This recent picture of Subanet Jabbar SDA, the Saqlawi stallion of Bev Davison and the sire of my Kinza Al Arab, really shows his style and his action. A horse like I like them.
I am so very proud of this beautiful and fine stallion, one of the very last Tunisian asil in existence. I am also very grateful to Skander Karoui to have given me the opportunity to acquire him. Not a single ounce of French Arabian blood, whether old (Denouste, Duc II, Kriss II, etc.) or new (Dormane, Tidjani, Kesberoy, etc), runs in this veins. Only the old Tunisian and Algerian government bloodlines, as preserved by Gisela Bergmann. He is 21, so in a few years, his bloodlines will belong to the past. The Tunisians has done an impressive job of destroying their old, authentic, highly prized national bloodlines by mixing it with that of French and other “fake Arabian” stallions. Within a couple of generations, all 100% Tunisian blood was gone. The excellent grey stallion in the pasture is Shueyman Fahad (Mahboob Halab x Shueymah Sabbah by Mokhtar x Murad Haouda by Cherif x Hamada), a 2011 Shuwayman stallion bred by JC Rajot and owned by Arnault Decroix. The grey under the tree is Dahhmany Bagdady.
The wonderful Dahhmany Bagdady, one of the last representatives of the old, prepotent Babolna/Weil type of royal Arabian horse. He is 23 years old this year. The famed and storied tail male to Siglavy Bagdady exists through him and his few offspring, a handful of stallions scattered across Europe. I am so proud that he is in my care.
I have never been to a more magical place. Photograph by Pascal and Maria Maréchaux of a fortified house in Wadi Markha (top), the village of Shaharah (middle) and the village of Jebel Bura (bottom).
ورد في مخطوط أصول الخيل المعروف أيضًا بمخطوط عباس باشا ذكر سليمان آل محمد من شيوخ بني خالد فجاء في فصل العبيات في سياق قصص عبية الصيفي ما نصه أفاد بداح الصيفي وشافي ولد فهيد الصيفي ومسعود ابن غدير مشايخ سبيع أنها عبية شراكية للشراك من بني خالد واندرج من الشراك فرس صفره لولد أخته هنيديس من السلقة من عنزه وصارت خيل عند الهنيديس من قديم مبطي على شياخة سليمان ال محمد شيخ بني خالد قبل عريعر وسليمان هذا أرّخ له المؤرخين النجديين وفترة شيخته على بني خالد معروفة لدى من تعمق بتاريخ الإمارة الخالدية في الإحساء فكتب سعيد العمر البيشي في أطروحته “التاريخ السياسي والاجتماعي للساحل الغربي للخليج ” أن فترة شياخة سليمان بن محمد ال حميد على بني خالد امتدت بين عامي 1142 و 1166 أي بين 1730 و 1753 مما يدل على أن رسن عبيات هنيديس كان موجودًا في الربع الثاني من القرن الثامن عشر الميلادي The strain of Ubayyan Hunaydees can be firmly traced to the second quarter of the 18th century. An account in the Abbas Pasha Manuscript mentioned a Bedouin by the name of Hunaydees, from the Salqa tribe of the Anazah Bedouins, as the maternal nephew of Sharrak of the Bani Khalid tribe,…
Above, one pole tent of a regular Bedouin. In the middle, three pole tent of a minor shaykh. Below, seven pole tent of an important tribal leader (e.g., Fawaz al-Shaalan of the Ruwalah, or Rakan ibn Mirshid of the Sba’ah). Photos by Louis Delseny (1906-1997), a French army officer and amateur photographer who served in Syrian desert starting in 1928 and through the 1930s. His unit was in charge of guarding the road from Damascus to Bagdad. Sources: Archives of the French Ministry of Defense.
وضعت هذه الحجة عام ١٢٨٤ هجري الموافق ١٨٦٧-١٨٦٨ ميلادي لحصان عربي عمره سنة لونه ازرق ماوردي رسنه معنقي ابوه كحيلان نواق مصدر الحجة أرشيف رئاسة وزراء السلطنة العثمانية بالاستانة عبر صفحة الدار السلطانية ومتصفح الوثائق العثمانية ويظهر فيها واحد من ختمين وصلانا من جدعان ابن مهيد عقيد عشيرة الفدعان من عنزه في ذاك الوقت كما يظهر فيها ختم فرج ابن حريميس شيخ العقاقرة من الفدعان واليكم نص الحجة بالكامل وجه تحريره انه نقول نحن الواضعين اسمانا وأختامنا ادناه ان الحصان الماوردي الحولي حصان منادي الأزمع من عشيرة السبعة انه معنكي أمه المعنكية وأبوه النواق أصفى من الحليب وللبيان حررنا هذه الشهادة جرى ذلك وحرر شهد بما فيه جدعان بن امهيد [ختم جدعان بن امهيد] شهد بما فيه فرج الحريميس [ختم فرج الحريميس] [الشهر غير مقروء] ١٢٨٤ [امضاء الكاتب غير مقروء] This short hujjah from 1867-68 for a “rose water” (mawardi) grey yearling colt of the Ma’naqi strain comes from the archives of the Ottoman Grand Vizirate in Istanbul. The horse was probably a gift to the Ottoman Grand Vizir or someone associated with him. Here is my translation: This is a very simple North Arabian Bedouin hujjah, without any of the religious references or flowery language of the documents produced…
