I first saw *Ta’an in 1990 as a yearling, at Mustafa al-Jabri’s stud outside of Aleppo. I took pictures which I will scan and share with you. I then saw him again in 1991 and 1992. In 1993, Mustafa gifted *Ta’an to Gerald and Debra Dirks who took him to the USA, then to Jordan in 1996. At that time, the Arab Horse Association studbook did not recognize the Syrian Studbook, so *Ta’an never got registered, even though Al Khamsa, Inc accepted him on the basis of his being a Bedouin-bred horse from Syria. The two pictures below were taken at the Dirks’ farm, and are courtesy of Marie Arthur.

*Ta’an’s sire was Awaad, a grey Kuhaylan al-Krush bred by ‘Iyadah Talab al-Khalaf, of the Shammar Bedouins, from the prestigious Krush al-Baida marbat of Mayzar al-Abd al-Muhsin al-Jarba of the Shammar. Awaad sired many good mares and stallions in Syria, among them the closely-bred black Kuhaylan al-Krush stallion Mokhtar, who was exported to France and who was Ta’an’s paternal half brother.

*Ta’an’s dam Efrieh, which Mustafa al-Jabri acquied from her breeder with her son at her side, was also bred by the Tai Bedouins, but traced back to the ‘Amarat Bedouin tribe (part of the ‘Anazah), whose al-’Ifri clan, owned the marbat called after them. Hamdani al-’Ifri was originally Hamdani Simri of the marbat of al-’Ifri, and was widely acknowledged to be one of the most authenticaed (mazbut) marabet of all the ‘Anazah.  *Ta’an’s dam Efrieh was sired by the Kuhaylan al-Wati stallion of Diab al-Sbeih of the Shammar, a dark grey desert-bred stallion born in the mid to late 1970s, and by the al-Ghishm clan of the Shammar. This Kuhaylan al-Wati stallion was also the sire of Mustafa’s head stallion Mahrous (Kuhaylan al-Wati x ‘Adlah by the Saqlawi Marzaqani known as Abu Ketf). Mahrous and *Ta’an shared the same straight profile and large protruding black eyes, and both features most likely came from that Kuhaylan al-Wati stallion.

*Ta’an left some progeny in Syria, many of which were exported to the Gulf countries. He only left one colt in the USA, DDA Baraq (out of the Hadbat Inzihi mare DDA Latifah by Grand Pass), and this colt’s whereabouts are unknown, although Randall Harris might have some leads. Not sure whether *Ta’an himself is still alive today.

[July 31 upate: the additional photo of *Ta'an below was taken by Joe Achcar in 1992. Thanks Joe for sending it]

Photo from Jeanne Craver.

Over the past decades, Mustafa spent extensive amounts of time with Bedouins and those familiar with them, and collected a large compendium of stories, some in verse, some in prose about Arabian horse strains, Bedouin feats and deeds, and the relationship of Bedouins with their horses.

Mustafa’s family is now working on putting these stories in writing in Arabic, for education and awareness raising purposes. Below is one of these story from Mustafa, which I translated from the original Arabic, and which Mustafa and his family graciously agreed to share:

One day Dham al-Hadi al-Jarba the Shaykh of the Shammar tribe went hunting with one of the men from his tribe, a Bedouin known as Wati al-Ghishm (as an aside: Wati means lowly and vile, and it was a Bedouin habit to give their children rough or negatively connotated first names to draw the evil eye away from them ; they would keep positively connotated first names to their slaves, for example Mas’ud or Marzuq). Wati was riding a pretty mare of the Kuhaylan strain; Dham liked the mare so much that he asked for her; when Wati politely turned his request down, Dham was so irritated that he resolved to acquire the mare at any cost, even if he had to resort to  force.

When Wati felt that Dham was up to something, he rode his Kuhaylah mare, and went off to the Sba’ah tribe, seeking protection with them ; but Dham wanted to show Wati that he could reach him and the mare wherever they went, so he sent two men to the Sba’ah encampments to steal the mare. Wati woke up one morning and saw that the mare was missing, so he went to the Shaykh of the Sba’ah and told him : « I left my tribe and my people and came all the way to you so you protect the mare, and look what happened »; the Shaykh of the Sba’ah told him : «Hope for the best ; lets perform the morning prayer first, and then we’ll examine the situation» ; upon hearing these words, Wati realized that the mare was lost and gave up on ever getting her back.

