Barazan, asil desert-bred Saqlawi Marzaqani stallion in Syria

Khalid Rakhlani runs a beautiful page on Facebook, called Arabian Horses in Syria. It features numerous photos of Arabian horses of 100% Syrian stock, registered in the Syrian Arabian Horse Studbook. This morning’s photo of the stallion Barazan caught my eye. He represents a type of desert horse that is rapidly disappearing: small, yet well built, with this wild animal quality to him. His sire Odeilan, a seal brown Ubayyan Suhayli, was very small, but this was from malnutrition. Barazan is jet black without white markings, in the pure tradition of old Saqlawi Marzaqani stallions. In the 1950s, the Maraziq Bedouins who have owned the strain since the 1850s stood a famous stallion called the “Black Marzaqani”, who sired the famous race winner Mawj al-Athir (who was also his brother, the black Marzaqani having bred his own dam as a young colt). Later in the 1970s, the daughter and wife and mother of Tai leaders, Anud al-Nayif also stood a black Saqlawi Marzaqani stallion — the “horse of al-‘Anud”. Below, an early photo of his maternal grand-dam Tairah when she was still in the Syrian desert, with her Bedouin owner Sabah Munawikh al-Uthman of the al-Luhaib clan of the Shammar.…

On stallions used by the Tai in the XXth century

There was another important aspect of my recent series of conversations with Abu Tamer, Hammad Jaddu’ al-Jaz’aa, the venerable Tai Bedouin owner of a hundred year old marbat of Saqlawi Jadran Arabian horses known as the Saqlawiyyat of Dari al-Mahmud (or Saqlawiyyat Dariyyat as they have been calling them these days). It relates to the stallions him, his brothers and their father Jaddu’ al-Jaz’ah before them used to breed to their mares. He mentioned them using the following desert-bred stallions over the decades: The grey Kuhaylan Krush of Juhayyhim al-Mitkhan of the Tai, a horse Juhayyim got from the Shammar Jarba (early 1980s and 1970s) The black Kuhaylan Haifi of Juhhayim al-Mitkhan, a horse of Tai lineage (early 1970s and 1960s) The stallion of Muhammad al-Fajri of the Shammar, a Saqlawi Shaifi of the strain of Ibn Bisra (1970s) The fleebitten grey stallion of Bunyan al-Mujwil (al-Jarba), named “al-Sarukh”, a Saqlawi Shaifi of the strain of Ibn Bisra, born with the Jawwlah of Tai, but originally of Shammar stock (early 1970s and 1960s) The chestnut Kuhaylan Ibn Jlaidan of Bardan ibn Jlaidan of the Shammar (early 1970s and 1960s) The second horse of ‘Ebbo al-Humayyid, a bay Saqlawi Jadran of…

On two desert-bred stallions from the 1930s

This evening I was chatting with Hammad Jaddu’ al-Jaz’ah (Abu Tamer). We chat regularly about the horses about the horses of the Syrian Jazirah more generally and the horses of his family in particular. They have been breeding a well established (mathbut) strain of Saqlawi Jadran since the 1920s. At around 85 years old, Abu Tamer has an excellent memory. This evening he told me a few things about his horses which I did not know before. First, the original mare his father acquired was a daughter of Dahman Amer the horse of al-Ajarrash. This seems to have been a notable desert-bred stallion, present in the back of the pedigrees of many Syrian desert horses (beyond the number of generations registered in the studbook). The Dahman Amer of al-Ajarrash is the sire of the Hamdani Simri stallion al-Malkhukh, who is present in most Syrian horses today through his great-grandson Krush Juhayyim (son of the Ubayyan Suhayli of Abd al-Aziz al-Maslat, the son of a daughter of al-Malkhukh), but also in the tail male of the Saqlawi Ibn Zubayni stallion Abjar (son of Ghuzayyil, son of Hamdani al-Jhini, son of al-Malkhukh son of al-Ajarrash). Most notably, the Dahman Amer of Sattam…

