Hussain Ghashemi from Iran sent these pictures from Iran. Not an

Arabian horse obviously, but a gorgeous specimen of an Iranian

Turkmen horse.

I think I may have already written that this mare was one of my favorite living asil mares, on pedigree, on photo, and in real life (I saw her at Carol Lyons in 2003 or was it 2004? I don’t remember): En Pointe CF is a war mare the likes of which seldom exist today. An ‘atiq (antique, ancient in Arabic) mare of the ancient desert type, reminiscent in her style and class of the Old Blunt mares of the Rodania tail female like Risala and Rissla.

Her dam Pirouette CF is my all time favorite living Davenport mare, and her sire Triermain CF is my favorite living Davenport stallion. Her double grandsire Javera Thadrian is simply my all time favorite asil Arabian stallion in the West (but you knew that already).

By the way, I do believe that linebreeding to Javera Thadrian does produce outstanding horses. En Pointe CF is one example; Tantris CF is another, and my own Wadha (Javera Thadrian x Wisteria CF by Triermain CF, by Javera Thadrian) and Wadd (Triermain CF x Wisteria CF by Triermain CF) are not bad at all, either.

Not sure who owns her today, but she is lucky.

I just found out from a comment Jackson left below, that the horse is actually mine, one I own jointly with Darlene Summers, Monologue CF. I confess I felt a little out of touch.. but then again, I only saw Monologue twice, once at Pamela Klein’s and once at Craver Farms, where he is currently stationed.

There needs to be a good supply of (non-Egyptian) Al Khamsa stallions registered to ship semen from. When I wanted to breed Jadiba to a Davenport stallion this past summer, the only ones I could find who were ready to ship were Triermain CF in Illinois, Vice Regent CF in Georgia, and Pal-Ara Sensation and Mandarin in Oregon. Mandarin died last year, and Triermain is getting old. I opted for Vice Regent but now I have more mares and I wish there are other stallions to choose from.

There is no shortage of outstanding Davenport and BLUE STAR and other asil stallions, who ought to be registered to ship. I wish Davenport stallions like Regatta CF, Daedalus LD, Porte CF, Silverton CF, Indie Star, Eldar HD, Shiraz CF, Clarion CF, Firebolt, Chancery CF, Popinjay, Bah-Rani, Pulcher Ibn Reshan, Cobalt KH, Quantum LD, Aurene CF, were available to ship semen from. These and others are the sires of the future.

I realize registration for shipping is expensive, but there must be way to recoup the costs, and perhaps a collective effort can be undertaken, will several breeders cooperating to pool funding and get stallions of common interest frozen or registered to ship. It is well worth the effort, and there is no other way forward for the future of the asil Arabian in the USA.

However great the legacy of Judith Forbis as a breeder of Arabian horses of the show type has been, her most enduring legacy, IMO, is to have made this book available to Western audiences. Page after page, the information in the Manuscript debunks many Western misconceptions about Bedouin horse breeding. Really, the only thing missing from the book is an index of the individual horses, strains and Bedouins mentioned.

Check out this quote, page 439 [notes between brackets are mine]:

“The Sheikhs of Subayah [actually, Subay', a Bedouin tribe long allied to the Aal Saud] came and they were asked about their horses of the ‘Abeyya strain [in context, 'Ubayyan al-Suyayfi]: Baddah al Saifi [actually, al-Suyayfi] and Shafi the son of Fuhayd al Saifi [ditto] and Mesud ibn Ghadir, the sheikhs of Subayah [Subay'] replied: She is ‘Abeyya Sherrakiya of al Sherrak [...]. And we [in context, Fuhayd al-Suyayfi, Shaykh of Subay'] mated the safra, Hosayna, to a Kuhaylan Saada [actually Sa'dan or Sa'd] Tuqan, the horse of Hubaylis of al Qublan of Mutayr. And she gave birth to a shaqra filly whose name is Barissa who is with Shafi, the son of Fuhayd.”