When the morning prayer was over, the five sons of the Sba’ah Shaykh came to check on their father; the latter stood before his chidlren and looked at each one for a long time, then he asked the eldest son to follow him. The Shaykh of the Sba’ah owned four mares and a stallion, all of them of the ‘Ubayyan Sharrak strain ; he went to his horses, sat in front of them, and started mumbling as he counted the beads in his hand ; then he asked his eldest son to jump on the stallion’s back, follow the thieves, and come back with the Kuhaylah mare.

And so it was. By the time of the evening prayer, the son was back with the Kuhaylah. Wati could not hide his amazement ; after thanking the Shaykh, he asked him for the reason why he stared at his children for such a long time before selecting the eldest for the mission of retrieving the mare. The Shaykh’s answer was : « all my sons are strong, but the maternal uncles of the eldest are from my kin »; by this the Shaykh meant that he was aware of his eldest son’s origins from his mother’s side, and hence he was certain of his performance. Wati then asked him about his mumbling as he was playing with the string of beads, and the Shaykh replied : « I was counting the paternal ancestors of the horses, and I found out that the fifth paternal ancestor of the stallion (that is, the sire of the stallion’s maternal great-great-great-granddam) was better than those of the mares, and that’s why I selected him».

When Dham learned the details of what had happened, he came to Wati to seek peace with him and asked him to return to the tribe, telling him he had no interest in the Kuhaylah mare anymore. Dham added : « Kuhaylat al-Wati may be strong, but the ‘Ubayyan Sharrak is much stronger, therefore the Kuhaylah does not deserve to be taken by force».

The mare in the photo above, Nawal, was owned by Mustafa al-Jabri, and is a ‘Ubayyah Sharrakiyah tracing to the marbat of Ibn Duwayhiss of the Sba’ah tribe. The story above was probably related to Mustafa in the context of his purchasing Nawal in the mid 1980s and researching her origins. I wrote about Nawal some time ago, here.

The horse is turning 24 next year, so the clock is ticking.. Soon, with Bedouins becoming sedentary and more integrated in the global economy, the notion of a desert-bred horse born under a tent will itself come to and end. Below is a photo of one of Mokhtar’s sons in France, the stallion Quarzai, who recently earned third place at a 90 miles endurance race.

As an aside, the famous stallion Krush Halba, the foundation sire for the Turkish Arabian horse breeding program, hailed from the same Fad’aan marbat as *Werdi. Krush Halba was one of the most prepotent sires of racehorses of his time. He was active in the northern Lebanese town of Halba in the 1920s and 30s, and was purchased in 1933 by a Turkish Government Commission and exported to Turkey where he was known as Baba Kurus. Check out his hujjah here (scroll down to Appendix B).

One of Krush Halba’s sons, the grey stallion Kroush (actually a Kuhaylan al-Nawwaq by strain) was bought from the Beirut racetrack in 1936 by Dr. Mabrouk of the Egyptian Royal Agricultural Society (RAS), and was used by the RAS for breeding . Kroush appears in the Egyptian “RAS History” studbook (EAO Vol 1) on page 48. He had  three registered offspring in Egypt: the stallion Tamie (1937) out of Nagiya; the mare Bushra (1940) out of Kahila; and the mare Madiha (1938) out of Bint Sabah (hence a sister of Bukra, of Sheikh El Arab, of Layla the dam of Sid Abouhom, and of Babson’s *Bint Bint Sabbah). Pity none of them bred on.

Another of Krush Halba’s sons, the stallion Ghazwan was the foundation sire for the now defunct Lebanese Arabian horse breeding program. Some of Ghazwane’s daughters and grand-daughters came to the USA as part of the Hearst importation of 1947.

A third asil line to Krush Halba now survives in Syria, through his other son Abu Al-Tayyeb, also a Kuhaylan al-Krush from that Fad’aan marbat.

