilan A. of the Tanviri [actually, Tamiri] strain, his sire the old chestnut Seglawi of Ibn Sbeyni,   (#2) then a white Dahman Shahwan, dam the Dahmeh that belonged to Ahmed Bey Sennari, sire the Keh. A. of Mesenneh strain brought to A.B. Sennari from the desert, a handsome and very strong horse but wanting in something of quality (#3) and also the white with still some dark on the legs and mane;  (#4) Managhi Ibn Sbeyel (sire of our filly Jamila) his dam the Managhieh Sbeylieh brought from Arabia to the Tihawis (from whom Ahmed Pasha took her) his sire the old Seglawi Jedran from Ali Pasha Sherif belonging to Ahmed…

The French, the Suez Canal and the Tahawis

Historian Mohamed Saud al-Tahawy is digging into what appears to have been a privileged and deep relationship between the Tahawi leaders of the house of Saud al-Tahawi and the French engineers who dug the Suez Canals and the French managers who operated it afterwards, including Ferdinand de Lesseps; he has some correspondence between de Lesseps’ successor Jules Guichard, who operated the Suez Canal company from 1892 t o1896, and Saud al-Tahawi. Meanwhile, I was able to find the following in Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals, Feb. 19, 1887 entry: “Arrived at Tihawi camp at 1.30: it is as it were a sand oasis in the midst of cultivations; all the surrounding country belongs to Haj Sa’oud and his family. They must be good sort of people among themselves, though hating all fellahin, for they seem to be all very happy together […]. In the evening two black agas arrived from Cairo, they belong to the ladies of the late Abbas Pasha. There was also a French engineer stationed at Salahieh.” I wonder who he was.

Virginia Deyr, 1979 Hamdaniyah Simriyah tracing to Sobha from the Abbas Pasha line

This photo of the lovely 1979 Hamdaniyah Simriyah mare Virginia Deyr (Tristram x LR Double Bubble by Ar-Raad) in old age appeared in one of the Khamsat magazine issues and is courtesy of Jeanne Craver.   This Hamdani strain, going back to the mare Sobha (Wazir x Selma) is one of the handful strains handed down from the Abbas Pasha collection in asil form. Owing to this fact only, Sobha’s Hamdani Simri strain ought to receive so much more attention within an outside Al Khamsa’s realm. The credit for saving this line in Al Khamsa/asil form goes to Charles Craver who acquired the mare Arabesque (Rouf x Koreish by Alcazar out of the Crabbet/Blunt mare Simawa). The other Abbas strains still in existence in tail female today, within Al Khamsa, are: El Dahma’s (Dahman Shahwan); Ghazieh’s (Saglawi Jadran); and Roga’s (Saglawi Jadran); other Abbas Pasha strains such as Jellabiet Feysul’s (Kuhaylan Jellabi), Noma’s (Kuhaylan Nawwaq), Nura’s (Dahman Najib), and Samha’s (Saglawi ibn Zubaynah) died out early on. Jellabiet Feysul’s still exist, but outside Al Khamsa. By the way, Virginia Deyr carries two lines to the Davenport Second Foundation stallion Tripoli: she is by a Tripoli son out of a Tripoli grand-daughter.

In my opinion, the best Egyptian mare of the 1970s

This is Kalthoom (Farazdac x Nahed by Sid Abouhom x Zaafarana by Balance), tail female to Ghazieh through Radia, a mare born in 1974 at the EAO. Talk about a racing pedigree, and an athletic conformation that reflects it. Not a flattering photo, as she sticks her tongue out, but what a mare! I specifically love the black skin from the eyes all the way down to the muzzle. It is a mark of asalah/authenticity, for the Bedouins at least.