Here you have a Bedouin shaykh, the son of the tribe’s leader, talking about the horses he and his father bred. They mention having bred one of their mares to a Sa’dan Tuqan stallion, and refer to that strain as a branch of Kuhaylan, like the Kuhaylan Hayfi, Rodan, or Mimrah. There is another instance of a breeding to the same Sa’dan Tuqan stallion on page 430.

Now according to Carl Raswan, the Sa’dan strain is Ma’naqi related, and is not a branch of the Kuhaylan. In his (totally arbitrary, IMO) strain categorization, the Sa’dan is one of the strains a purist Bedouin breeder should avoid breeding his asil mare to. If that were true, why would the leader of the Subay’, a major Bedouin tribe in the area of Riad in Najd, breed his mare to a stallion of this strain? and why the Mutayr, another major Bedouin tribe from Najd, maintain a Sa’dan Tuqan as a stallion, which means the strain is shubuw (to be mated from) to both the Mutayr and the Subay’?

Who would you believe in this case? the documented Bedouin primary source, or the undocumented western secondary source?

Let me add the following general principles: The Bedouins’ culture was an oral one; information was transmitted orally between people of the same generation and from generation to generation. They did not need anything in written when dealing with each other. The truthfulness and probity (‘adl in Arabic, a value depending on honor) of the man ensured the trustworthiness of the information, and it was confirmed by other men who acted as witnesses.

When dealing with outsiders, whether non-Bedouin Arabs like the town people or Aleppo, the Cairo-based missaries of Abbas Pasha, as well as Westerners, there arose the need to have this information put in writing, for two reasons :first, the system of values that bound Bedouins to each other did not apply to outsiders. Conversely, the outsiders did not trust information that was not put in writing.

So, as far as Arabian horses were concerned, the hujjah was the transcription in writing of information that was originally shared and transmitted orally. I am not sure it was designed for Westerners first. Rather I think the Cairo based Mameluk Sultans and the Istanbul based Ottoman Sultans were likely the first to request written hujaj for the horses they bought. The Abbas Pasha Manuscript is essentially a compendium of hujaj.

Of course, when trade in horses reached a larger scale, and foreigners who did not speak Arabic became involved as clients, a whole industry of agents, intermediaries, translators, guides and businessmen arose, who made sure that if a foreigner employing them wanted a piece of paper with Saqlawi Jadran written on it, well, they would create one for him. The Bedouin who was made to sign on the piece of paper, either did not know what he was putting his seal on, because he was illiterate (oral culture again), or he did not feel concerned, because the transaction involved non-Bedouins, and hence fell outside his value system.

I also flipped through Raswan’s “Black Tents of Arabia”. Somehow I never feel safe with Raswan. There is some good information, in the middle of a sea of misleading and often wrong statements. I really feel I could fill an entire new blog at the rythm of a post per day documeting these, and I know I eventually will some day. Meanwhile, I have learned to respect him as a passionate advocate of the preservation of the asil Arabian in the USA. He must have been a really nice person, too.

I think there are two ‘golden rules’ about Lady Blunt and Raswan, concerning information about horses, strains, tribes, etc. I have said this before, and will continue to say it: I would consider her generally right unless proven wrong, and him generally wrong unless proven right.

By the way, I have chosen the suffix Al Arab for my (very much virtual for now) stud. So he will be registered as Wadd Al Arab (“Wadd of the Arabs”), and his sister as Wadhah Al Arab.  When I was younger, I was really impressed by racehorse names like Shaykh al-Arab, Shatt al-Arab, Wahid al-Arab, and used to think horses with such names were to be reckoned with.

From a purely linguistic perspective, Wadhah really should have been registered as “Wadhat al-Arab”, since a final “t” in Arabic is silent unless followed by a noun in the possessive case (e.g., Kuhaylah Rodaniyah and Kuhaylat Rodan, which translate respectively as “Rodanian Kuhaylah” and “the Kuhaylah of Rodan”; another example is Saqlawiyah on it’s own as opposed to the possessive case as in Saqlawiyat al-Abd).