In the 1980s, asil Arabians tracing to *Turfa were a major building block of Al Khamsa, and a quick glance at one of the ads which breeders of *Turfa-bred horses placed in books like Al Khamsa Arabians (1983) suffices to convince one of the popularity of this bloodline back then. *Turfa-bred horses were athletic, had good disposition and looked like classic Arabian horses of the first order. The *Turfa blood was to be found mainly — but not exclusively — in combination with Babson Egyptian bloodlines, horses tracing to Babson lines with the addition of the stallion Sirecho (Nasr x Exochorda by Aiglon), and in many combinations within the BLUE STAR group of horses. Stallions looked especially attractive: Fa-Turf, Ibn Fadl, Dhahran (photo below, note the resemblance with his grand-dam above, he is by Sirecho out of Turfara, out of Turfa), Fa Raad (photo also below, by Fa-Turf x Raada by Ibn Fadl)

I don’t know what happened in the 1990s, but it seems like a number of foundation *Turfa breeders either retired or lost interest in the bloodline, and the number of new births among asil Arabians with at least one *Turfa cross in their pedigree plummeted, from 1234 in the 1980s decade, to 880 in the 1990s, to 428 in the 2000s. These may seem like large  numbers, but they aren’t, if one considers only a tiny fraction of these numbers trace to *Turfa in the tail female (I will get you the tail female numbers soon).

However, breeders like Janet Ingram provide us with reason to believe that this sad trend can indeed be stopped. Janet was a newcomer to the world of asil Arabians when she came to own a young stallion of Babson-*Turfa bloodlines, Turfas Marine (photos above, as a colt, and as a three year old, by Sunnyru Marine out of Turfas Tara, by Princeton Faaris), who is also tail female to *Turfa. She did not know what she had, but she asked around, and quickly came to the conclusion that her stallion should not only remain a stallion, but also have the opportunity to have some offspring from related mares. Breeders like Janet Ingram need to be encouraged (someone was recently telling me that Al Khamsa needed to grow breeders as much as horses), and their sense of entreneurship and their willingness of take informed risks that would pay off later lie at the core of breeding asil Arabians on a small scale in today’s world. People like Janet Ingram are the unsung heroes of the saga of asil Arabian preservation not only in the USA but also around the world.

PS – It sounds like I am preaching, but I am not. There is a real danger of losing these horses. Really.

PPS – The mention of *Turfa’s strain, Kuhaylan, may seem innocuous, but isn’t…

Victor Muller, a French army intelligence officer who had overall responsibility over the Syrian desert area at the time of the French Mandate on this country authored an authoritative book on the Bedouins of Syria. In one chapter, he wrote that the initial marbat of Kuhaylat al-Jalala among the Shammar was with Ibn Dayes of the Khrissah clan, but that it had recently become extinct with Ibn Dayes. He also wrote that he knew of a Kuhayla al-Jalala mare with the Jayss tribe, the traditional enemies of the Shammar, whose pastures are by the Turkish border with Syria. He also added in what looks like an update to the previous information that the last Kuhaylat al-Jalala mare, owned jointly by Dham al-Hadi al-Jarba (leader of the Northern Shammar in Muller’s time) and by the Qa’it clan (a clan of Shammar warriors) had died recently.

He also adds that the number of ancient strains taken by the Shammar in that famous battle with the Sharif of Mecca were five, and cites all the strains I cited except Kuhaylat al-Dhabi. That said, I heard al-Dhabi cited among these from an authoritative Bedouin source in Syria.

Kesia (I) was a Kuhaylah Nawwaqiyah, sired by a Kuhaylan Nawwaq, bred by the Qumusah section of the Saba’ah Bedouin tribe, which owns the marbat. The head of the Qumusah, Shaykh Sulayman Ibn Mirshid put his seal on the mare’s hujjah, which makes this mare very precious. Kesia (I) came to Great Britain in foal to a desert-bred Saqlawi al-’Abd stallion, and produced a filly Kesia (II). The dam and the filly are two of the few mares of the Nawwaq strain to have been imported to a Western country – another one is *Malouma.

The tail female of Kesia II no longer exists in asil breeding anywhere. However, her great-grandson Segario (Nimr x Shabaka, out of Kesia II) is still represented in asil pedigrees in the USA, where his dam was imported from Great Britian by Colonel Spencer Borden.

Today, the blood of Kesia survives in less than seven horses around the world, through Segario’s grandson Gharis (Abu Zeyd x Guemura by Segario), and then Gharis’ grandson ASF David (Daaldan x Dihkenna by Gharis). Believe or not, the six or seven horses with a line to ASF David, and which were mentioned in a recent entry, are indeed the only remaining link to the Al Khamsa Foundation Horses Kesia I and Kesia II, but also to another foundation horses, the stallion *Mameluke.

If we lose these six or seven mares, then not one, but three foundation horses of early American breeding would have been lost to asil breeding. As far as I know (and this needs checkign), this would be the first time that a Foundation Horse (in this case, three) would have to be deleted from the Al Khamsa Roster, since the last remaining line to the desert-bred *King John was lost in the 1980s.