Muhammad Sadyk Pasha, owner of *Shahwan

The splendid Arabian stallion Shahwan, purchased by Lady Anne and Wilfrid Blunt in 1892, was foaled in the possession of Muhammad Sadyk Pasha, who was given his dam in foal by Ali Pasha Sharif. He is the maternal grandsire of Ibn Yashmak, through whom he finds his way into modern Egyptian pedigrees. I found the trace of Muhammad Sadyk Pasha (1832-1902). He was a senior military official — a Lewa, just like Ibrahim Khairi Pasha, owner of Badaouia –, a geographer, an explorer, and a military engineer, graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique of Paris, as well as the president of the Egyptian Geopraphic Society in his later days. He undertook four journeys to Hijaz and Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, which he described in great detail in a book, “al-Rahalat al-Hijaziyah”, translated as “Journeys to Hijaz”. He was reportedly the first person to take photos of the two holy cities, which appeared in Oriental and Western publications. Muhammad Sadyk Pasha was the treasurer of the Pilgrimage (Hajj) caravan on two journeys. Click on this superb Biritish Museum link for a more complete bio, a photo of him, and a selection of his wonderful photographs. Saudi Aramco also has an article about him.

Rare photo of RAS stallion Mansour

Last spring, my wife, who by now knows Cairo’s cultural gems well, took us to the Agriculture Museum, housed in the palace of Fatma, daughter of the Khedive Ismail, in the Doqqi neighborhood. You can click on the links to learn more about the museum and its treasures; here my objective is to share with you this wonderful photo of the RAS stallion Mansour (Gamil Manial x Nafaa Al Saghira), the sire of Nazeer, Sheikh el Arab, Bint Farida, Roda and others, hanging on the wall of a museum room entirely dedicated to RAS photos.I may be wrong but I don’t think this photo (my photo of the framed photo) has been ever published before. You can see the Prince Mohamed Ali blood in the photo (especially Dalal, Mansour’s grand-dam), and you can see why Nazeer and *Roda looked the way they did.  

Donia of Ahmad Pasha Kamal?

From Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals, January 9th, 1908, at Prince Yusuf Kamal’s sale of the horses of his father, Prince Ahmad Kamal who had died the year before: “Besides my three and Ghazala, a handsome but very slight of bone Keh. Memrieh was sold to somebody Bey”.   Lady Anne bought three bay mares/fillies at this sale; the Journal entry mentions that this Ghazala was a Kuhaylah Mimrihiyah bought for one of the Egyptian royals, Omar Bey Sultan, by his racing associate Jacques Valensin. No other horses were sold at this sale. The herdbook of Prince Mohammed Ali, dating from after 1912, lists the mare Donia: “Origine, Prince Ahmed, achetee par Mohamed Pasha Abou Naffi; Cadeau; rentre a Manial 10 Dec. 1912.” I wonder whether that “handsome but very slight of bone Keh. Memrieh” is Donia, and whether this “somebody Bey” is “Mohamed Pasha Abou Naffi”, then only a Bey.  Here’s a hypothesis: Mohamed Pasha Abou Naffi bought this mare at the above sale, either in foal to a stallion from Prince Ahmad’s or later bred to a stallion of Prince Yusuf, his son; four years later, he gifted the mare to Prince Mohamed Ali, but retained the resulting filly known as Nafaa after him.  

Treff-Haven Sabeel, the lifeline

This stallion, Treff Haven Sabeel  is, in my opinion, a ray of hope for US-based Egyptian breeding. I was saying on Facebook that such strong couplings, short backs, high, prominent withers and exceptionally strong shoulders have all but disappeared from New Egyptian horses. That’s because the halter shows for which most of these horses or their recent ancestors were bred do not take these primary qualities into consideration. That these qualities should still be found in Sabeel is reassuring. He happens to have no lines to Nazeer. Not that Nazeer was a bad horse, on the contrary; it’s just that the use that was made of Nazeer sons, grandsons and great-grandsons was not conducive to the perpetuation of the above-mentioned qualities. Just look at the Serenity horses. There is plenty of Nazeer in there, but the horses were bred differently and used for different purposes. Photo by owner Kate from Van Alma Arabians.

The Ali Pasha Sharif Memoranda of Lady Anne Blunt

Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals entry for December 31, 1907 (page 327) contains this interesting mention (in relation to the Ali Pasha Sharif stallion Harkan):  “I must go through the Ali Pasha Sherif Memoranda that I have with Mutlak, hhe will be able to clear up several points.” An excerpt of a much earlier Journal entry, made on March 5th, 1891, gives one example of these memoranda (in bold, below), about the stallion Amir (Aziz x Horra) the purchasing of which Lady Anne was then considering: “I copy out the memorandum Mr Flemotomo enclosed to us from the Pasha on the following day.  “Grey horse Seglawi Jedran of Ibn Sudan, son of Horra, sister of Wazir, sire chestnut horse (Aziz) Dahman Shahwan son of the daughter of the daughter of the mare of Makadan. Foaled the — 1297. Price 200 (). His name Amir.”  “N.B. I have inserted the name of Aziz as in other memorandum it is put in, see below. I hope we may be able to buy this horse.” Another memorandum follows in the same Journal entry, with less details: “The second shown us was a chestnut colt 5–6 years old […] he is described by Ali Pasha Sherif as…

