The young colt now grown
Thanks Edouard so much for your wonderful post on Mubarak. It was not until 1996 that I had the pleasure of seeing this copper chestnut stallion of Ibn Ghurab at Al Basel the new government stud at the time. When I saw him I had the same reaction as you regarding how much like the Davenport stallion Plantagenet he appeared. Similar color but also similar charisma particularly in the eye and expression. He was quickly presented in hand and then his handler jumped on him for a quick bareback ride back to his stall. I thought I would share a photo of him I took in the late afternoon of that November 1996 day. Those who are familiar with the Davenport horses in the U.S. will certainly see the similarities. You can see the wonderful expression. It is so refreshing to see such continuity of centuries
That first picture, I thought, was very like Plantagenet (I saw him in 1982 when he was six). This one brings to mind even more Plantagenet’s son Palisades CF, that I know as an old horse; well, I first saw him as a yearling, but I’ve spent more time with him in the last few years.
What a nice photo of him, Joe F. I had never seen it before. I am trying to dig up the photo I took in 1989, when Mubarak was a two year old..
Yes, the resemblance to Davenport breeding is heartening. Mubarak also reminded me a little of Sir Oliver, 1968 chestnut stallion (Sir x Olivia), in a general way. When I saw Sir Oliver in 1975 there was a kind of nobility in him that gave him a square but upright kind of silhouette, something that impressed me years before when I bought a book by Dr. Conn, The Arabian Horse in America. In that book is a picture (page 190) of the Davenport bred Jamil-Abdullah-Azam, a grey 1936 stallion (Dhareb x Antarah) ridden by a young man. He is of course a full brother to Charles Craver’s foundation mare Dharebah. I was struck by how much this horse looked like a horse that would be mounted by a Bedouin with lance, the silhouette was similar to some I saw in the Jezirah region of Syria in 1996, likewise, some of the older Blue Star horses and a number of the Bahraini horses I saw. It is just heartwarming to see the continuity of some types of Arabians that still look the same as the earliest days of our discovery of them. Perhaps it is because some people have chosen to maintain and not change the horses as they have received them. The results are close to the kinds of horses generated by this cultural-environmental generative process from the migrating tribes of the Arabian peninsula. The fact that it continues in a small way in North America since the early 1900s is astounding. Hopefully this blog will be a contributor to the philosophy of this continuity.
Amen.
Well, I’m a bit hesitant to keep posting pictures of Palisades, but here’s a 2002 photo taken by Michael that I think shows the resemblance to this picture of Mubarak:
http://ambararabians.com/img/pal-standing.jpg
As langniappe, two stills from a 1992 video (thus the quality, sorry):
http://ambararabians.com/img/palisades/pal1992-1.jpg
http://ambararabians.com/img/palisades/pal1992-2.jpg