Quick note on Krush Juhayyim

Mostly a note to myself.. I finally found a document that establishes the breeder of Krush Juhayyim, the foundation stallion of modern Syrian Arabian horsebreeding. A breeding certificate mentions that the sire of a grey ‘Ubayyah mare is “Krush Juhayyim from the marbat of al-Abd al-Muhsin (Sattam al-Hawwas)”. Sattam is the son of Hawwas the son of Mayzar the son of Abd al-Muhsin al-Jarba. Mayzar was the leader of the Syrian Shammar as of 1934. PS — I learned from the Jarba shaykhs that this Krush strain came to them directly from Ibn Rashid of the Shammar of Hail. After the Ottomans quelled the rebellion of the Shammar under Abd al-Karim al-Jarba and hung him over a bridge on the Tigris in Mossul, his mother Amshah took her surviving son Faris and Abd al-Karim’s son Abd al-Muhsin, and stayed with their relative Ibn Rashid to shield them from the Ottomans. Upon their return to Mesopotamia, Ibn Rashid gave the young Abd al-Muhsin one of his Krush mares, which he had gotten from the al-Dawish leaders of Mutayr.

Sa’ad Al-Thani, Kuhaylan Khdili, 1995

I am scanning old photos, and these two from the Syrian Kuhaylan al-Khdili stallion Sa’ad Al-Thani (Al-Aawar x Leelas) emerged from the lot. I am happy he has a tail male going, with Dahjani Al Arab in France and Abul Hol in Syria, a Kuhaylan al-Mimrah (#1857 in the Syrian Studbook). Photos taken in 1995 at Mustafa al-Jabri’s (his Volvo in the back). That was a good horse, one of his sire’s best get.

Kanz Al Khair, Ubayyan Suhayli stallion at Basil Jadaan in Damascus

This is a stylish stallion with a superb pedigree and very clean pedigree. The fact that I recall most of his ancestors in the fifth and sixth generations must mean that I am getting old.. I remember Adeelah, Obeirah, Mokhtar, Maseh, Al Kahirah, Mobarak at Basil’s, Marzouq, Aseelah, and their son Shaddad at Kamal Abdel Khalek in Aleppo, Fawaz and his dam at Saleh Sorouji in Damascus, Ayid at Ayman Ajlani, and Mashuj at Fouad Al-Azem in Hama. The 1990s and early 2000s were the golden years of the Arabian horse in Syria.

Nauwas, 1967 Ubayyah mare from the strain of Ibn Jalawi

Jeanne Craver recently shared with me these threephotos of the 1967 mare Nauwas (Al Khobar x *Muhaira), an Ubayyah from the strain of Ibn Jalawi of Easter Arabia. The photos are from/by George Hooper, who had owned Nauwas in her later years. An article I had written some fourteen years ago on this blog featured a black and white version of one of these photos. I now own a direct grand-daughter of Nauwas, so in a way, the wish I had expressed in the article has come true.

A photo of Rabanna

Richard Pritzlaff riding. Photo gleaned off the internet, without a source. Rabanna, like her contemporary the Doyle mare Gulida, is a boon for any breeder to have in the pedigree of their horses. So much of the real Abbas Pasha blood in these two mares. Much gratitude for dedicated breeders like Sheila Harmon and others for having carried that line forward in recent times. My personal favorites are the grey “Rabannas”, e.g., Kumence RSI, Aloha RSI. They look different from the chestnuts, not just color wise. I see more of the original Rabanna in them.

Yemen on my mind

From time to time — I am not sure why — I have intense flashbacks of Yemen, where I spent perhaps the most memorable stays of my life. I visited it often between 2005 and 2015, traveling around the country from the ancient cities of San’aa, Dhamar, Ibb, Ta’izz and al-Mukallah to the remote villages and fortresses atop the mountains. The people and the culture left a deep mark on me, and so did the architecture and the landscape. It is the one part of the Middle East where the most ancient manifestations of an original Arabian civilization express themselves the most vividly, without noticeable Greek, Egyptian, Roman, Persian, Ottoman or now ubiquitous Western influences. I found these pictures on a Facebook page dedicated to Yemen (Mahdi al-Dubaybi’s page). Most of the pictures are from villages and towns in the mountain provinces of San’aa, Raymah and al-Mahwit, incuding of the towns of Haraz, al-Mahjabah, and Dar al-Hajar, which was the residence of the last Imam of Yemen before the 1962 revolution.

