Sired by Regency CF (Ibn Alamein x Bint Antan by El Alamein) and looking very much like his sire, Rahim is the son (and otherwise the only offspring — so far) of my new acquisition, the 26 year old Ma’naqiyah Sbailiyah Dakhala Sahra (Plantagenet x Soiree by Sir). He is some 88% Davenport, with a tail female to Miss Ott’s Sirrula, all the way back to Major Upton’s Naomi.

His owner Joseph Walters, has been breeding him to Polish mares, and was not aware of his Al Khamsa, asil status.

Edouard, take this out if you want — but their owner, Mary Ann Brewer, has decided to stop breeding, and is offering these two Kuhaylat, and Tokens Ceelen (a straight Davenport mare, tail female to Schilla) on a free lease to interested Davenport breeders. Contact her for details — she’s in Texas.

Both photos are from the archives of Billy Sheets, but I have seen them before in a Khamsat magazine issue too.

Asara is one of the Second Foundation Davenport mare, whose is the tail female of a number of favorites featured on this blog, such as the Krush stallions Janub Al Krush, CL Hi-Ned, and Indie Star.

Below are are some of these photos, which you can click on to enlarge. What a mare.

One of these mares is JDA Husaana (Salil Ibn Iliad x Saafadda CHF by Fiddlesticks), photo below, a 1999 chestnut mare who was bred by Pam Baker.

Just like the Davenports or the Doyles, or like my own Jadiba and Sahra, JDA Husaana is Early American Foundation, meaning that she traces 100% to the horses listed in AHR Volume V, registration numbers 1-2924. These are basically the Arabian horses found in the USA by and before 1944.

Lots of very, very old American Arabian horse blood flows in her veins. In addition to her two “Davenport” grandsires, she carries the blood of three stallions bred by Jane Ott and her mother, who launched the first large-scale asil preservation effort in the USA: Joramir (Sirecho x Fad Roufa), Dahrecho (Sirecho x Dahma Al Zarka), and Zarlan (Mistlany x Zarieha), as well as the Ott mare Blue List (Saafaddan x Zarieha by Kahar), who is the tail female.

Note how this mare’s head has all the characteristics of a good Arabian horse head, without the dished profile: small cup-shaped muzzle, deep jowl, huge eye that is placed low, arched throat, and great distance between the throat and the top of the forehead, which accentuates the triangular shape of the head. Many of today’s show horses have a rectangular shaped head instead of the triangular one.

Bedouins believed that a long, think forelock just like Viola’s is a sign of great asalah (authenticity) in Arabians.

I begin with this headshot of Zahra (not her registered name), a Kuhaylat al-Nawwaq from the stud of Kamal Abd al-Khaliq in Aleppo, Syria, by the Ma’naqi Zudghum stallion Dinar son of the Hamdani Simri stallion al-A’war, out of the mare Hanadi who was by Krush Juhayyim. We bought this mare from Kamal when she was 10 days old and then sold her when I moved to the USA. She traced back to the old marbat of the Naqashbandi sufis of Deyr-el-Zor, who have had this line for some 120 years now. The line originally came from the Sba’ah Bedouins. Zahra produced two foals, a colt by the Kuhaylan Krush stallion Amoori (by al-A’war), and a filly by the Kuhaylan al-Khdili stallion Saad al-Thani (also by al-A’war), and both died at an early age.

This was the last mare we owned in Lebanon, and my father sold her to Sa’d al-Faysal of Homs, when I came to the USA in 2000.

This photo of Regatta in his prime bears a strong resemblance to photos of both Tripoli and Tripoli’s son Monsoon (x Ceres). The photo appeared in a recent Khamsat magazine article which Philip Bienvenu wrote about Kamil Ibn Salan’s descendants. Thanks to Jeanne Craver for sending it to me.

I would love to breed a mare to him.

I cropped the photo to zoom in on the two mares. The larger photo has a view of the pasture and of some of Gulida’s offspring.

She was bred by Jeanne Craver in 1985, and then went to Charles’ cousin Crista Couch, and then to Kathryn Busch, who sold her to me.

I was about 10 or 12 the first time I came upon a horse of that line. That was before the internet, and before DVDs too. I was going through the Asil Club’s publication Asil Araber II, when, buried in a sea of Egyptian pedigrees, I found the photo of Erika Schiele’s stallion El Beshir (Faaris x Sirrulla by Sirecho), bred by Mrs Ott. The photo was in black and white and it showed a dapple grey horse, and I was  taken by the horse as much as by its unusual strain (recorded as Ma’naqi Hadraji, but it’s actually Sbayli) and pedigree. There was also that famous photo of the Kuhaylan Hayfi stallion Lysander at Craver Farms, and I wondered about that unusual (ie, non SE) pedigree too..