These horses, al-Musinnat [plural form of Kuhaylat al-Musinn or al-Musinnah] are very ancient. They are from the horses of ‘Abdallah ibn ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn Faysal ibn Turki Aal Saud, the brother of King ‘Abd al-Aziz Aal Saud.

Prince Abd Allah, the brother of the king, had kept his horses in a private, separate farm. Upon his death, the horses went to his son, Prince Abd al-Rahman, and then to his grandson, Prince Faysal. And Prince Faysal is now aged. Then the horses went to Prince Turki Ibn Fahd Ibn Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman ibn Faysal ibn Turki, who is now preserving what remains from the asil horses, per God’s will.

Some of the Musinnat horses of Prince Abdallah, the brother of King Abd al-Aziz, participated in the Hedjaz campaign [i.e., the takover of the Hedjaz region from the Sharif of Mecca by the army of Ibn Saud in 1924].  Two men from Ibn Saud’s army fought particularly well in some episodes of this campaign: the first was Badi ibn Dhubyan from the tribe of Subay’, and he was riding a Musannan stallion that belonged to Prince Abdallah, the king’s brother. The second was Ibn Wareek, a Qahtan Bedouin from an ancient horsebreeding family.

Both fought pitched battles on horseback against one of the Sharif’s toughest warriors: Kharbush al-Dhuwaybi of the Harb tribe, who was riding a black stallion. Badi killed Kharbush in one of the battles, and the Sharif’s troops and Bedouin auxiliaries were defeated.

The two warriors came back to the camp of King ‘Abd al-Aziz, and announced to him that Badi had killed  Kharbush in battle, in front of a large assembly of people. Abdallah, the king’s brother, was in the assembly, and said jokingly: ”You mean Musannan killed Kharbush”.. Abdallah meant that the horse Musannan’s strength and courage in battle helped kill Kharbush and defeat the enemy.

The Musinnat have been owned by the House of Saud for a very long time, since the time of Faysal Ibn Turki, and are some of the best horses found in Saudi Arabia today. In the past, the Musinnat were owned by the House of Saud only, then they passed to Ibn Rashid in Hail, and then back again to the House of Saud in the early 1920s after the House of Rashid was defeated. The Musinnat of Bahrain are second to these Musinnat.

As to other Musinnat elsewhere, and only God knows, because from what I know the Musinnat belong to Ibn Saud and Ibn Rashid.

Below is a picture of a Musinnah mare from this precious line. Her name is Mirath. Sired by Qais, a Suwaiti stallion, out of Bint Bariqah, a Kuhaylat al-Musinn (or al-Musinnah). Also at Prince Turki’s.

[Note from Edouard: the photo is not very good, but you can see the substance of the mare].

One of my favorite RJ articles is “The Blunts and Crabbet Stud: An Abbreviated History and Description of the Breeding Program“, from the time Crabbet Stud was founded in 1878 to Lady Anne Blunt death in 1917, including the dam lines that were represented at Crabbet across 40 years of breeding:

In 1917, “the desert mares still represented at Crabbet at the end of Lady Anne’s life were Basilisk, Jerboa, Dajania, Queen of Sheba, Meshura, Rodania, and Ferida. However, the Jerboa line had died out in tail-female.” So, six of the Blunt’s desert damlines were still represented in 1917. Also, “of the Ali Pasha mares, the 1917 catalog details that [...] the blood of the families of Sobha, Bint Helwa, Bint Nura, Makbula and her daughter Kasida, ran strong in the herd, with all but the latter having provided sires to the stud.” Four damlines from the Ali Pasha Sharif mares were still there in 1917, for a total of ten damlines. 

It would be tally how many of these ten damlines are still represented in Al Khamsa breeding, in 2010, ninety three years after the listing in the 1917 Crabbet catalog:

Of the desert mares, Meshura has no Al Khamsa descendents altogether. Makbula/Kasida, Bint Nura, and Queen of Sheba are only represented through their male descendants. Likewise, the damline of Dajania has died out in Al Khamsa, from very early on, although it’s influence through the middle of the pedigrees in significant. These five damlines are now extinct in tail female in Al Khamsa/asil breeding.