On the trail of the Bisharat Horses: the Government Stock Farm, Acre, and the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force

The origins of the three horses presented by Shibly Bisharat to King Faruq of Egypt are currently somewhat obscure, as the only information we have at present comes from Shibly’s son Midhat Bisharat’s correspondence with Dr Hans Nagel, which gives their strains and includes the fact that they were purchased from the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force when it was disbanded in 1948. There is no mention of their breeders, and no direct connection to the Bedouin.  Only the stallion Besheir El Ashkar and one of the two mares, Badria, still have descent in horses accepted by the Asil Club and Al Khamsa. What we know of these two from Pearson and Mol’s 1988 The Arabian Horse Families of Egypt is given below:  Besheir el Ashkar was a chestnut foaled on 26th March, 1935. He was presented to the Inshass Stud by Basharat Bey in March 1948 and sold to the Wasta Farm in October 1951. p. 59 Badria was a chestnut foaled on 26th March, 1941. She was presented to the Inshass Stud by Basharat Bey in March 1948 and transferred to the Veterinary Section of the Army in June 1953 and later to the EAO. p. 129 Both horses have an exact…

Emir, a Saqlawi stallion of the Ruwalah

The excerpt below comes from Eduard Löffler’s 1860 book, Die österreichische Pferde-Ankaufs-Mission, which is a firsthand account of the 1856-7 expedition helmed by Colonel Rudolf von Brudermann to the desert to buy horses for the state studs. The expedition, by this point, had already acquired a number of horses, including Aghil Aga, who still has a presence in Al Khamsa horses. They had met with the Wuld Ali, who were camping in the Hauran, to the south of the Tell al-Hara, “only 17 or 18 hours of riding from Damascus”. Löffler says the sheikh was Mohamed El Duchi (Mohammed Dukhi ibn Smeyr in Lady Anne Blunt’s Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, and Mohammed ed Douhi in Roger Upton’s Travels in the Arabian Desert), who happened to be in Damascus at the same time as the Austrians, negotiating with the governor over camels for a caravan of pilgrims travelling to Mecca in May. Colonel von Brudermann made arrangements via the Austrian consul Pfaeffinger to journey with the sheikh back to the Wuld Ali, where they might see their horses. Löffler remarks that the horses of the Wuld Ali were “edle, schöne, prachtvolle Thiere, die entzückten und jeden Pferdefreund enthusiasmirt haben würden”…

Before I forget

Billy Sheets, who with his father and grandfather before him owned Arabian Stud Farms [ASF] told me some twenty years ago that the bay stallion active at ASF under the name ASF Gersom [Dhahran x Esperanzo Asal Fanifara] was not ASF Gersom, who had died young, but his younger full brother, ASF Jedeciah, the 1977 model, also bay. Not sure why I remembered this today.

Jamr, yesterday

Jamr, despite being small, is magnificent. In fact, he does not look small at all when moving. Yesterday, I also took these photos of him walking in hand. He is short [13.3 and a half], I am tall [6 feet], so that makes for titled photos where his legs look shorter and his body bigger. I wish I had taken some video too, as he was moving in a way very reminiscent of the 1920s Crabbet stallions in this British Pathe short film, one hundred years later.  

Monologue CF, at 21

The horse I enjoyed seeing the most yesterday was Monologue CF. He has never looked better since Darlene Summers and I acquired him from Pamela Klein in 2011 [I think 2011, I have been getting all mixed up with dates lately]. You can click on the photos to enlarge them. His eye was shining and so was his coat, despite the dusty winter coat, and his gorgeous neck crest is back. It is hard to imagine a broader forehead, a larger eye, a deeper jowl and more balance in any horse. He is a model of balance, harmony and proportions. I will have him bred to Barakah next spring. I wish Davenport breeders used him more, and I wish I had more mares for him.  