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…

Egypt Grand Hotels of the past

A wonderful blog about Egypt’s Grand Hotels and golden era. On the Shepheard, quoting from this blog: “Long before London’s Savoy or the Paris Ritz, Shepheard’s of Cairo was the epitome of glamour. It was a hotel from which explorers set off for Africa, where kings entertained mistresses, where movie stars rubbed shoulders with of?cers on leave from the desert and spies hovered in the hope of minds being softened by the congenial atmosphere. […] Everybody stayed at Shepheard’s from Mark Twain and Arabian adventurer Richard Burton to Noel Coward and Josephine Baker. Its parties and balls were legendary, its barmen the souls of discretion. When the hotel was burned to the ground in rioting in 1952, it marked the end of an era.”  

Cairo’s Shepheard Hotel

From Wikipedia: “Shepheard’s Hotel was the leading hotel in Cairo and one of the most celebrated hotels in the world from the middle of the 19th century until it was burned down in 1952. A modern hotel called the Shepheard Hotel was built nearby in 1957” and “in the First World War, the hotel served as British Headquarters in the Near East.” It is frequently mentioned in Lady Anne’s Journals and Correspondence.

Thabit Pasha the Wakil of APS

Another character who makes occasional appearances in Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals is Thabit Pasha, who acted as Wakil (Trustee) for Ali Pasha Sherif’s estate in the later years of his life, and who was a central character in the process of Lady Anne’s acquisition of the remnant of the Stud of Ali Pasha Sharif in December 1896 and January 1897. The genealogical tree of the royal house of Mohammed Ali the Great has his as: “Muhammad Sabit Pasha (b. 1820; d. 1901), Private Secretary to Muhammad ‘Ali the Great 1847-1848, Minister for Justice 1878, of Charitable Endowments, Education and the Interior 1884, Khedevial Envoy at Istanbul 1881-1882, President of the Privy Council. 1884-1901, a younger son of the Circassian Chief of the Nahoush.” According to the same tree, Sabit/Thabit Pasha married a daughter of Zohra, who was one of Mohammed Ali the Great’s sisters. He appears to have been one of the country’s highest officials, and the head of the Khedive’s advisers when he acted as Wakil for Ali Pasha Sharif. The site goes on to list Aziz Bey Sabit as one of his sons, this being the same Aziz Bey Thabit whom Lady Anne mentions as a visitor to Sheykh Obeyd Stud…

The Yekens

Both Ahmad and Fathi Bey Yeken (Yakan, Yeghen) make fleeting appearances in Lady Anne’s Journals and Correspondence (where their name is sometimes mis-transcribed as Bekin) whether as visitors of the Sheykh Obeyd Stud or occasional buyers of surplus stock. Either Ahmed or Fathi Bey is mentioned as the buyer of the colt of Fasiha (Ibn Sherara x Bint Fereyha) by Antar (Aziz x Sobha) in 1908, and Fathi Bey was the buyer f the colt of Ghazieh (Ibn Nura x Bint Horra) by Feysul in 1907. The genealogical tree of the royal family of Egypt mentions the Yeken as an allied family descending from a certain Mustafa Bey, who married Zubayda Khanum, sister of Mohammed Ali the Great, founder of the Egyptian royal family. Mustafa Bey’s sister, Amina Khanum, was also Muhammad Ali’s principal wife. So the sister of the first married the second, and the sister of the second married the first. Both Mohammed Ali and his brother-in-law Mustafa Bey were born in Kavala (in today’s Macedonia, then under the Ottoman Empire, like Egypt). Most of the senior military commanders around Mohammed Ali the Great were from Kavala, including Mohammed Sherif Pasha, the father of Ali Pasha Sherif. One of Mustafa…

