Lady Anne Blunt on the Bani Sakhr tribe

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 of Abeyan Sherrak which is known and highly thought of.

A remarkable feature of these observations made many years apart is the continuous distrust that Lady Anne Blunt has harbored towards horses coming from this tribe — with the possible exception of a strain of Ubayyan Sharrak that was owned by the tribe’s leading clan of al-Fayiz. Another observation is that the Ubayyan strain is associated with three of these five mentions: it is mentioned as Ubayyan once, as Ubayyan Sharrak another time, and as Ubayyan al-Khudr a third time.

This information becomes relevant when one knows that the Beni Sakhr Bedouin tribe in general, and their clan of Khudair in particular, are especially proud of their strain of Ubayyan Sharrak, which named Ubayyan Khudayr after them. I believe, without being totally certain, that this is the same strain as Ubayyan al-Khudr, because Khudayr is a diminutive of Khudr, and Khudr can be also seen as the plural of Khudayr. That’s the strain I wrote about earlier here.

7 Replies to “Lady Anne Blunt on the Bani Sakhr tribe”

  1. El Deree came from the Baqqarah tribe near Deyr az Zour. Breeder was Kheder al Derri, whitness his son Ahmed al Derri in Germany and also in Jens Sannek book. It is time to correct the false infoemations on El Deree that are circulating.

  2. According to what I read, there are two lines from the oldest and most famous Obayan factions among the Bani Sakhr: Obaiya Al-Khudair or Al-Khader, and Obaiya Al-Huwaina (عبية الهوينة) , which they have previously indicated is one of the oldest lines that goes back to the Bani Hilal tribe, and this is permissible.. This is because of the legacy left by the Bani Hilal tribe between the Hijaz, Taif, and between Rania and Bisha which is left there, and there is no doubt that the Bani Sakhr tribe is considered one of the oldest Hijazi tribes in history.

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