Someone recently posted on social media one the nicest historical videos of desert Arabian horses I have ever seen on the internet. The video feature, among other scenes, a French horse-buying mission to Syria in the 1930s-40s: My attempts to locate the location of the filming yielded the following: The section of the video with the water wheel looks like it was filmed on the Orontes river near the city of Hama in Central Syria. The cows with the olive grove background are typical of the costal mountain of Western Syria. The soil in the section with the Bedouin and the pretty grey mare looks like it could be the steppe area between Homs and Palmyra, while the brick houses in the section with the stallions are typical of the alluvial Euphrates valley towards Raqqa and Der el Zor. من اروع المقاطع المصورة عن خيل البدو في سوريا لربما تم تصوير مقطع نواعير الماء على ضفاف نهر العاصي بالقرب من مدينة حماة في وسط سوريا. أما الأبقار في بساتين الزيتون فلعل جرى تصويرها في المنطقة الجبلية الساحلية غرب سوريا. أما الأرض الصخرية في المقطع الذي يظهر فيه البدوي صاحب الفرس الزرقاء فهي تشبه أرض البادية بين حمص وتدمر، بينما بيوت…
From Williamson’s unpublished dissertation on the Shammar Jarba: Bedouin society ascribed its highest social values to bravery, fighting prowess, and personal cunning. Because it placed so much importance on these qualities. Bedouin society worked out a system of inter-tribal raiding known as ghazw wherein a man could demonstrate his fitness. Tribes carefully planned ghazw against their enemies, attempting to capture their herds and camps. Although carried out according to strict rules, these raids often had a sporting atmosphere. While lavish stories evolved describing the cunning and daring of a particular tribe or individual, few people were killed or wounded. In the long run a tribe often lost as much as it gained because of reciprocal raids.
Anecdote CF (Triermain x Aniq El Bedu), a.k.a. Pulcher Ibn Reshan, photo by the late Jackson Hensley, ten years ago.
Some 16 years ago, in 2008, I wrote about this beautiful old Kuhaylat al-Ajuz Arabian mare from Tunisia, Hadia, on this blog, .here. One year after that, in 2009, I wrote about the bay Tunisian stallion Jehol Sahraoui, here. He was from the program of Gisela Bergman in South-West Tunisia. The second photo of Jehol Sahraoui is by Jean-Claude Rajot. My stallion Rhoufi (Tchad by Jehol Sahraoui x Zaghrouta by Jehol Sahraoui) is a double grandson of Jehol and a double great-grandson of Hadia.
Today, modern buildings extend all the way to the mountain range of Mt. Noqm.
I gleaned off this awesome photo of a Bedouin palanquin in the area of Tadmor/Palmyra in 1937, for what looks like a marriage or a ceremony of some sort. As is usually the case for these photos from “nostalgia influencer” social media accounts, there is no source for the photo.
I had been telling you about the strain of Ubayyan al-Khudr of the Bani Sakhr in earlier posts. I stumbled upon a reference to this strain, as I was doing a new translation of the hujjah (certificate of authenticity) of the Arabian stallion Marhum. This was a desert-bred horse born in 1890 and imported from the Middle East by Hernan Ayerza of Argentina in 1898. Until now I had been laboring under the assumption that the signatories of the hujjah of Marhum were all ‘Anazah tribesmen. This assumption was based on an earlier translation I had done for Al Khamsa Arabians III (2008). Upon taking a closer look, they turn out of to have been tribal leaders of the Bani Sakhr. Here is my new translation of the hujjah, followed by some commentary: In the Name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, and prayers and peace upon the Prophet of the Envoys. After the Fatiha and prayers and peace upon our Prophet Muhammad the pride of the worlds, on the side of the bay horse Abu al-Janhan [four illegible words describing the horse] with a snip on his nose [three more illegible words], on [our] honor and good fortune and…
I ordered this book on the epic of the migration of the Bani Hilal, in one of its Tunisian versions. The author interviewed one of the last oral reciters of this grand epic, an old Tunisian herder, and translated it into French. I The epic of the Bani Hilal is the Arabs’ equivalent to Homer’s Iliad. It is based off a historical event: the mass migration of the Bedouin tribe of Bani Hilal out of Arabia and into North Africa over the course of the eleventh century CE. Of course, like any epic, it consists of several cycles, each one with its heroes, vilains, love stories, betrayals, feats of courage, etc.
Nino Van Reisen of Gothenburg University has this audio recording of a section of the Epic of the Dayaghim as narrated by members of the al-Madhi leading clan of the tribe of Aal Issa in Northern Jordan. The recording features a story about Arar ibn Shahwan’s stallion Mashhur. As Arabic listeners will gather, the pedigree of Mashhur as well as his offspring are of central importance to this Northern Najdi version of the epic which Nino believes to very close to the original epic. It was recorded in 1982.
A very nice photo of Moira Walker’s Landrace Bellara (Pulcher Ibn Reshan x Jadah BelloftheBall), the youngest Kuhaylat al-Ajuz from the line of the Saudi royal mare *Nufoud.