He recognizes that the horse he bought for the RAS was out of “El Nowagia”, and “by Krush”, yet not only does he name the horse “Kroush“, but he also says he was “a Krush”.  The horse was obviously a Kuhaylan Nawwaq like his dam.

And these were supposed to be the best horse experts of their time. I mean, it’s like a US constitutional expert saying that the President is elected by Congress, and getting away with it. I just don’t get it.

One pronunciation of qaf is as [Q] in conformity with classical Arabic, and is used in the dialect of the Druze inhabitants of Mount Lebanon, and the ‘Alawi inhabitants of the coastal mountain chain in Syria, as well by many other groups elsewhere in Arabic speaking countries. For example the would pronounce the Arabian horse strain name Nawwaq as “Nawwaq”, just as you would in English, and as it is spelled in classical Arabic. Similarly, “Saqlawi” would be pronounced exactly as it is written.

Another pronunciation of qaf is as the glottal stop ['], which is best rendered in latin script by the letter [A]. Most Palestinians, Egyptians, Syrians and Lebanese — including myself — will pronounce it this way.  Nawwaq is pronounced “Nawwa’ ” in this case, and Saqlawi becomes “Sa’lawi”.

A third pronunciation of qaf is as the letter [G], and this is the way most (but by no means all) Arabs of Bedouin stock will pronounce it, including a majority of Jordanians, Saudis, other Gulf citizens and some Iraqis and Syrian. Nawwaq is pronounced “Nawwag”, and Saqlawi, “Saglawi”.  This third alternative pronunciation is the one most Westerners are familiar with, because it originates the writings of Western travelers to Arabia, who were interfacing with Bedouins.

Now, what much fewer people are aware of, is that the Saqlawi ‘substrain’ of “Jadran” (or “Jidran” or “Jedran, since vowels do not exist in Arabic and can be rendered in English in different ways)” is also an example for this alternative pronunciation of [Q] as [G].

The name of this ‘substrain’ was first written with a [G] instead of a [J] by earlier travelers: e.g., Carlo Guarmani, who spelled it “Gedran”; see also the Seward’s Arabians imported to the USA in 1860, one of which was a “Siklauy-Gidran”; as well as the stallion “Siglavy Gidran”, ancestor of the Gidran breed, imported by Baron Fechtig to the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1816. It was only in later years that the [G] and the [J] became interchangeable in Jidran/Gidran, perhaps under the influence of Arabian horse breeders’ travels to Egypt, whose people pronounce the [J] as a [G] (e.g., “Gamil” instead of “Jamil”).

In reality, the earlier Western spelling of Jidran/Jedran/Jadran as Gidran/Gedran/Gadran was the Bedouin’s way of spelling the name Qidran/Qedran/Qadran in their own dialect. Qadran is actually a rather common (and very ancient) man’s name among Bedouins in Arabia; it now appears that it was also the name of the original owner of that branch of the Saqlawi strain in Arabian horses, that his name had been misspelled as “Jadran” by Westerners all along, and adopted in its misspelled form by modern day Arab horse breeders, from Egypt to the Arabian peninsula.

Indeed, over the years, the ubiquitous spelling of Qadran as “Jadran” has made it very difficult for modern day Arab writers and horsemen to identify who the original “Jadran” was, what his complete name was, which tribe and clan of the ‘Anazah he belonged to, and whether he had any living descendants.

Most recently, Saudi writer Mohammad b. Saud al-Hajiri resolved that enigma, by noting that “Jadran” was a Western misspelling of the Bedouin name Qadran, and in doing so, has located descendants of Qadran, the Bedouin who first owned that world famous branch of the Saqlawi strain.

More on who these are in a later post.

One consequence of the formation of this working was the recent designation by the Board of Directors of Al Khamsa, Inc of about of 15 of the surviving tribal Tahawi horses as “Al Khamsa Horses of Interest”. You read about this on this blog, and you will hear more about it in the future. It is certainly a first step toward the recognition by Al Khamsa of other tribal horses (e.g., Syria’s, Saudi Arabia’s, Bahrain’s) in the Arabian horse’s original homeland. It will probably have other consequences on the Egyptian Arabian horses, too.