Little Bassma at 18 months old

Yesterday I went to see my horses up in Pennsylvania, and took a lot of pictures with my smartphone. Smartphone photos are what they are. This is a head snapshot of little Bassma Al Arab [Jamr Al Arab x Jadah BelloftheBall], now one and a half years old. In this picture, her head looks like that of her sire Jamr: she has his deep jowl, small muzzle, elastic nostril, triangular head, and especially his large, soulful, low-set eye. She also has her dam’s very long ears, which is a plus. The profile is flat, without a hint of a dish, and I like it like this. Lots of asalah and old type in that filly.      

Shaykh Al Arab, Ma’naqi Sbayli stallion, b. 2020

Lyman Doyle also took this impromptu shot of the two year old colt I used to call Shaykh Al Arab, by Tamaam DE out of DaughterofthePharaohs, and which now belongs to his family. I like the old-fashipned Crabbet look on this horse, and I think he is very promising. I am so happy that horses of this kind are still being produced here and there in 2020.

Shaman Al Arab at two years old

Lyman Doyle recently gratified me with several nice pictures of the horses I board at his and his parent’s farm in Oregon. Click on the low res photos to enlarge them. Here’s a couple of Shaman Al Arab, my Ma’naqi Sbayli stallion-to-be, by Tamaam DE out of SS Lady Guenevere. He turned two years old this past August. He is really excellently conformed, and I am finding it hard to fault him — my favorite pastime as some of you may know.    

CSA Baroness Lady available to the right home

I own the very last Al Khamsa mare alive with a tail female to the 1886 Blunt desert-bred mare Ferida. Her name is CSA Baroness Lady, a.k.a. “Lady”. Lady is now 23 years old, and is available to the right home. Get in touch if you are interested. She is available because I now have four frozen embryos from her for future use, two from the Bahraini stallion Shuwaimaan Al Rais, and two other from the Syrian desert-bred stallion Dahjani Al Arab. Hopefully one of these four embryos is a female that will be able to take the line forward. She is available to the right home at no cost because of her age. She still cycles regularly, though, and her uterus is clean and in good shape. The vets at U Penn recovered seven eggs from a first aspiration last August, of which four matured and were inseminated. Two of these cleaved and developed into embryos which were quickly frozen. The second aspiration also led to ten eggs, of which three matured and of these, two developed into embryos that were also frozen. That’s a great success rate. The Blunt taproot mare Ferida was the matriarch of one of…

Malaak Al Talj for sale

Laura Fitz is selling this handsome colt, by Monologue CF out of Mi Blue Angel. He has a rare cross to the Bahraini stallion Mlolshaan Hager Solomon. She told me that he has had quite a bit of ground work. He loads, clips, lunges, round pens…. He was 14.1 the last time she measured him. The last two photos display his sire Monologue’s very board forehead and large eyes.

A turning point

Very happy to announce my acquisition, a few months ago, of this handsome and truly desert-bred jet black Kuhaylan al-Wati stallion [click link for the pedigree] hailing straight from the Shammar Bedouins. Hopefully, he will make his way to the US at some point in the future. He is currently standing at the stud of Shaykh Hashim Al Jarba [Abu Hmud] in N.E. Syria, where he has been put to good use over the past three years. He’s had some ten foals this year only. His offspring, among them the two fillies below, are very promising,    

Southern African Kuhaylat al-Mimrah

Just a quick update about the mares. Sidi Bint Maistro will be coming here around the middle of October. Her paddock is already picked out. I’m going to have a hard time letting her go. Assad Princess Surrayah is a different case entirely. After nine years of living on almost nothing, the moment she got here the old girl developed laminitis. With the bum knee, she’ll still stand there, blissfully trusting you, as you have a look at her hooves.  I really don’t know if we can expect a foal.