Yemen has been on my mind a lot lately. صورة لسوق المراشي مركز مديرية خراب المراشي – الجوف (1973 – 1975م) تصوير المهندس المعماري البرتغالي فرناندو فراندا الصورة محفوظة بمتحف كالوست كولبنكيان – لشبونة – البرتغال
I was happy to find a mention of this important manuscript in Major Roger Upton’s “Gleanings from the Desert of Arabia” (London, 1881). It is a short manuscript by a member of the Jabiri family of Aleppo who lived in 19th century and listed many strains of Arabian horses known to him. Here is Upton’s mention of it: Let me repeat, moreover, that some incline to the opinion—among them Djabery Zadah MohammedAli (Effendi) — that all the families and strains given in the foregoing race are descended from Keheilet Ajuz and I must state that Djabery Zadah Mohammed Ali, who published in Arabia a short account of the Arabian horse, with a chart, gives a longer roll of names than I have shown, some of which I have not included because I had great doubt of their authenticity or correctness. I saw this manuscript, or a copy of it, in the office of the late Mustafa al-Jabiri in Aleppo around 1990-92. I don’t know what became of it. I should ask around.
I confess being terribly late in acquainting myself with some of foundational Arabian horse literature in English. Roger Upton’s “Gleanings from the Desert of Arabia” is one of those books I had not read, save for passages here and there. I am happy I found a searchable version of it online, and I am having fun searching for specific words in it. Below are Upton’s quotes on the “Manakhi” strain (his spelling). On the Ma’naqi strain (page 328-9): Of the Manakhi. The Manakhi appeared to us a favourite strain, for both horses and mares of this family are to be found in most tribes of Badaween; and we thought, with the exception of Keheilet Ajuz, there were more horses and mares among the Anazah, certainly among the Sabaah, of the Manakhi family than any other. Manakhi means Keheilans or Arabian horses descended from the “long-necked one.” Manakhi Hedruj is the chief variety, and although I am not sure, I think it is the parent family, and the others are not collateral, but offshoots from Manakhi Hedruj. I think Hedruj means of majestic appearance: thus Manakhi Hedruj, ” the horses of the long necks of majestic appearance.”* A family in the…
[This article is work in progress jointly between Kate McLachlan and I] Kate and I are have serious doubts about the Darley Arabian being from the Fad’aan tribe, as modern lore has it. There were no Fad’aan Anazah Bedouins in the area of the Syrian desert between Aleppo and Palmyra around 1700 CE, where the Darley Arabian is said to have been acquired from. It was not until the 1800s — at least a century later — that the Fad’aan left the vicinity of the oasis of Khaibar in the Hijaz (Central Arabia) and moved north to the Syrian desert, a thousand miles to the north. Kate tells me that the only primary source about the Darley Arabian is a letter by Thomas Darley to his brother, printed on pp. 21f. of Richard Frederick Meysey-Thompson’s 1911 The Horse: Its Origin and Development Combined with Stable Practice. The letter, reproduced below in full, makes no reference to the Fad’aan Bedouins or to the ‘Anazah for that matter, and only speaks of a horse of the “Mannicka” race (reference bolded in the letter). ALEPPO, Ye 21st December, 1703. DEAR BROTHER, Your obliging favour of the 7 Aprill came to my hands the…
صورة قديمة لحصن عزان حصن الشيخ عبدالكريم بن احمد المهشمي.. مركز رحوب مديرية برط العنان محافظة الجوف اليمنمنقول عن صفحة فهد اسماعيل الانباري
Saudi historian of the ‘Anazah tribe ‘Abdallah ibn Duhaymish Ibn ‘Abbar al-Fad’aani, whose work I generally value, found a mention of the date of the mass migration of several ‘Anazah tribes from Central Arabia to the Syrian desert (North Arabia, which covers part of Syria and Iraq and Jordan today), in a contemporary Lebanese chronicle, Tarikh al-Amir Haydar al-Shihabi, which was published in Beirut in 1933. I could not find the relevant passage in my edition of this chronicle, so I am taking Ibn ‘Abbar to his word. Says Ibn ‘Abbar, with my rough translation: The book “Lebanon in the era of the Shihab princes, by Prince Haidar Ahmad al-Shihabi, perhaps the only source for events in Bilad al-Sham in the thirteenth century [Hijri]”, mentioned under the events of the year 1230 H (1814 CE) that “great swarms of the tribes of Anazah came out of Najd, escaping drought and difficult conditions; these tribes are the Fad’aan, the Sba’ah and the ‘Amarat; they competed with the ‘Anazah tribes from Dhana Muslim [Ibn ‘Abbar added here: Dhana Muslim being the Wuld ‘Ali, the Manabihah and the Jlass] that preceded them, which led them to collide with each other.”
I have managed to trace back the strain of Ubayyan Abu Jurayss (Umm Jurayss for the females) to the ‘Utayfat (alt. spellings ‘Atayfat and ‘Otayfat), one of the main clans of the Wuld ‘Ali tribe of ‘Anazah. But I don’t know yet how they got to the Wuld ‘Ali and where from. In the below tree of the Anazah clans by Ibn ‘Abbar, the Utayfat are in red and the overall Wuld ‘Ali in green. The ‘Utayfat, whose leading clan is (I think) al-Wati, are under the Dhana Dhuri section of the Wuld ‘Ali, which is led by the family of Ibn Smeyr (alt. spelling Smeer/Sumayr/Semeyr etc). The Wuld ‘Ali at large are led by the clan of al-Tayyar. Of course, this is significant insofar as one of the main line of Egyptian Arabians, that of El Shahbaa, is from the strain of Ubayyah Umm Jurayss. Umm Jurayss means “mother of the little bell”.
