Daughters of the Wind: a blog on desert arabian horses, past and present

In 1971, H.R.H. Prince Salman b. Abd al-Aziz Aal Saoud, brother of the present king of Saudi Arabia, and then and now governor of the Province of Riyadh (which more or less corresponds to the historical region of Najd), presented the bay Hamdaniyah mare Gazala to a Dr. Klaus Simons of Germany. The latter imported his prized mare to Germany, where the Asil Club accepted her and her offspring, three mares by Farouss (Kaisoon x Faziza by Fa-Turf) and two stallions by Hamasa Arslan (Farag x Shar Zarqa by Negem)

Jeanne Craver forwarded me her typewritten hujjah, which is signed by the hand of Prince Salman, and exists in both the original Arabic, and an awkward English translation. Here is the English version as it appears in the original document, word for word (capitals mine):

[Printed Letterhead for Prince Salman Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud]

To Whom It May Concern

We certify hereunder that Gazala is Thoroughred Arabic (Assila), she is of Hamadaniah Kuhaylan family, she is brown colour, white line of the face, white spot on the upper lip, white line between the nostrils, white colour on the lower extremities of the limps. Her father Saker and her mother is Sultana. Her pedegree is attached to this certificate. She was born in the Arab desert of Najd in the tribe if Shammar in Hayel Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. She has been in my stable one year.

For the above we herby certify

Salman Bin Abdul Aziz Al-Saud

[handwritten signature of Prince Salman]

Governer of Riyadh

Of course, the typos and mistakes come from the translation, not the original Arabic version. A second document, very similar in form and content, provides the additional information that the mare was presented to Mr. Klaus Simons, and clarifies that the strain is Hamdaniyah with no mention of Kuhaylah this time. I don’t have the attached pedigree, but you can see a translation of it in the Asil Araber II, where there is also a nice picture of Ghazala. The pedigree, which is very elaborate with ancestors recorded up to the sixth generation, and dates of birth up to the third generation (both VERY unusual features for a desert pedigree) is also on allbreedpedigree.com, here.

What is really strange is that the Arabic version of the hujjah speaks of Hamdaniyah “Kahlawiyah”, a term I have never heard of before, and which the English version translates as “Kuhaylan”. Two possibilities: either the administrative cleric who drafted the hujjah for Prince Salman to sign knew nothing about Arabian horse strains (not at all unusual, even in Saudi in 1971) and meant to write Kuhaylah but wrote Kahlawiyah instead; or ‘Kahlawiyah is a branch of Hamdaniyat, but that’s highly unlikely. I have never heard of it, and the way the word is built suggests a garbled rendering of the term Kuhaylah.