The following remaining five Crabbet damlines are still represented in Al Khamsa breeding today in 2010:

1. Basilisk (Saqlawi Ibn Dirri, through both Rabanna and Peraga);

2. Rodania (Kuhaylan Rodan, through both Rosemary and Rose of Sharon, eventhough the Rosemary line is down to one single mare, Prince Asjah);  

3. Ferida (Ma’naghi Sbayli, through both Milanne, and until very recently, Radonna)

4. Sobha (Hamdani Simri, through Simawa in the USA, and Siwa II in Europe)

5. Bint Helwa (Saqlawi Ibn Sudan), through her two daughters Ghazala and Hilmyeh, the latter being the dam line of the Doyle mare Gulida.

To me, it’s a miracle that five of the ten damlines represented at Crabbet Stud in 1917 are still around almost a century later. This miracle has a name: the American preservation breeding movement in favor of the asil Arabian horse, which started in the 1950s with the likes of Carl Raswan, Jane Ott, Richard Pritzlaff, Charles Craver and Joseph L. Doyle, and continues until today. Doyle preserved line 5 above (Gulida), Pritlaff rescued line 1 (Rabanna), Craver saved line 4 (Arabesque), and Raswan and Jane Ott provided advice, guidance and inspiration to them and several others.

Now, Jesse has spent a lot of time around horses, and obviously adores them, but she’s still two and needs to be reminded to approach them from the front, not the back. (A photograph that I missed taking: Jesse, in the hay feeder which is a repurposed water trough almost as tall as she is, squealing with delight as Recap ignored the old hay she was being offered in favor of wiggling her upper lip in Jesse’s hair.) And she was pretty good for a while, but there were four mares to trim and Jesse was gaining speed, so we put her on top of Petit Point.

Petit Point was perfectly agreeable about balancing the child while her front feet were being done, but Jesse’s wiggling was picking up again, and she was slowly working her way back, until she was nearly sitting on Petit Point’s loins. The farrier’s apprentice asked for a back foot, and Petit Point — refused. She apparently calculated that the child was going to pitch off her back if she didn’t stay planted, and keeping the child aboard was her Job.

This, you get a photo of, albeit a bad one. (I was holding Poppy and couldn’t back away far enough.)

So Farrier removed Jesse from Petit Point’s back, and her hind feet were free to move once more. (Poppy, when asked, declined hastily to have Jesse placed aboard, stating that looked nothing like a saddle and she was having none of it.)

This area general is home to the tribe of al-Aqaydat (Ageydat), a wealthy and powerful semi-nomadic tribe of cultivators and small herders whose Shaykhs obtained a number of really good desert-bred mares in the first part of the twentieth century, sometimes through ghazu (raids) and sometimes through purchase and gifts. They bred these mares well, and protected them by using only asil stallions, and hence came to own reputalbe marabet. Today some of the prettiest and typiest Syrian horses came from these Ageyday marabet.

One of the most well known Aqaydat marabet is that of Kuhaylat al-Trayfiyyah, which is an old strain the history of which I don’t know well. All I know is that it might – just might – derive its name from Matarifah clan of the ‘Anazah tribe. The strain is mentioned in the Abbas Pasha Manuscript, in connection with events that took place in Eastern Arabia, either in Bahrain, Qatar or the al-Ihsaa region of Saudi Arabia.

The Kuhaylah Trayfiyyah is the photo was not registered in the WAHO Syrian Studbook and I don’t know the reason. Perhaps some of her papers or authentication documents were missing or incomplete, perhaps she did not meet the Registration Committee’s criteria, and perhaps her owners did not want to register her, which was not uncommon at the time.

I recall being struck by her high withers, her deep girth, her sloped shoulder, her short-back, her level croup, her beautiful pricked ears, and her overall graceful and gentle appearance, despite her old age, and poor condition. Photo taken at Radwan Shabariq’s farm near Aleppo, in 1996, where this mare was being brought to be bred by his Hamdani ibn Ghurab stallion al-Aawar.

The second line to *Samirah is through her other daughter Kerasun, by the desert-bred stallion *Sunshine. *Sunshine was also from the Saud studs, and was imported in utero to USA in 1931 by Albert Harris, along with his dam *Nufoud, *Samirah, and two other mares. Kerasun in turn had two daughters, both bred by Albert Harris: Kaleta (by Alcazar) and Karamia (by Kulun, a Kuhaylan al-’Ajuz stallion from really old bloodlines tracing to *Nedjme).