Another related consequence of this group working together and exchanging information was the uncovering of previously hidden information, discover new information and make a number of educated guesses about a number of foundation horses of the Egyptian Agricultural Organization (EAO) and the Inshass Stud of the Egyptian kings. In doing so, the working group relied on various sources of information, including connecting the dots with previous research, the knowledge of its own members, stories from living Tahawi elders, field work done by Bernd in the 1980s, audio interview of Tahawi elders who have since passed away, and above all, stacks of historical documents and papers found with various members of the Tahawi clan.

Some of this new information will no doubt rattle previous solidly held beliefs, claims and comfortable assertions about these foundation horses, and will probably be subject to heavy controversy, if not opposition. Yet, all the new facts, but also the new hypotheses which are not yet facts, are positive, and reinforce the status of these EAO and Inshass foundation horses as original asil Arabians of the highest status. In the end (almost) everyone should be pleased.

For now, the working group will stick to the hard facts, and hold off before sharing the hypotheses, until further (ongoing) evidence such as mtDNA tests and new original documentation, is produced, so that the hypotheses become facts.

In any case, you will hear about these revelations in a much anticipated book on the Tahawi and their horses by Bernd Radtke, forthcoming in the summer of 2012. So stay tuned.

This stallion, who has a strong liver chestnut color, is built like a war horse. He has a masculine, virile, beauty. Jeanne Craver always knew I would like him, and she was right. Jeanne said that if this horse was with the Shammar Bedouins, he would be their herd sire. I could not agree more.

The absolute highlight of the trip, other than seeing my horses and especially the new ones, were the two hours I was able to spend with Charles and Jeanne helping put together the slides projector and watching some video footage of the horses at Craver Farms from 1958 up to 1961. Priceless images, and priceless moments, with Charles and Jeanne commenting on the footage.

I saw a total of 50 minutes of footage of Tripoli and many of the early horses, some of them preceding the Davenport “Second Foundation”: Arabesque (Rouf x Koreish by Alcazar); her fillies Byzantia (by Garaff), Tizzy and Josephine and her son Tristram (impressive), all by Tripoli; the wonderful 100% Blunt mare Ringlet Astralis x Rudeyna by Daoud), who unfortunately did not produce there; and of course the Second Foundation mares Dharebah (breathtaking, a desert-type mare) Dharanah, Tara and Dhalana; Antan and her son Sutan (by Subani); Asara (so powerfully built); and the first Second Foundation offspring Aramis, Oberon, Portia and Alaska (all Tripoli x Dhalana); Prince Hal, Sir, Janan Abinoam (all Tripoli x Dharebah); Fairy Queen (Tripoli x Dharanah);  Culpurnia (Tripoli x Tara), etc.  [Just go to the Al Khamsa Roster and look up all these horses if you want].

The icing on the cake was some original video footage which Charles had taken of Gulastra (Astraled x Gulnare) at 30+ years old at Bazey Tankersley’s in Washington, DC.  My head has been swirling with images of all these horses ever since.

Watch out, lots of photos coming.

There is hardly anything in common anymore between the kind of horse featured on this blog and the ‘living art’ featured in halter shows (whether it is asil or not asil, pedigree-wise). We are now at a stage whether different names should be used to designate two different breeds of horses.

I suggest the term “Post-Arabian” for the show type.

The original “Beauty of Aleppo” who was the grand-dam of the mare in the photo was a Kuhaylat Umm Junub born in 1930 and bred by a Nuri Effendi of Aleppo, Syria, and later imported to Turkey.

So know we know at least two surviving lines for the precious strain of Kuhaylan Abu Junub, one in Saudi Arabia (but came from Syria in the 1960s-70s), and one in Turkey, which also came from Syria in 1930.

I am simply amazed at the resilience of these rare strains that were so prevalent before and which at some point were thought to be lost. It’s like new sightings of birds everyone thought were extinct.

Vice Regent recently had his first foal at age 20, and it’s a colt, Laarado (x Laarisa EAF, who is by Alaadri), who is owned by Kathy Kelly in Georgia. Photos below