The Venus Hadban line in Lady Anne Blunt’s writings — a new discovery

I am in Yemen for the week. I am done with work for today, and the only book I brought with me is Lady Anne Blunt’s invaluable Journals and Correspondence (Archer and Fleming, 1986). Lately I have been combing the Journal entries for references to non-Blunt, non-Ali Pasha Sherif early foundation stock of Egyptian Arabian breeding, in the hope of finding new direct or contextual information about these horses. I believe I have just made an interesting discovery which I am eager to share with you here. During the later years of her life in Egypt, Lady Anne paid many visits to the studs of members of the Egyptian royal family like those of Prince Ahmad Pasha Kamal, Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfiq and other notables, and described their horses in her Journals with remarkable consistency and accuracy. Most of the horses she describes during these visits have bred on to become foundation horses of modern Egyptian Arabian horse breeding, including Bint Yemama, Om Dalal, Dalal, Tarfa, Doga, Radban, Saklawi II, Dahman El Azrak, Farida Debbanie, Roga El Beda, Sabha El Zarka, Jamil El Ahmar, Koheilan El Mossen, El Sennari, etc, etc. Lady Anne’s description of them and the information she provides on the…

What Ali Pasha Sharif horses looked like

This is a picture of Ghazieh gleaned from the internet. Born in 1897 at APS. Bought by the Blunts in 1897 at the APS sale, died in 1917 at Sheykh Obeyd Stud. By Ibn Nura out of Bint Horra by Aziz out of Horra by Zobeyni. Dam of Feyda by Jamil (Aziz x B. Jamila), who is in turn dam of Ibn Fayda (at Inshass Stud in Egypt) and Ibn Fayda I (at Sidi Thabet in Tunisia) both by Ibn Rabdan. Also dam of Ghareb who was used by Lady Anne as a sire at Sheykh Obeyd stud, and her daughter Feyda and Ghazwa  and grand-daughters faiza adn Falha were admired by visitors to Sheykh Obeyd Stud from the world over. Funny, I don’t see a dished face or a flat topline. Maybe Lady Anne Blunt and Ali Pasha Sharif did not know enough about breeding Arabian horses to breed for these. Maybe show judges know better. Personally, I would die for a mare like this one.

2014 Kuhaylat al-Kharass filly at the Tahawis in Egypt

The Tahawi preservation breeders have the last (with her dam) asil Kuhaylat al-Kharass filly, by a Straight Egyptian stallion from US lines and out of the desert mare. I have not seen her yet, but from the photos Yasser took, she seems quite something. There was only one horse from that strain, an aged stallion, in the Syrian Studbook and he died a while ago. There was an old mare from the same strain in the Lebanese studbook, but she died too. The strain is originally from the Sba’ah ‘Anazah, where it was much prized and sought after especially for racing. It is well represented in the sire and dam lines of many of the Hearst imports. It was also the strain of Proximo/Jadaan, the personal mount of the head of the Fad’aan Jadaan Ibn Mhayd, seen by the Blunts in their second desert journey in 1881 (Lady Anne spelled the strain as Kuhaylan Akhras) and bought by them in India where he had been sold for racing.  Proximo failed to produce anything at Crabbet (not very fertile), and was eventually sold to Poland yet at some point it was considered likely that the Crabbet foundation mare Nefisa was his…

Eternal Fascinators

Lately I have been re-reading Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals and Correspondence to let steam off increasing workload. I try to read a few entries while in the car, in airport terminals, and — I confess — in the bathroom. I have been paying special interest to the entries about Ali Pasha Sherif horses — it’s probably the “I-now-live-in-Egypt factor”, trying to make sense of the various horses mentioned. Then I remember that RJ Cadranell had most of it figured out in this fascinating article, here. RJ, hats off to you.

Coptic Museum and Youssef Kamal

So today my wife made me take a break from work to see the Coptic Museum in Old Cairo. I enjoyed the visit. In the evening I checked the website of the museum and found this reference, about the collections in its library: “The late Prince Youssef Kamal collection is in the Museum library with the French Expedition famous Déscription de l’Egypte.” That’s the son of Ahmad Kamal Pasha (APK), who inherited his father’s stud of Arabian horses, and sold it to Prince Mohammed Ali, Lady Anne Blunt (who bought three mares) and others in 1907. I will go back to the library to check out this collection, and look for horse-related materials.