Jadaan at the Valentino memorial

This beautiful photo of the Saqlawi Al-‘Abd stallion Jadaan (Abbeian x Amran) in older age standing by the memorial dedicated to early Hollyoowd star Rudolph Valentino was posted by Andrea Kaiser on Facebook and relayed by the Davenport Arabian Horse Conversancy. Jadaan is represented in a small number of Arabian horses of Davenport lines, especially those from the Krushan strain Fun fact: the term “latin lover” was apparently first coined for Valentino

Some thoughts about the strain of the desert-bred horses *Munifan and *Munifeh

The account of the visit of Dr. Ahmed Mabrouk of the Egyptian RAS to Prince Saud Ibn ‘Abdallah Ibn Jalawi (or Jluwi), Governor of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia in 1936 can also be used to shed some light on the desert-bred stallion *Munifan. The same reasoning used in the recent blog entry about *Al Hamdaniah also applies to *Munifan. *Munifan was also born in 1940, four years after Mabrouk’s visit. He was gifted to George O’Brien by Ibn Jalawi, and imported in 1947 to the USA by O’Brien. His Saudi export document indicates that he was by an ‘Ubayyan out of a Kuhaylah. His sire could be any of the five Ubayyan horses Dr. Mabrouk saw on his visit two Ibn Jalawi: a 7 year old bay stallion, an 11 year old dark bay stallion, a 7 year old chestnut stallion himself sired by a chestnut ‘Ubayyan stallion, and two bay colts, both sired by a bay ‘Ubayyan, likely the first one on this list, who appears to have been the head sire. Dr Mabrouk’s list of the mares he saw at Ibn Jalawi includes several mares of strains typically classified as branches of the generic Kuhaylan strain.…

Some informed speculation about the desert-bred mare *Al Hamdaniah

One of the earliest desert-bred Arabian horses to come to the USA from the Kindgom of Saudi Arabia was the mare *Al Hamdaniah. This grey mare with her conspicuous blood mark on the shoulder, was the subject of this blog’s first entry, some fourteen years ago. Born in 1940, by an ‘Ubayyan stallion out of a Hamdaniyah mare, she was bred by Prince Sa’ud Ibn ‘Abdallah Ibn Jalawi, an early governor of Saudi Arabia’s oil-rich Eastern Province, who gifted her to Admiral R.L. Connolly, who imported her to the USA. This morning I was thinking that her 1940 date of birth was significant. Dr. Ahmed Mabrouk of the Egyptian RAS had visited the stud of Sa’ud Ibn Jalawi in 1936, a mere four years before the birth of *Al Hamdaniah. He would have seen her dam at Ibn Jalawi’s stud. The account of the visit of Dr. Mabrouk includes a list of the stallions, colts and mares he saw, some eighty horses in all. It yields some clues about the pedigree of *Al Hamdaniah: Of the three ‘Ubayyan stallions and two ‘Ubayyan colts he saw, none were grey. Because a grey horse like *Al Hamdaniah must have at least one…

Ahmed Mabrouk on the ‘Ubayyan horses of Ibn Jalawi at al-Hasa in 1936

In his 1936 book “A Journey to Arabia”, Dr. Ahmed Mabrouk of Egypt’s Royal Agricultural Society (RAS) has this to say of the horses of Prince Sa’ud Ibn ‘Abdallah Ibn Jalawi, the governor of the al-Hasa province of the new kingdom of Saudi Arabia: “In the Prince’s stables, near his private palace, I saw about 80 horses. These I believe are the most pedigreed in Arabian owing to their concentration in a limited spot and the consequent exclusion of any outside blood.” Dr. Mabrouk lists two mares of the ‘Ubayyan strain: 8. Ebeya El-Safra, grey, 8 y., fine bones and short neck. 9. Ebeya El-Hamra, bay, 10 y., big eyes but progeny with small eyes, spavin [sic], off hind, faint star and marking off hind coronet, very fine. He also lists two ‘Ubayyan stallions and two ‘Ubayyan colts: 1. Ebeyan, bay, 7 y., 140 cent, both fore off hind white, faint race 2. Ebeyan, dark-bay, 11 y. white coronet, near fore, off hind, week [sic] hocks. 3. Two colts, bay, ex Ebeya El-Safra, by Ebeyan El-Ahmar, four whites, blaze, like sire. [sons of number 8] The markings on stallion 1 appear to correspond to this picture in Dr. Mabrouk’s book,…