Through Kaleta runs a very thin line high in desert bred blood straight from Najd and the Syrian desert, with the arrows indicating a mother-to-daughter link: Kaleta –> her daughter Faleta (by Ibn Fadl, another Kuhaylan al-’Ajuz and a son of the desert, his dam being *Turfa) –> Faleta’s daughter Peta by the Kuhaylan al-Hayf Lysander, from the Davenport bloodlines –> Peta’s 1985 daughter Halley, by the Kuhaylan al-Hayf stallion Audobon, another Davenport. If still alive, and I highly doubt it, Halley would be 24 now. I can’t help but see the hand of the late Carol Lyons being the breeding that resulted in Halley, first because Carol used to own the magnificent Audubon, and second because she was trying to preserve the very, very few remaining horses with no Blunt/Crabbet bloodlines in them, of which Halley was one. These horses Carol called Sharp (a play on words, as sharp and blunt are opposites).

I hope someone is able to provide an update on whether this mare, Halley, is still alive, and whether she is in a preservation home.

Most of the best-known and most important Arabian strains are still represented today in asil form, and we are lucky to have them. A number of really significant ones were lost in Arabia Deserta over the last fifty years. These include Kuhaylan Tamri (known to US breeders as the strain of the Davenport import *Houran), Kuhaylan al-Kharas (the strain of the Blunt import Proximo), Kuhaylan Harqan (the strain of the grandsire of the Ali Pasha Sherif stallion Mesaoud) and Kuhaylan Om Soura. Until last week, I thought Kuhaylan Abu Junub was one of these.

Kuhaylan Abu Junub is a strain I have always been interested in. There are some indications it is somehow ‘related to’, in a way I am not yet in a position to explain fully, to Ma’naqi, Jilfan, and Frayjan, all of which are ultimately Kuhaylan branches as well. It is on the list of Abbas Pasha’s ten favorite strains, where it ranks tenth. It was present among several ‘Anazah Bedouin tribes, and there were a couple famous marabet among the Sba’ah.

I thought the last asil mare of this strain had died some fifteen years ago in Syria. She traced to the horses of the Mudarris family of Aleppo, which owned a marbat of Kuhaylan Abu Junub, and another of Saqlawi ibn Zubayni. She was not registered in the WAHO accepted Syrian studbook, but she was nevertheless widely recognized as asil. When my friend Kamal Abdul Khaliq, another Alepine breeder, told me he died without replacement, I said to myself: “Another one goes down the drain”. In his presentation at the WAHO conference in Syria in 2007, my friend Hazaim al-Wair, who works with me researching strains, even recorded it as “extinct”. We were both wrong.

Last week Pure Man sent me the picture (below) and pedigree of a colt he told me was Kuhaylan Abu Junub. He also told me the colt traced to a mare that had come to the area of Hafr al-Batin in Saudi Arabia from the Bedouins tribes of the “North” (i.e., Syria or Iraq), some decaides ago. Hafr al-Batin and the whole of North-East Saudi Arabia in general, are now home to dozens of thousands of Bedouin nomadic clans, mostly Sba’ah, ‘Amarat, and Dhafeer, but also some Shammar, who were invited by the Saudi government to undertake a reverse migration to the south in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, and given Saudi citizenship. Pure Man also told me there was another colt from this line in the city of Medina, as well as two or three mares of breedable age. He also added that horsebreeders of repute vouched for the origin of this particular Abu Junub line.

The news made my day, and Pure Man promised to get more information about this line. I can’t wait.

If you get tired of watching her balance herself in the arena, skip to about 6:20 and watch her stroll across the little stream and head up into the hills…

If you want more, here she is on the longe line, a scant hour after getting off the trailer:

I would like to familiarize readers with the foundation stock of the Syrian Arabians, because I feel they will become more and more significant in the future.

You have already seen pictures of some of the most influential Syrian Arabian stallions, many of which are personal favorites: Ra’ad, a Kuhaylan al-Musinn; al-Aa’war, a Hamdani Ibn Ghurab; Mubarak, another Hamdani Ibn Ghurab; Mokhtar, a Kuhaylan al-Krush; Marzuq, a Ma’naqi Sbayli, etc. Look them up in the search function of this blog on the right hand column, and you will see the relevant entry with their photos.

Ra’ad was bred by Jamal al-Turki al-’Ilyu of the Saw’an clan, which is the leading clan of the settled, part peasant, part sheep-herding tribe of  al-Sabkhah, on the banks of the middle Euphrates. Jamal’s family also bred Ra’ad dam Nawal al-Kheil, and her grand-dam as well. The Sabkhah, who occupy the area of same name (click here to see it on Google Map) are themselves part of the larger peasant confederation of the Bu Sha’ban.