The cemetery of Mohammed Nafea Pasha in Cairo

He is the Mohammed Abu Nafie Pasha that is connected to the RAS foundation mares Nafaa El Saghira and (the elusive) Nafaa El Kabira, both of which are named after him.  The banner above reads: “The late Mohammed Nafea Pasha established this cemetery in 1921″, and the one on the left has his date of birth and date of death but these are not legible, in addition to his name.

Dachna, 1983 Shuwaymah Sabbah mare in Germany

Stephan Eberhardt shared with me this photo of his Algerian/Tunisian/Egyptian mare Dachna (Khaiber x Dahna by El Aswad a.k.a Ibn Galal-15), a Shuwaymah Sabbah tracing to the Tiaret mare Cherifa. I am always pleased to see that these asil lines  from North Africa have crossed well with Egyptian lines in Europe. The mare has two close crosses to Tunisian lines: her paternal grand-dam is the Jilfat al-Dhawi mare Rissala (Esmet Ali x Chanaan by Souci), whose sire and dam are from Anatole Cordonnier’s breeding in Tunisia but mostly from Algerian lines; and her maternal grand-dam is the beautiful Dar Essalam (Koufi x Djamila by Titan) whose sire is from Tunisian lines from Sidi Thabet and dam from Algerian lines from Tiaret.

The Mohammed Ali dynasty and the Tahawis

Also from Lady Anne’s Journals, February 24th, 1891: “A very bad day, wet, windy, cold and dull, not suitable for Judith to go to Cairo, so that I and Wilfrid went without her. When we got into the 1st class carriage we found in it Prince Osman Pasha who entertained us with agreeable conversation the whole way to Cairo. Prince Osman also explained the original connection of the Tihawi family (the Hamadi Sheykhs) with the Mohammed Ali family. It began from the arrival of Mohammed Ali in Egypt and the Tihawi were from the first the special body guards of the Pasha, which continued with his sons and descendants.”

Lady Anne Blunt and the Tahawis

From Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals and Correspondence under the January 13, 1903 entry: “Course to Om Kamr (for the third time). We started at 7.30 am making for the Hamad. Cantering on we  came in sight of a tent, which at first H.F. [Wilfrid Blunt a.k.a. Head of the Family] thought might be Abu’s tomb _ a Kubba _ but it proved to be a white tent. On approaching we saw two figures come out. We asked them who was the owner of the tent and they replied Sheykh el Arab Mazin (el Tihawi) and that he was gone out hunting. We had not gone out much further when we saw 5 horsemen between us and the rief, and we loitered watching them as they got nearer and saw that they carried hawks and one carried a gun and the fifth was followed by a pack of about half a dozen hounds. On first speaking, by H.F. to the two nearest us, hey seemed very suspicious of us but afterwards their chief was most amiable, he proved to be Mohammed Ibn Majello, owner of large lands near Karaim and a connection of saoud el Tihawi between who and Majello there is a…

Major General Ibrahim Khairi

I have always been intrigued by some of the early sources of RAS foundation horses, and wanted to learn more about them. I am not only referring to the Princes (Mohammed Ali, Ahmad Kamal, Yusuf Kamal, Kemal el-Dine Husayn, etc) and Lady Anne Blunt, but also by the more minor sources. One of these is “H.E. Lewa Ibrahim Khairi Pasha”, the owner of the mare Badaouia (RAS), the dam of Kheir and grand-dam of Gassir. Lets deconstruct that name for a second: “H.E.” is obviously “His Excellency”, a senior mark of respect for ministers and other high level officials. Lewa, as I once told Joe Ferriss and Jeanne Craver who reflected it in the revised entry for Badaouia (RAS) in Al Khamsa Arabians III, means “Major General”, and is a senior army rank. My father, General Salim Al-Dahdah, a retired two-star army general, is a Lewa, in Arabic. Pasha is the title of nobility we all know. This yields “His Excellency, Major General Ibrahim Khairi Pasha”. Armed with this new understanding, I looked up his name in Arabic in Google, for starters. Here is what I found: 1) In one source: 19-year old Gamal Abd al-Nasser (Egypt second military ruler…