Last week Kinza stepped on the leg of her newborn filly. The filly has been lame since, but the leg is no longer swollen and her situation is improving slowly, per Lyman Doyle who sent me these videos. The filly is otherwise very nice and Kinza looks really great for a four year old first-time mother.
The Abbas Pasha Manuscript (APM), in its English translation, has nineteen mentions of a Bedouin community named “the people of the north”. These mentions are often associated with names of tribes that seem to form part of this “people of the north”, such as the tribes of al-Sirhan (pages 501, 508, 511), al-Sardiyah (page 311, 449), and al-Issa (page 369). It turns out that these three tribes formed the core of the “People of the North”, a loose alliance formed around 1750 by tribes long established in the areas of al-Balqaa (northern Transjordan) and the Hauran (southern Syria), to fend off the relentless advance of the ‘Anazah tribes from Central Arabia towards the north. The alliance was first led by the Sardiyah, a small but very noble tribe that is an offshoot of the Bani Lam and which the Ottomans had put in charge of securing the pilgrimage route from Damascus to Medina. The “People of the North” alliance also included the smaller al-Issa, al-Sirhan, and al-Fuhailiyyin tribe, as well as the larger Bani Sakhr tribe, itself then a newcomer from Central Arabia but an enemy of the ‘Anazah. The alliance first succeeded in pushing the first Anazah waves, led…
Lyman sent this picture of young Shamsah (Cascade DE x SS Lady Guenevere by SS Dark Prince). She is I think nine months old, and is growing into a very solid young mare.
The stallion Dahman (b. 1900) was one of the most admired horses ever imported by the French government from the Middle East. Robert Mauvy, who knew him well, wrote beautiful pages about Dahman and his influence on both the Arabian and Anglo-Arabian breed in his book Le Cheval Arabe. Mauvy held Dahman as the archetype of the classic Arabian horse and provided a French translation of hujjah: “L’un des plus représentatifs de la race et des plus impressionnants était sans contredit l’étalon Dahman, alezan brûlé, 1, 45 m, aussi brillant dans l’attitude que dans l’action (né en Orient en 1900 dans la tribu des Chammars, importé en 1909), donc voici la traduction de la hudje: “Louange a Dieu, clément et miséricordieux, qui nous a créé des bienfaits et entre autres celui des chevaux, puisque la félicité est au-dessus des sabots des chevaux, tel qu’il l’a dit anciennement. Louange a Dieu qui nous a dotés de cela et que nous avons négligé d’en réjouir. Arbre généalogique du cheval alezan foncé ayant trois balzanes aux pieds, exception faite du pied gauche du devant, avec une pelote descendant jusqu’aux naseaux. Il est agé de cinq ans, il s’appelle Dahman, son père est Dahman,…
Kate found an interesting document the other day, which this entry reproduces and comments on. The document was published in the “Bulletin de la Societe Imperiale Zoologique D’Acclimatation“, a French scientific society founded in 1854 during the French Second Empire, under Napoleon III. Th document concerns the grey Arabian stallion “Bawab”, also known as “Aneze”, gifted in 1855 by the Viceroy of Egypt and his presumptive heir to French entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps. De Lesseps, of Suez Canal fame, imported the stallion to France along with a mare and another stallion, also gifts from the Viceroy and his heir. A third stallion joined them from Syria, a gift from De Lessep’s brother Edmond, then France’s Consul General in Beirut. The Viceroy of Egypt at the time was Said, under whose tenure work on the Suez Canal begun. His presumptive heir was Prince Ahmed Rifaat Pasha, who died drowning in 1858 and was replaced by Ismail Pasha as Said’s heir. The description the bulletin gives of Bawab is unenthusiastic: Le deuxième étalon, du nom arabe Bawab dit Anézé, gris clair comme le précédent. Sa taille est de 1 mètre 48 centimètres . Il est âgé de douze ans . Ce Cheval…
Kate recently asked about how old the strain name of Ubayyan Suhayli was. In other words, when did the specific strain of Ubayyan Sharrak owned by al-Suhayli of the Shammar stopped being referred to as Ubayyan Sharrak and became known as Ubayyan Suhayli after its owners’ name. The earliest written reference to Ubayyan Suhayli I have come across is in a French Studbook entry (below): a mare born in 1892 and imported by the French to Algeria in 1896 has a dam from the strain of “El-Abie-El-Scheilie”. That dates the strain to the 1880s at least. That said, the passing of the strain to the Shammar tribe during its war with the Sharif of Mecca is definitely older than that. The war(s) of Shammar with the Sharif predate the publication of the APM (1853) and the visits of Abbas Pasha’s envoys to the tribes (which started in 1848-9), although the APM does not mention the Ubayyan Suhayli strain. One probable reason for that is that Abbas Pasha’s agents seem to have avoided some encampments of the Jarba Shammar, specifically those of Abd al-Karim and his brother Faris (the one Lady Anne Blunt met in 1878), the sons of Sfug al-Jarba.…
روى الضابط الفرنسي فيكتور مولر رئيس الاستخبارات الفرنسية في البادية السورية في عهد الانتداب الفرنسي عن لسان مشل باشا الجربا أن العبية الشراكية التي درجت إلى شمر بكون شمر والشريف تفرعت إلى فرعين فرع عند عبدة شمر هدية من الشيخ فارس أبو مشل باشا إلى ابن ربيش من عبدة وكان هذا الخط موجودًا عند ابن ربيش وغيره من عبدة وفرع آخر عند السحيلي من الفداغا عُرف لاحقًا بالعبية السحيلية
This morning Lyman Doyle broke the good news that Kinza Al Arab had foaled a filly by Bashir Al Dirri at the Doyle farm in Oregon. She will obviously be chestnut like both parents. She is Saqlawi Ibn Dirri to Basilisk on both sides of the pedigree, to Bushra (Azrek x Bozra) on the sire line, and Bukra (Ahmar x Bozra). Also, she carries “Code Red” (heck, code purple) Al Khamsa lines to *Mirage, *Euphrates, and *Al Mashoor one more generation forward, after her sire. Her name will be Karma Al Arab. Karma in Arabic means vine. Here’s a pedigree link while waiting for pictures.