While not Bedouins in the most restricted sense of the word (ie, camel herding Arab nomads), the sheep herding tribes of the fertile valley of the Euphrates and its tributaries became wealthier than their camel herding neighbours such the Fad’aan and the Sba’ah during the course of the twentieth century, because of the decline of the camel trading economy and the rise of mechanized agriculture and sheep herding. Their rise in wealth and power meant that, in time, they were able win the respect of their Bedouin neighbors who sometimes forged alliances with them by way of marriage. Exchange of horses were often the results of such alliances.

Although I currently have no direct information about this, I can garantee you that the Kuhaylan al-Musinn marbat of al-Saw’an comes from the well known (ma’ruf), famous (mashhur) and well ascertained (mazbut) marbat of Jadu’ Ibn ‘Amayer of the Fad’aan Bedouins. Ibn ‘Amayer’s was the premier marbat of the Kuhaylan al-Musinn in Syria, and it survived until the early 1980s.

This is Elegance (by Triermain x Enchante CF by Zacharia) owned by Darlene Summers of Maryland. She is Kuhaylah Hayfiyah tracing to the horses imported from Arabia Deserta by Homer Davenport in 1906. Photo Christine Emmert.

Above is a distant photo of another son of the desert-bred Kuhaylan al-Musinn stallion Raad. This is Hussam al-Shimal, a Kuhaylan al-Nawwaq stallion from the marbat of Sa’ed Ameen Yakan, in al-Bad, north of Aleppo.

Hussam is going to be sent to France where he will stand at stud with Arnault Decroix.

I am no fan of the show-ring. I firmly believe that an asil Arabian horse was not born to be paraded around like a puppet, and that among all asil Arabians, the Syrian asil horses deserve this ridiculous treatment the least (these were war and endurance machines, remember), but I thought it was worth noting that Hussam, this son of a desert-bred, was twice Syria’s National Reserve Champion.

Back in the early 1980s, Omar’s father, civil engineer Munir Anbarji, was working on projects in the Syrian desert. He purchased this young Kuhaylan al-Musinn colt to use on his desert-bred mares. The handful of Aleppo horse breeders who cared about asil arabians at the time knew that this colt, Raad, was of mazbut (authenticated) origin.

Chira is unique in the sense is that she is the last mare to trace to Nafaa through Nafaa’s daughter Bint Nafaa (by El Gadaa) and as such, the last mare to carry El Gadaa’s blood. Read more about Bint Nafaa and her sire El Gadaa here.

I am glad to know Teymur is working on preserving this precious line, which is so close to some of the choicest desert bloodlines. Best of luck with that, Teymur.

There is another asil line tracing to Rosemary that also survives in the USA. I stumbled upon it while browsing through the Al Khamsa Roster. This is the line of Rayim (Abu Zeyd x Roshana), a 1927 bay mare bred by W.R. Brown. Just follow this breath-taking genealogy of Crabbet mares from the “R” line:

Rodania –> Rosemary, 1886, by Jeroboam –> Rabla, 1899, by Mesaoud –> Rokhama, 1906, by Astraled –> *Rokhsa, 1915, by Nasik –> Roshana, 1920, by *Berk –> Rayim, 1927, by Abu Zeyd. At this point the line is bred to old American bloodlines, as Rayim produces Amirat by Arafat (Ameer Ali x Serije, a Saqlawi al-Abd tracing to *Wadduda) in 1947. Amirat in turn produced Nuqat, by Nasir, a son of Rayim, hence doubling the Rosemary line. Nuqat is bred to Abu-Talib, another Kuhaylan Rodan son of Rayim, to produce the 1960 mare Salsalet (3 close crosses to Rayim). Salsalet is bred to the Egyptian stallion Saba El Zahraa (Morafic x Salomy) to produce the 1974 mare Cardinelle, who, bred to the race winner Egyptian stallion Asjah Ibn Faleh produces the 1990 mare Princess Asjah. This mare, bred by a B.A. Cole, would be 19 years old, if alive today, and the youngest tracing to this prestigious line. Thank God for these Egyptian stallions that just came in handy to save some of the old American lines from extinction.  Now that line needs somebody to take it to the next level. Before it is too late.