She is by Plantagenet, and according to Charles, “more like Plantagenet than Plantagenet himself”. Her dam was by Sir, her grand-dam by Julyan (Julep x Bint Maaroufa), her g. grand-dam, by Sirecho; her g.g.grand-dam by Sultan (Ibn Nafa x *Exochorda); her g.g.g. grand-dam by Antez; her g.g.g.g. grand-dam by the Davenport imported Kuhaylan Tamri stallion *Houran (the only Al Khamsa line he left), etc., etc.

Anyway, some 15 years later, I started learning about Jeanne Craver’s breeding program (other than the larger Davenport breeding program at Craver Farms jointly with Charles), which was centered around El Beshir’s sister Sirrulya, by Julyan. We started discussing a breeding lease of Sirrulya’s grand-daughter Sahra. For some reason I did not follow up until last year, when Sahra’s owner Kathy Busch and I worked together to get Sahra artificially inseminated from Triermain. She conceived, despite some cysts in her uterus, but did not keep the pregnancy.

Now Sahra is back at Craver Farms, where she is to be bred to Triermain (or Monologue), and if that does not work, to do embryo transfer. Ideally, I would like to harvest more than one egg, but I am not sure how the registry handles three foals born on the same year from one mating..

I don’t have good photos of Sahra to show you just now, and she is an old mare, but here’s a link to a photo of her mother’s brother Dakhala Sabiq (Prince Hal x Sirrulya by Julyan) in his prime. I haven’t even seen her yet.

I want to thank both Kathy for letting me have her, and Jeanne for allowing her back among her and Charles’ horses. Sahra is a war mare, and I have the privilege of being ‘owned’ by her.

Darlene Summers has the only foal of hers, a daughter by Triermain called Elegance, and everyone in the Davenport breeders community agrees that this grand and precious mare should have more foals.

This lovely mare is a cousin of my Jadiba, as both their great-grand-dams come from Fred Glass’s old breeding program which was centered around the mare Serije (Letan x Sedjur by *Hamrah).

There is a relatively large group of Saqlawiyat al-’Abd horses who trace to *Wadduda through Sahanad (Abu Hanad x Sahabet by Tanatra x Jadur by Jadaan x Sedjur by *Hamrah) via Jadur, but Hart Asheera and Jadiba are the only two left tracing to the other branch through Jadur’s sister Serije.

Asheera is Megan’s favorite riding mare, and I wish she could leave her with a last foal, a filly this time (she had two colts who were gelded).

Recently, while going through Datasource, I was thrilled to find out that an asil line to *Abeyah has actually survived, through modern show ring lines and outside any preservation program.

This is the line of the 1963 mare RO  Jameelah (Faaris x Ramleh, by Ghazi x Fersaba, by Ferdin x Saba), who has a line to Nureddin II through his son Ferdin, which means she is not Al Khamsa, because Al Khamsa does not accept Nureddin II.

Now the case of Nureddin II (Rijm x Narguileh by Mesaoud) is a long and complex one, and a painful one at that. In my opinion, he is who the studbooks say he is, that is, the 1911 son of his two parents, the Crabbet horses Rijm and Narguileh. I have seen all the documentation available, and I don’t buy the arguments of either Carl Raswan or his disciple Jane Ott, about him being the son of an English Thoroughbred. This theory has been refuted many times by all serious researchers. In my standards, the horse is asil, and so is his descendant RO Jameelah.

RO Jameelah has anywhere between four and six asil descendants today, the youngest one of which is the 2000 mare Savannah Spring (Thee Sandman x Lappes Morrane, by Hi-Fashion Mreekh x Lappes Danette, by Lappes Sar Ali x Lappes Jaleena, by Hadaya Bay Halim Bey x Jamora, by Kamal Ibn Morafic x RO Jameelah), who is 99.99% Egyptian, but has three lines to RO Jameelah, and hence to *Abeyah. Her dam, born in 1994, and her granddam, born in 1989, should also be  alive.

Below is a picture of Savannah Spring’s sire, Thee Sandman (Thee Desperado x Lappe Mreekhie by Hi-Fashion Mreekh), also a ‘Ubayyan Sharrak tracing to *Abeyah. He looks rather good … for a show horse.

I am so grateful to Monica Respet and Linda Uhrich for helping me secure Jadiba, and to Randy Abler and Gail Wells for facilitating the breed to Vice-Regent.