Sahiby Bint Baraka as an adult mare

Below is a photo of Sahiby Bint Baraka, the daughter of Barakah and Tuwaisan, as an adult mare. Wollie Bollie is an affectionate nickname, meaning “ball of wool”. Sahiby Bint Baraka had four registered foals, two daughters and two sons. It is through her second daughter, Sahiby Noura, that the asil Kuhaylan al-Mimrah line survives in southern Africa today. Her first daughter, Sahiby Danah, was by the half-Egyptian stallion Robdon Zingari (Zahir x Yasimet), and produced four colts. Through them, Sahiby Danah’s blood can be found in the pedigrees of endurance horses, such as Arkab Nazeer, Deo-Gratias Nazira, and Silvretta Brio. Her first son, Sahiby Asham, by Ahir (Morafic x Deenaa), did not breed on, while her second son, Sahiby Tuwaisan, died just short of his first birthday.

MD Turfairan, Kuhaylan Ajuz

Perhaps it’s time to share my latest attempt to keep the gene pool in my horses as broad as possible. It’s also a story of dedication, steadfastness and perseverance by Jessie Heinrick, who made it all happen. The bottom line up front is that some time ago, I acquired sight unseen an 11 year old stallion, MD Turfairan, tail female *Turfa close up, so a Kuhaylan ‘Ajuz by strain. I had been following him for a decade, year after year. At the time, I loved his overall balanced, his long withers, his shoulder, the facial bones and the deep jowl, based on these pictures. Some two years ago, at my suggestion Jessie Heinrick drove down from Oregon to Arkansas to visit with his breeder Susan Whitman. Jessie came back with Turf in her trailer. He did not have papers, and for a while it looked like he wouldn’t be able to get any. Susan was not sure of his sire, so the first attempt at matching his DNA with that of the most likely candidate (MD Hadids Hammer) failed. A second attempt with MD Ibn Hattairan succeeded. The registered owners of his dam, and his breeders, who were elderly, were…

Dosage

Today, my Barakah was bred to Monologue CF. I love this young mare of mine, and I am looking forward to the outcome of that cross. In general, I find that this particular branch of the *Nufoud damline is a diamond in the rough. It has plenty of desert type, but some defects too. Barakah’s dam Belle is the most deserty mare I own, but the girth lacks some depth, the back is a tad long, the forehead a little narrow and the barrel — the rib cage — is not round enough for my taste. But she has plenty of bone, long ears, a proud carriage and the croup and tail set are just the way they should be. The addition of Wadd — Barakah’s sire — fixed the girth, the longish back and the ribcage, all structural features that I have found hard to fix in one generation, but it messed up the croup. Barakah inherited her sire’s short droopey croup and short-ish hip, although when moving like in the pictures below, this does not show. So I am hoping Monologue will now fix the croup with his long, straight hip like in the photo, without affecting the…

20 Farag at Bábolna

The photo below shows 20 Farag, a daughter of the EAO import Farag, out of the mare 25 Amurath Sahib. Her dam was herself a granddaughter of the desert-bred stallion Kuhaylan Zaid, imported by Carl Raswan and Bogdan Zientarski for Bábolna on the same trip that they bought Kuhaylan Haifi and Kuhaylan Afas for Prince Roman Sanguszko’s Gumniska stud in Poland. Photo by Betty Finke, purchased from In The Focus. 20 Farag is tail-female to the mare Adjuse (60 Adjuze in the Al Khamsa roster), imported to Bábolna in 1885 by Fadlallah al-Haddad, along with the stallions Koheilan Adjuze and O’Bajan (both of whom feature in 25 Amurath Sahib’s pedigree). Foaled in 1876, Adjuse was a grey mare (Wrangel calls her forellenschimmel, “trout grey”), sired by a Koheilan Adjuse and out of a mare listed as Scheha; she stood 157cm tall, or just shy of 15.2. 20 Farag’s granddam 221 Kuhaylan Zaid was caught up in the Second World War, and it is by a small miracle that she survived to produce 25 Amurath Sahib. She was one of four daughters of Kuhaylan Zaid who landed up in the vaccine-manufacturing Behring Plant, Marburg, Germany, and who were subsequently exchanged for…