On the Name and Descendents of Davenport’s 1906 Import *Azra
The Al Khamsa website has a very nice and comprehensive feature on the stallion *Azra, a Saqlawi Ubayri imported by Davenport from the desert in 1906, and his remaining descendants. Check it out here.
By the way, it was not until a few days ago that I realized that the stallion’s name actually meant “grey”, in reference to his color. Davenport’s Syrian and Lebanese companions would pronounce the Arabic qaf letter (equivalent to k or q) as ‘ (the guttural stop which if preceded by the vowel like A would be virtually silent, hence turning Azraq/Azrak into Azra.
The Blunts had the same idea with their own Azrek, except that his Bedouin buyer, Zeyd Saad al-Mutayri would pronounce the name like Bedouins do and the way classical Arabic has it, with a q/k at the end.
I’m sure that’s right, just like the Davenport imports *Hamrah and *Mowarda, and the Blunt import Ashgar, were also given color names.
it is also possible that *Hamrah was named after the color of his dam (ibn al-hamra, or son of the bay one, ie *Urfah) since his name is in the feminine form and that *Reshan was named after the stallion of the Reshan strain she was in foal with (see hujjah) because her name is in the masculine form.
I had suspected that about *Hamrah’s name…