Ubayyat Ibn Thamdan at the Tahawi in Efypt, ca. 1955

Mohammad Mohammad Osman Faysal Abdallah Saoud al-Tahawi sent me this beautiful photo of his grandfather Faysal on a Ubayyat Ibn Thamdan mare, taken around 1955. I like everything about this photo: the whitewashed tombs in the background, straight out of the Arabian Nights, the mud brick walls and the mud houses and the oasis, the old Shaykh on the mare, and the electric pole as a lonely testimony of creeping modernity in a scene that could otherwise have taken place a thousand years ago. And the mare of course: look at that perfect specimen of a desert mare: the full powerful croup, the walk, the carriage of the neck, and the long head so full of character. The strain above all: Faran Ibn Thamdan of the Sba’ah Bedouins was the owner of one of the three or four best strains of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak in North Arabia, a strain which produced some of the best foundation horses of the Arabian breeding program on my home country of Lebanon some fifty years ago. More about the strain of Ubayyan ibn Thamdan later, once I am done staring at this picture.    

The Palace of Princess Nemat Kamal Al-Din

A couple blocks from the Casdagli palace, in the Garden City district of Cairo, lies the palace of Princess Nematullah Kamal El Dine, wife of Prince Kemal El Dine Hussein, and daughter of the Khedive Tewfik. The palace, restored and renamed Qasr al-Tahrir (Liberation Palace) but amputated of its garden which became part of the now-famous Tahrir square, now belong to the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Click here for a slideshow.    

The Casdagli family of Cairo and Manchester

Old Egyptian Arabian horse records have preserved the trace of a Mr. Kasdughli, who owned Arabian horses which he obtained from Lady Anne Blunt during her last years at Sheykh Obeyd near Cairo and from Prince Kemal El Din Hussein of the Egyptian Royal family, and perhaps other sources as well. Here’s on the Dahmah Shahwaniyah mare Durra of LAB in the Al Khamsa Roster (I use it because it’s online and easily accessible, in addition to being a precise source): Durra (BLT), 1917 bm 1.36 RAS; Breeder: Lady Anne Blunt; A Dahmah Shahwaniyah bred at Sheykh Obeyd Stud. Purchased by the Royal Agricultural Society from Mr. Kasdoughli in 1924. Died 1930. NOTES: The above information is from the RAS History, p36. Durra was probably purchased by Mr. Kasdoughli from Prince Kamal al-Din, who purchased the horses (including several pregnant mares) left at Sheykh Obeyd after Lady Anne’s death, and re-sold some of them.  Another reference to him is in the Al Khamsa Roster entry for the horse Aid, to whom Durra was bred to produce Bint Durra, bred by Mr. Kasdughli: Eid (RAS), 1920 _s RASp-*Bint Bint Durra; Breeder: A Dahman owned by Mr. Kasdughli in Egypt. NOTES: The above information is from the 1932 pedigree for *Bint…

Kuhaylah Tamriyah mare from the Tahawi

This is Bint Delingat (Delingat x Bint Ammoura), one of the non-registered Tahawi mares that are currently being considered for registration by the EAO in a registry separate from the “Straight Egyptians”. She belongs to Yahia Abd al-Sattar al-Tahawi, who otherwise owns and breeds a lot of registered Arabian mares of Tahawi backgrounds, tracing in tail female to the three mares of Hamdan Stables. I took this photo in Geziret Saoud in Egypt last month. Bint Delingat is a Kuhaylah Tamriyah, and the very last of her strain. Oh, what an mazbut and precious strain Kuhaylan Tamri is! I especially like her long ears, and her overall type, which is reminiscent of some horses from Syria.  

Asil Bahraini Horses at the EAO

Someone from the EAO contacted me and asked me (nicely) to remove these two posts. I have a good relation with EAO management that’s based on mutual trust, so I have agreed. We will be taking that discussion off-line and starting a constructive dialogue on the future role the EAO sees for these Bahraini stallions. I will keep readers posted on how this dialogue evolves. Comments will stay because they are the readers’.  