Now is the time to feature another asil line that has survived in South Africa, and which carries crosses to desert-bred lines that are extinct almost everywhere else around the globe.

That’s the line of the mare Rosina (Saoud x Ruth II by Bendigo), a 1950 Kuhaylat al-Rodan exported by H. V. Musgrave Clark to South Africa in 1953. The line is a tail female to Rodania, an 1869 desert-bred Kuhaylat Rodan imported by Lady Anne Blunt in 1881, and one of the most influential mares in Arabian (and asil) horse breeding. What’s so special about this line, will you ask? Kuhaylan al-Rodan asil horses are all over the place.

Well, first of all, the absolute majority of Rodania tail female horses are within what is known as “Straight Egyptian” breeding, a sub-set of asil breeding which has branched out into a category – and a type – of its own. Actually, “Straight Egpytian” breeding has almost completely taken over asil breeding, to the point that last year, fewer than 50 non-”Straight Egyptian” asil horses were born in the USA.

There is only a handful of asil Kuhaylan al-Rodan lines in the world that do not trace through Straight Egyptian breeding, and I will review these one at time. Rosina’s line in South Africa is one of these. Rosina’s line is all the more precious in that it traces to Rodania through Rodania’s daughter Rosemary by Jeroboam. There is only one other asil line tracing to Rodania through Rosemary, it is in the USA and it is hanging by a thread. More on this line later.

Rosemary (Jeroboam x Rodania)

Now what makes Rosina’s line really interesting is that it carries crosses to two of the Courthouse desert-bred stallions: Nimr, and Atesh.

What is Courthouse? It’s the stud of H.V.Musgrave Clark, an early breeder of Arabian horses in the UK. Clark is otherwise known for being the man who sold Skowronek to Lady Wentworth, but he also bred at least three lines that he obtained from Crabbet: Belka (Rijm x Bereyda), who traces to the Blunt desert-bred import Basilisk, a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah; Safarjal (Berk x Somra), who traces to the Blunt’s Sobha, a Hamdaniyah Simriyah of Abbas Pasha stock; and Rangha (Berk x Rabla), who traces to Rodania through Rosemary. H.V.M. Clark mainly bred these mares to three desert-bred stallions he obtained through his own connections: Fedaan, Nimr, and Atesh. How he managed to get three well-authenticated, well-bred stallions from irreprochable bloodlines and excellent marabet still boggles my mind.

Fedaan, a Saqlawi Jadran of the marbat of Ibn Zubayni, imported to the UK by HVM Clark

Atesh was a desert-bred chestnut Ma’anaghi Sbayli, bred by the Gumussah section of the Sba’ah Bedouin tribe (so just like the Davenport imports *Haleb and *Gomussa, and the desert stallion Funaytil featured in an earlier post). He avoided a career as a desert war horse, only to become the charger of General Enver Pasha, the Ottoman’s Empire de facto ruler during World War I. Enver Pasha used Atesh on the Caucasus front, one of the war’s most violent (that was no small-time ghazu skirmish, really). Somehow Atesh ended up in the ownership of H.V.M Clark after the war, and sired a number of foals at Courthouse.

The trajectory of Nimr, a bay Saqlawi Jadran and Rosina’s grand-sire, was slightly less glorious, since he was only the personal horse of Mohieldin, son of the Sherif of Medina (not the Sherif of Mecca, but the two families are related). Nimr’s dam Yaz [correction, his sire, thank RJ. Edouard revision Sept 11, 2009] is somehow connected to the horses of the Imperial Ottoman stables, but I don’t remember how, and will need to re-research that. He also was acquired by Musgrave Clark, and used at Courthouse.

In South Africa, Rosina produced a daughter, Sahibi Yakouta, by Gordonville Ziyadan (Zahir x Baraka), a son of the lovely Kuhaylat al-Mimrah from Egypt, thereby bringing in South Africa’s other asil line. There seems to have some very early awareness of the asil status of these two horses. Sahibi Yakouta in turn produced Charmante Yasmina by Anchor Hill Omar, and Yasmina was bred to another Egyptian stallion (of the showring type), WD Majesty, and also produced a filly.  There seems to be further progeny, associated with more showring bloodlines. What matters is that the tail female goes on, and as Joe Ferriss, Karsten Scherling and I were discussing in Rick Synoswski’s barn, these showring lines have enough prepotency to be bred back into Bedouin type (ie, war-horse type) within one or two generations.