From Lady Anne Blunt’s “A Pilgrimage to Najd” (1881): “To the present day in the North, the Anazeh distinguish the descendants of the mares brought with them from Nejd as “Nejdi” while they call the descendants of the mares captured from the tribes of the North, “Shimali” or Northerners.” and: “The Anazeh have disappeared from Nejd. They began to move northwards about two hundred years ago, and have ever since continued moving by successive migrations till all have abandoned their original homes. It may ben that the great name which Nejd horses undoubtedly have in the East, was due mainly to these very Anazeh, with whose horses they are now contrasted.” I had noted these two passages in comments on an earlier thread from 2019, but I thought they were worth bringing back.
I looked up the mentions of the Bedouin tribe of Bani Sakhr in the Journals of Lady Anne Blunt. There are five of them, ranked below in chronological order. [Saw at the Tahawis] One bay Abeyan el Khudr from a tribe near the Bani Sakkhr beyond the Hauran… [A Shaykh of the Samaritans told us] that the Beni Sakkhr etc tribes were owners of remarkably good strains… It was Khuddr again, this time with a bay horse to sell, he calls it Abeyan from the Beni Sokkhr (a tribe whose horses I have not heard much good of) and this was a heavy going horse, not worth the looking at. On Monday, the mare […] was bought through Webb for 30 pounds. She is described as good, not first rate but with some style. There is a really fine certificate of parentage which describes her as a ‘Hamdanieh Samirieh”of the Beni Sokkr — a tribe whose name does not inspire me with confidence but they are said to have some thoroughbreds. I distrust as a rule any horse or mare said to be from the Beni Sokkhr but Major Huseyn says that the Ibn Faiz have got a mazbut strain…
Lady Anne made the following remarks in a letter to Spencer Borden dated January 26th, 1910: At last I can send my Crabbet Stud List for 1910. You will see that I have altered the order of it, which was a good deal of trouble. I have put Kehilans first because in fact every strain harks back to Kehilan Ajuz, not only all the other Kehilans, but all those strains (Seglawi, Dahman, Manaki, etc) where for brevity the generic term Kehilan has been dropped. Of this my Manager here, Sheykh el Arab Mutlak Battal of the Mutayr tribe so famous for its horses, never ceases to remind me.
عبيات العفاري رسن من الخيل العربية الأصيلة تختص به سوريا من جميع البلدان العربية ولقبت عبية العفاري بسوريا بطراحة الظبي وذلك كناية عن سرعتها بأنها تسبق الظباء وسميت عبية العفاري نسبةً الى العفاري الشمري الذي هاجر من نجد إلى الجزيرة السورية والعفاري من النمصان من الزميل من سنجاره من شمر ونخوته راعي العليا وزايد العفاري هو الذي هاجر من الصهوة بحائل مع حفيده حماد العفاري الذي ورث عبية العفاري وجاء بها من نجد على الجزيرة وهن من خيل الشريف بركات متوارثين هذا المربط أبًا عن جد من أكثر من 150سنة :وأكدالشيخ أحمد مشل الجربا في قصيدته عن هذا المربط العريق عبيا العفاري وبأسم أهلها تسمتمن نجد حماد العفاري جن بها يم الجزيرة عندنا واستقرتنعمين براعي العليا ونسبها وعندما أعيد فتح باب تسجيل الخيل العربية الأصيلة في سوريا عام 1997 قد أبرز راعي المربط حينذاك حميد عبيد العفاري شهادة للشيخ حمود الجزاع اللحيدان شيخ النمصان في المملكة العربية السعودية بأن عبية العفاري متوارثة كابر عن كابر وأنها درجت عليهم من دور كون شمر والشريف وأنها معروفة بنجد باسم عبية خضر وأما عن مدراجها من عند العفاري في سوريا فدرجت من عند العفاري إلى خضير عيادة الماضي من البهيمان من الخرصة من شمر ومن عند خضير الماضي درجت إلى كلٍّ من1- الشيخ…
As I have written before — sixteen years ago already — no Arabian horse strain is intrinsically above or better than the other. Lady Anne Blunt had it right when she wrote that her stud manager, Mutlaq al-Battal, a Mutayr Bedouin, never ceased to remind her that all were Kuhaylan, and all were asil. Any ranking of strains is inherently subjective, and a matter of personal preference. The Abbas Pasha Manuscript’s foreword (J. Forbis and G. Sherif), usually attributed to his agent Ali al-Darwish but which could well have reflected the personal preferences of Abbas Pasha himself, starts with a short paragraph “On the Classification of Horses“: I say about classifying the lineage of Arabian horses, the first to take precedence is Duhayman Shahwan of the Kunayhir strain and Duhaym al Najib. Second is Kuhaylan Mimreh. After that Saqlawi Jedrani, which is divided into three sections: the dearest and most precious is the family of Al Samniyat, then the family of Al Sudaniyat, and third is the family of Al ‘Abd. After that is Saqlawi al Obeyri and Marighi, both from the same family. After that Hadban al Nazhi, which includes six families […]. After these Kuhaylan al Tamiri, then…
Maria Wallis’ beautiful Operetta HBF (Student Prince x Idyl CF by Atticus), a Kuhaylah of Davenport bloodlines also foaled a filly by Pulcher Ibn Reshan at Debbie Mackie’s in Illinois. He’s had three nice foals this year so far, two fillies and Mayassa’s colt.
