A blog on desert arabian horses, past, present and future
I bet some of you think this is overkill, but here are two more pictures of that lovely Kuhaylat al-Mimrah mare that went from Egypt to South Africa. The first one also features a headshot of the Bahraini stallion Tuwaisaan. With kind permision Pauline Du Plessis, Saruk Stud, RSA
A fascinating and thoroughly documented article (in French) by anthropologist Bernadette Lizet on the French manuscript of count Wenceslas Rzewuski, which was touched upon in an earlier post and ensuing thread.
The readership of Daughter of the Wind keeps growing. Yesterday it reached the 100,000 clicks milestone. Â Sometimes I struggle to keep up with the flow of queries, comments, and new topics for blogging that readers address to me through the website or by way of email. Yet, sometimes I feel that the blog’s focus on … Read more
A good article by Peter Harrigan is Saudi Arabia’s Aramco World. Peter was a keynote speaker at the last Al Khamsa Convention in Tulsa, OK.Â
Seanderich, a desert bred stallion born in 1902, is one of the founders of Arabian horse breeding in Spain. Both his sire and his dam are stated to have been from the Saqlawi strain. The Spanish Stud-book actually has all his four grandparents as Saqlawi. For more details about his importation to Spain through an … Read more
This past weekend I took part of my family to visit with Jenny Krieg, of Poolesville, Maryland. Jenny is the president of Al Khamsa for a few more days. A new board will take over for a year after the 2009 Tulsa Convention, which starts today, and which I am so sorry for not being able to … Read more
In 1909, a French government commission led by Inspector Quinchez bought 24 desert-bred stallions from the Egyptian racetrack of Sidi Gaber in Alexandria. Of these, 17 went to Algeria (then a part of France), and the remaining 7 were distributed in government studs across mainland France. The seven were: Dahman, Meenak, Farid, Aslani, Hamdany El Samry, Latif and Maarouf. The … Read more
Looks like some of my last posts (here, and here) have really (like, really) angered a particular category of people: cynical French breeders who make big money out of breeding and selling “pseudo-Arabian” racehorses. They are now fully mobilized and want to launch a campaign to defend their horses by the next WAHO conference. Some … Read more
Pretty mare, eh? Nabilah Fanatasia (Omar El Shaker x Nabilah Bint Saklabilah) is from South Africa’s Nabilah Stud and traces to the Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah mare Nabilah (Enzahi x Zamzam) in tail female, as well as to the Kuhaylat al-Mimrah Barakah in the midde of the pedigree. Both Nabilah and Baraka were imported to South Africa … Read more
This little known importation is the earliest ever made to the United States. Â Between 1851 and 1856, Keene Richards took two trips to the Arabian desert, visiting virtually every region of North Africa and the Middle East. He came back with several horses, of which the stallions Massoud, Faysul, Mokhladi (no doubt a Mukhallad, the … Read more
In the spirit of continuing to pick on French “Arabians”, here is an old picture of Gosse d’Avril (Gosse du Bearn x Fleur d’Avril), a horse any English Thoroughbred breeder would want to own..
Also from Calvyn.
My father took this photo at Craver Farms in 2002. I remember really liking this mare, but can’t recall her name or breeding. Would this be Una CF?
Also from Calvyn Baderhorst
I can’t help keep showing pictures of the Kuhaylat al-Mimrah mare Baraka (Ibn Manial x Gamalat). Here is a photo with her daughter, Sahibi Bint Baraka, by the Bahraini stallion Tuwaisaan (Jellabi al-Marshoosh x a Tuwayssah). Below is Sahibi Bint Baraka as a grown-up mare. Both photos courtesy of Calvyn Badenhorst of South Africa.
This 1997 article by Michael Bowling and R.J. Cadranell mentions the Babolna-bred mare 125 Ghalion (b. 1975), which has only one distant cross to the English Thoroughbred mare 30-Maria, her tail female ancestor (scroll down to the middle of the article for the question about 30-Maria). RJ and Michael calculated that after 125 years and 12 generations of … Read more
It’s been some time I have been saying that I will write a post about this French Arabian stallion, by the desert import Latif, from the Fad’aan tribe, out of the French-bred mare Djaima, by Khouri also an import from the Fad’aan. That article will come soon, I promise. Meanwhile, here is Denouste, a Mukhallad by … Read more
I love the website allbreedpedigree.com . It’s one of those wikis that let you do whatever you want. Readers’ comments on the last entry I posted just put me in a subversive mood, so I went and changed the race of the mare Polka from “Arabian” to “Thoroughbred”. For those who are not aware of … Read more
On paper, this stallion looks okay. I mean he has the pedigree of an Arabian horse. But he is not. He is an Anglo-Arab in disguise. Â Ba-Toustem (Djerba Oua x Bacchantara, at least that’s what his papers say) was born in France, at a time when Arabians raced in the same same races as Anglo-Arabs … Read more
The new Al Khamsa website has a pedigree directory. Check it out.
Since the last couple posts have been about mares of the Shuwayman Sabbah strain bred by the Shammar, here is a quote from Lady Anne Blunt‘s “Bedouin tribes of the Euphrates” (p. 235) that had a lasting impression on me: “Faris’s own mare is a tall bay, Shuéymeh Sbà h, with a powerful shoulder, great girth, … Read more
Just came across an interesting article from 2005 in the New Scientist: Irish researchers analyzing Y-chromosome sequences in the DNA of a sample representative of the 500,000 or so English Thoroughbred racehorses alive today found that 95% of these horses traced to a single horse in the tail male: the Darley Arabian, born in 1700 (who by … Read more
Following the recent entry on the pretty black mare Shams al-Ghurub, and to Joe Ferriss recalling that he saw her dam Hakayah in 1996 in Syria, I am posting a picture of Hakayah that I took back in 1989. Hakayah was then with Ahmad (Abu Tahir) al-Ghalioun, who had leased her from her owner, the Shaykh of the … Read more