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…

Felha, asil Kuhaylah Nawwaqiyah mare from the Tahawi in Egypt

Yasser Ghanim Barakat sent me this recent photo of the asil Kuhaylat al-Nawwaq Tahawi mare Felha (El Kharass x San’aa), aged 25. Felha was bred by Shaikh Soliman Eliwa al-Tahawi and is now owned by his grandson Hossam Abdullah Soliman. An ongoing campaign is currently taking place to get her and 11 other Tahawi mares accepted by the EAO and mtDNA testing was done to compare this line with that of another Tahawi Kuhaylat al-Nawwaq mare, *Malouma, as well with the existing K. al-Nawwaq lines in Syria and Lebanon.  

Asil Kuhaylat al-Nawwaq from the Tahawis

One of the few asil Tahawi mares left in Egypt is this old Kuhaylah Nawwaqiyah owned by Helga al-Tahawi, the wife of the late Shaykh Soliman al-Tahawi. She is one of those which the Board of Directors of Al Khamsa recently recognized as tribal “horses of interest”. I think the photo is from Bernd Radtke, but it might directly from the Tahawis. A collective effort on three continents is under way to get these 15 or so remaining Tahawi horses recognized by the EAO in Egypt, and as a result, by WAHO.  

Haraka and Bint Hamida, Saqlawi Jadran mares in the USA

The two Saqlawiyat Jadraniyat full sisters Haraka and Bint Hamida (Kenur x *H.H. Mohamed Ali’s Hamida) have founded a dynasty of their own in the USA. Their dam Hamida (Nasr x Mahroussa) was bred by Prince Mohamed Ali and was a half sister of *Zarife, *Fadl, and *Maaroufa; their sire Kenur (*Sunshine x *Tairah) was the offspring of two Albert Harris’ Saudi imports to the USA. Both photos are from the archives of Billy Sheets, but I have seen them before in a Khamsat magazine issue too.

New information on the Egyptian stallion Gamal El Din

As part of the working group on the horses of the Tahawi, which Edouard mentioned in a recent post, I wanted to share with you brand new information about the Egyptian stallion Gamal El Din. The information was obtained when Yehia Abd al-Sattar al-Tahawi, Mohammad Saoud al-Tahawi, and myself, recently recorded a one hour video with one of the very old Tahawi horse breeders, Shaikh Tahawi Sa’eid Mejalli al-Tahawi, who was born around 1904, and is 107 years old today. He still has an amazing memory for his advanced age, and is one of the old Bedouin breeders, and a great horse expert, following his father Shaikh Sa’ied Mejalli al-Tahawi. In this interview, he shared many exciting details about the old Tahawi horses such as “Dahman Abdullah Saoud” which he saw himself when he was young. “Dahman Abdullah Saoud” was the sire of the race horse Barakat (also a Dahman, but from another line), among others, and is today represented in modern Egyptian pedigrees through his great-grand-daughters Fulla, Futna, and Bint Barakat. Shaikh Tahawi al-Tahawi also spoke about lady Anne Blunt and her frequent visits to the Tahawi clan, and about the horses she bought from them. These horses are referred to…

Rare Hallany Mistanny Photo

This old photo of the 1937 black Saqlawi Jadran stallion Hallany Mistanny (Zarife x Roda) is from Billy Sheet’s photo archives. I am not sure it’s been published before. Hallany Mistanny sired his first asil foal in his twenties, and along with his Travelers Rest (General Dickinson’s stud) mate Sirecho (Nasr x Exochorda) was a cornerstone of the preservation renaissance which Jane Ott led in the 1950s.

Asil Kuhaylah J’aithiniyah from the Tahawis in Egypt

I am very proud to share with you some photos of the remaining asil horses of the Tahawi clan in Egypt. These horses are the very last remaining asil descendants of the large breeding program of the Tahawis, based exclusively on desert-bred Arabians imported from the tribes of Sba’ah, Ruwalah, Fad’aan, Hssinah and Shammar between the 1880s and the 1940s. This one is a Kuhaylah J’aithiniyah, a grand-daughter of the mare Bombolla (Rock x Masquerade by Ibn Bakhshish), of Sheykh Soliman ‘Abd al-Hamid Eliwa al-Tahawy, and tracing to the desert-bred mare “J’aithiniyah al-Kabira”, brought by the Tahawis from the ‘Anazah in the 1920s. I, Yasser, am the proud owner of this mare. She is one of the handful mares that has been recognized as “horses of interest” by Al Khamsa at their last annual convention.