A preservation program that I watch closely is that of Carrie Slayton’s. Carrie has several nice Kuhaylan Haifi Davenports mares and a few non-Blunt horses, from a group that the late Carol Lyons identified, preserved a dubbed Sharps. Carrie had a handsome chestnut colt from breeding the bay Mohican CF (owned by Ambar Diaz) to her bay mare Aureoles Alnehaya. She named him Algonquin. His color is not a surprise in hindsight given how many close croses he has to both Dharanad and Ceres, not speaking of Tripoli. Link to Facebook post here.
Last week also saw the birth of the first foal of my Mayassa Al Arab: a colt by Pulcher Ibn Reshan (ex Anecdote CF). Mayassa is on a breeding lease to Deb Mackie, and the colt hers. He is Kuhaylan Krush by strain.
It’s foaling and breeding season and a new crop of foals in on the ground. Belle, who went to Moira Walker in October 2022, had a lovely filly this year by Anecdote CF (aka Pulcher Ibn Reshan). Moira named her Landrace Bellara, in keeping with the B names for this family. The filly, who will be grey, is double Iliad and double Plantagenet, and is the sixth Al Khamsa female from that strain, after her dam, her sister Bassma Al Arab (b. 2021), her other sister Barakah Al Arab (b. 2016), Barakah’s daughter Badia Al Arab (b. 2024), and Ninah Nufoud (b. 2013), a relative at Monica Respet’s.
Bedouin testimonies in the Abbas Pasha Manuscript (APM) do not mention the calendar year an event took place. That’s because Bedouins, having an oral culture, did not record years the way people with a written culture did. Instead, the referred to major events that took place in the those years: “The year water was sold”, “the year Ibrahim Pasha went back westwards”, “the year Saffuq Al Jarba was slain”. The latter event is mentioned on page 477: “In the year that Saffuq al Jarba was slain, a hamra mare came to us which had been captured by Musay’id, the son of my brother“. Using Ottoman archives, Wiliamson, in his “Political History of the Shammar tribe” dated the treacherous murder of Sfuq al-Jarba, leader of the Shammar, by the Ottomans to late October 1847: An Ottoman contingent under the leadership of Gange Agha left Baghdad in late October, 1847, and met Sufuq at his camp a few hours outside of the capital […]. Sufuq remained behind under the protection of his personal guard. Gange Agha, leader of the Ottoman troops, supposedly remained behind to assist Sufuq in the event of trouble. […] Gange Agha [now] had the opportunity to execute the…
The Najdi chronicler Ibn Bishr had this to say under the year 1229 Hijri (1814-15) the year of the death of the Wahhabi leader Saud ibn Abd al-Aziz: As to the number of agents he [Saud] would send to collect taxes in camels and sheep from the Bedouins of the Peninsula of the Arabs [living] beyond the two Holy Shrines [Mecca and Medina], Oman, Yemen, Iraq and Sham, and also from the Bedouins of Najd between these [lands], one of his [Saud’s] retinue, who later became a scribe for him, told me that the agents he [Saud] had sent to the Fad’aan, the well-known ‘Anazah Bedouins, [once] came back with their tax receipts, which amounted to forty thousand rials, not counting the revenues of the tax collectors, and eight mares of the choice horses, while the revenue collected by these agents [from other Bedouin tribes] did not normally exceed 2,500 to 3,000 riyals.
The Abbas Pasha Manuscript (APM) mentions many war episodes (manakh) between the Bedouin tribes, of which that of Al-Rudaymah (incorrectly spelled Al Radeemah in the Sherif-Forbis translation) was perhaps the most important. This was no regular ghazu, but more a set of pitched battles, during which many horses died or changed hands over three months. The Najdi chronicler ‘Uthman ibn Abdallah Ibn Bishr dated the beginning of the “battle” of al-Rudaymah to the month of Rajab 1238 of the Hijri calendar, equivalent to March-April 1823, some 30 years before the completion of the APM. Here’s Ibn Bishr, my translation: In this year, in Rajab, [was] the famous battle of al-Rudaymah [after] a well-known place in al-‘Armah, between Faysal al-Dawish and his followers from Mutayr and the ‘Ajman and other Bedouins Arabs, and Majid ibn ‘Uray’ir and his followers from Bani Khalid and others including ‘Anazah and Subay’. A protracted battle and combat involving horsemen and men on foot took place […]. Combat was so intense that the hair on a child’s head would have turned grey. Bani Khalid and their followers lost. Much treasure, jewelry, fancy cloth and provisions was gained [by the winners]. Many were killed from both sides.…
Bunyan Fahd al-Dawsari, whose Facebook page I follow with great interest, posted these beautiful, smiling, sunny photos of desert life among the Dawasir Bedouins in 1969. The photos were probably taken by members of the archaeological mission excavating the major pre-Islamic site of Qaryat al-Faw, capital of the Central Arabian kingdom of Kinda, in the Saudi Arabian province of al-Sulayyil.
Jeanne Craver shared a photo of the Davenport stallion *Muson which I had not seen before. I recall reading somewhere — forgetting the source now — that the breed in its original form displayed more distance between the back legs than between the front legs.
The strain of Kuhaylan Tamiri was one of the first strains the Sba’ah Bedouins chose to breed from. From Prince Mohammed Ali’s lists, based on notes taken by the agents of Abbas Pasha: “Says Murshid al-Nawwaq [of the Sba’ah]: The horses which were in our possession in Najd sometime ago have no parallel anywhere. When asked which ones were allowed to mate, he replied that the ones they allowed to mate were only three: first the Saqlawi, second Kuhaylan Tamiri and third Shuwayman Sabbah.“ Similarly, but in the APM itself: Dabbi ibn Shutaywi [of the Sba’ah, specifically their Gmassah section] was asked what stallions of the stud were used on their mares at the time al Gomussa were at Nejd. He replied, “As long as I can remember we mated al Saqlawiyat and other stallions that are well known to this day. But our white haired men told us when I was a child, that before al Saqlawiyat, al Gomussa were using a Kuhaylan al Tamiri as a stallion. And also a Kuhaylan al ‘Ajuz that belonged to al Gomussa and was cut off.
The twin strains of Kuhaylan ‘Abhul and Kuhaylan Mu’abhil belong the Ruwalah and are named after men from this tribe. These strains are themselves branches of the better known Kuhaylan Tamiri. On the first, page 595: Orar al Honaydi al Sha’lani of the Ruwalah, upon being asked about the sire of a certain mare: “O Ali, we do not remember that time, but they mated them to Saqlawi Jedran and Kuhaylan Tamiri of the horses of Ibn Abhul“ On the second, page 522: Faysal al-Sha’laan, leader of the Ruwalah, upon being asked about it: “[…] and as for al Moabheliyah [alt. spelling Mu’abhiliyyah, masc Mu’abhil], she is Kuhayla Tamiriya, and her owner is Tamir of al Daghman and she is Kuhayla om Maarif.”
Arnault Decroix posted this photo of the Syrian stallion Nimr Shabareq on his Facebook page. He is standing him at stud in Normandy this yesr. I believe this stallion to be, despite some defects, the embodiment of the old desert type. I love his balance, and how the parts all fit together.
The digital copy of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript (APM) has allowed me to follow the tracks of particular horses as they changed hands from one Bedouin tribe to another. One of these horses is Saqlawi Al Araj (“the lame”), apparently a famous horse in the mid 1800s. A search of Al Araj in the APM yields the following information: he was a Saqlawi Jadran from the strain of Ibn Sudan. He was probably bred by Ibn Sudan of the Sba’ah, and the Sba’ah certainly used him for breeding. Several mares of the Sba’ah were bred to him, whose daughters then went to the Abbas Pasha stud. Subsequently, he reappeared in the ownership of Bandar Ibn Sa’adun, the leader of the Muntafiq tribe in Southern Iraq. Bandar also used him as a stallion, and bred from his Wadnan son after him. Example on page 547: “And we mated the daughter of Hadban a second time to Saqlawi al Araj of the strain of Ibn Sudan, belonging to Bandar al Sa’doun“. The lists of Abbas Pasha imports gathered by Prince Muhammad Ali Tewfik include several daughters of Al Araj (correctly spelled al-A’raj). From a quick look, most appear to be out of…
Arnault Decroix published this photo of the 1967 Arabian stallion Salam (Agres x Tosca by Fellous) on his social media accounts. Salam, who I saw during the 1994 WAHO conference in Rabat at the age of 27, was the head stallion for the Moroccan government. He struck me then as a very correct stallion with excellent proportions. His pedigree blends old, authentic French bloodlines (75%) and Tunisian/Algerian lines (25%). I don’t know who took the picture. He is very reminiscent of some Davenport horses in the USA.
The strain of the Kuhaylan al-Khdili (alt. spellings Hedili, Khadali, Khadli) is not well known outside Arabia. It is however one of the most esteemed and revered strains of Arabian horses. Connoisseurs speak of its authenticity (asalah) with awe and respect. Few horses of that strain made it to the West. One such horse is Safita, a red bay desert-bred who according to the French Studbook Volume 21 was by a sire “de race Koheilan en Naouak” and a dam “de race Koheilan El Kedilih”. Safita was imported by the French General Detroyat from Syria to Algeria in 1934. Writes Robert Mauvy who knew him well and loved him: Safita, bai cerise. Cheval à très grandes lignes dont une encolure exceptionnelle. Sa tête était fine et légère, sculptée, avec des oreilles pointées… à l’excès. L’une d’elles endommagée par un coup de sabre- sa gorge arquée était d’une rare netteté; si le corps était excellent, l’arrière main était d’une puissance exceptionnelle; ses postérieurs, de ce fait, très distants l’un de l’autre, et ses jarrets droits, longs et larges -actions éblouissantes crins tissus d’une grande finesse. Kuhaylan al-Khdili is a branch of the Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz, owned by the Khdilat clan of the…
I am featuring Thalia CF (Javera Thadrian x Bint Dharebah by Monsoon) on social media. She was one of the best I have owned. She was in my ownership between late 2015 and mid 2017. Sadly, she came in my life at the ripe age of 24 years old, after having had two foals for her previous owner. I was not able to get any foals out of her, but I will always remember her as a true illustration of the real Arabian horse.
Moira Walker took these photos of Reema CF (Trilogy x Fragrance CF by Regency CF), Debbie Mackie’s beautiful milky white mare, a Hamdaniyah of Davenport bloodlines, during the latest Al Khamsa get together in Illinois, which featured a long-awaited presentation by Jeanne Craver on strain.
Kate found another Western source citing early Arabian horse strains: Prince Hermann Puckler Muskau (1785-1871), in the 1830 . Kate did the research for this entry. “Amongst the thousand tribes that inhabit Arabia and the desert, almost every one has its race and its particular denominations, and, naturally, their opinion differs as to their value ; nevertheless, all agree in according the first rank to two races. The first is that of the real Nedschdis, that is to say, those bred in the province of that name ; for, as it is supposed, that all the noble horses of Arabia originally came from thence, the term Nedschdi is a general name for all horses of pure Arab blood ; a difference which should be remarked, for it has already led many foreigners into error. There are five races of these real Nedschdis : 1st, Sada – Tokan ; 2nd, Touesse-al-Hamié ; 3rd, Schouahi – emAnhoub ; 4th, Hamdanije-Symra; 5th, Souat- Hije-Aeden-Sachra. The first of these names is that of the mare, from which they derive their origin ; the second, that of the proprietor. “The second excellent race is that of Kachel. I only know four kinds 1st, Kaehel el…
A stunning aerial photo of the Syrian border town of al-Bu Kamal, on the Euphrates, before the river flows into Iraq. From the IFPO (French Institute for the Near East). The photo is dated March 6, 1936. The river to the left, the fertile plain, and the wide open desert, all the way to Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
There are four references to the Mulawlish (also spelled Mulawlishan, Mlolshaan, Mlolshan, etc) strain in the Abbas Pasha Manuscript (APM). Both occur in accounts by members of the Ibn Khalifah family of Bahrain, who were already using stallions from that strain by the early 1850s, and perhaps earlier on the Dahman mares. The first is on page 251: “[she] was covered by Kuhaylan al Moulawlish and she foaled a safrafilly.” The second is on the same page: We covered the shaqra mare, daughter of alJallabi, by Kuhaylan al Moulawlish (ibn al Jallabi, ibn Kuhaylan Zoayr) and she gave birth to anashqar colt which died”. In both cases, the strain is referred to as a branch of the Kuhaylan.
One of the Western travelers to write about Arabian horse strains was the Swiss Johann Ludwig Burkhardt. His Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys: Collected During His Travels in the East were only published in 1831, but were based on information collected in the Hijaz between 1814 and 1815. Burkhardt died in Cairo in 1817. His book featured this anecdote: “The favourite mare of Saoud, the Wahaby chief, which he constantly rode on his expeditions, and whose name, Keraye, became famous all over Arabia, brought forth a horse of uncommon beauty and xceellence. The mare, however, not being of the khomse, Saoud would not permit his people to use thatfine horse as a stallion; and not knowing what to do with it, as Bedouins never ride horses, he sent it as a present to the Sherif. The mare, Keraye, had been purchased by Saoud from a Bedouin ofthe Kahtan Arabs for fifteen hundred dollars.” This account ties the strain of Kuhaylan al-Kray, a branch of the Krush strain that was present with the ‘Ajman Bedouins at the time of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript (ca. 1850), to the Qahtan Bedouins from a very early date. It corroborates the information which ‘Ubayd al-Hafi al-‘Utaybi…
The Abbas Pasha Manuscript (APM), compiled around 1852, is the single most comprehensive — and perhaps the only — source of Bedouin accounts and stories about their Arabian, faithfully and painstakingly recorded by the envoys of Abbas Pasha. The unique value of the APM lies in the Bedouins being both the narrators and the protagonists of these stories. Every other written source at our disposal comes from Western travelers and explorers who, with few exceptions, did not speak the language, communicating mostly through interpreters and other intermediaries who “explained” things to them, which they would then go on and explain to us the readers of their books. We readers became accustomed to seeing the Bedouins and their horses through the more or less distorting lens of travelers like Upton, Blunt, Davenport, etc. The Bedouins in these Western accounts lost their agency and became subjects. Arabian horses became a Western field of knowledge. Carl Raswan, despite living among the Ruwalah for some years, is a good example of this distorting lens: what his numerous writings show is his own perspective, as illustrated by his classification of Arabian horse strains. For example, Raswan classified Sa’adan, Rishan, and Samhan under the “Muniqi related”…