It looks like some of you are enjoying the occasional digression from pedigree and geneology stuff. Yesterday, Anita Westfall sent me two nice pictures of some of her horses: This picture is of her very pretty Miss Attitude (by Lorenzo CF x Dawn’s Attitude SF, also by Lorenzo CF), a Kuhaylat al-Hayf of the line imported to the USA by Homer Davenport. It shows both the ‘human eye’ with the white, and the long eyelashes! The other photo – also from Anita, who by the way takes really, really nice pictures, including that legendaary picture of Prince Hal – shows Miss Attitude (front) together with Anita’s other Kuhaylat al-Hauf mare, Bit O’Ruth (Lorenzo CF x LD Genisis LD byPlantagenet, back). The one in the back has a slightly dished profile, while the one in the front has a straight profile, but will all the features of a classic arabian head: small muzzle; large, open nostrils, delicately shaped lower lip, dry face with the veins showing; clean, arched throat; deep, well-drawn, cicular jowl, and above all, large, feminine eyes. A delight of a mare.
Another Hearst import to the USA in 1947 is *Bint Rajwa, who came with her dam *Rajwa, and her full brother *El Abiad. There were essentially two groups of Hearst horses: one group was bred in Lebanon, from well-established Lebanese asil lines, and included the horses: *Bourhane, *Kouhailane, *Layya, *Lebnaniah, *Mansoura, *Nouwayra, *Najwa, and *Mounwer; another group was desert-bred, and had come from the Syrian desert to Beirut for racing purposes. This second group included *Arkane, *Snounou, *Ghamil, and *Rajwa. Rajwa’s recorded strain is Saqlawi “Ejrifi”, a marbat I have never heard of before, and the name of which I believe is misspelt. It may well be Saqlawi Arjabi (alternative spellings: Erjibi; Rajabi), which is the fourth and last of the four main branches of the strain (Jadran, Ubayri, Arjabi and al-Abd), but I am not sure. I will need to check this one. Bint Rajwa is Rajwa’s daughter by a famous asil Arabian horse of Lebanese breeding: the grey Karawane, who raced in Beirut in 1940s in the ownership of Henri Pharaon (who else?) and was otherwise known as “Karawane al-Azim”, i.e., Karawane the Great. A picture of her is appended below, from the website of Suzi Morris’ Ariena Arabians, courtesy…
Here’s a YouTube video of the magnificent asil stallion Sportin Life (Brimstone x Asallah Al Krush), a Kuhaylan al-Krush tracing to the mare Werdi, imoprted by Homer Davenport to the USA in 1906. He passed away recently at Pamela Klein’s, but there are still some of his get and grandget.
All you need to know about this horse is in the photo’s legend. Nice horse. Line extinct like all the horses of the Strognaov/Sherbatov importation of 1888.
Arabian horses do not come in one type or form; rather they are of many, many types; unfortunately, in this day and age, one type has come to dominate and has spead everywhere; it is the type associated with the dished profile, so popular in show contests. According to a number of oral stories from old Bedouin men, dished or concave profiles were considered a physical defect, and horses with such profiles were not sought after. It was considered that such horses could not keep up with other war horses, because the slope or angle of the “dish” would somehow affect the horse’s capacity to exhale large quantities of air while running. The two photos below show two separate types of heads largely found among Bedouin horses of yesterday and today. The first one is a picture of Mershid (Hamrah x Dahurah), a Kuhaylat al-Ajuz mare in the USA. Mershid’s head is very reminiscent of desert breds in Saudi Arabia today. The second one represents the stallion Ribal (Berk x Rijma), who looks like another type of Bedouin horses to be found in Arabia. *Written by Pure Man and Translated by Edouard
This is Atiq Ayla (Laheeb x Al Hambra B by Salaa el Dine out of 228 Ibn Galal I to Bint Azza I, from the Egyptian Dahman Shahwan line tracing to Bint El Bahreyn). Ayla has a very large, expressive eye of the ‘human type’ with plenty of white showing and long eyelashes. She is bred by my friend Tzviah Idan of Idan Atiq Arabians in Israel.
Hence read the start of a journal entry Lady Anne Blunt wrote in 1911 (Lady Anne Blunt, Journals and Correspondence, edited by Rosemary Archer and James Fleming, 1986). The entry, brisking with excitement and enthusiasm, recorded the arrival at Sheykh Obeyd, Lady Anne’s Egyptian studfarm, of five of the choicest, best-authenticated desert-bred Arabian horses ever to get out of the Arabian Peninsula, after an arduous journey that lasted several months. In the same vein, stay tuned for the fresh news of another exciting importation straight from “Arabia” to the “West”, as I put together pictures and text for a story that will no doubt excite many of you, especially those in Europe. Here is a peek (as you can see, these are three, not five):
Check out the new photo galleries of horse pictures at the revamped website of the Davenport Conservancy. One of my favorite is this photo of the magnificent Craver stallion Sir (Tripoli x Dharebah) in old age. How I wished I was around to see him live.
Clothilde Nollet of Maarena Arabians in France, just sent me this link to the website of a young Syrian lady, Dr. Ghasoub al-Abrash Ghalyoun, who moved to Spain and brought with her an asil mare from Syria, Karboujah (Sa’d x Roudeinah by Mas’huj), and her grey asil son Najm Ya’rob, by the stallion Fawwaz (Ayid x Sit al-Kull). Dr. al-Abrash also has other horses at her Abrash Krush stud near Madrid. While I have never seen this stallion or his dam, I have very vivid memories of their sires, grandsires, and grand-dams: the stallions Ayid, Fawwaz, Mas’huj, Mahrous, Sa’d, and the mares Jamrah, and Sitt al-Kull populate my teenage memories, when my father and I used to drive from Lebanon to Syria and visit the studfarms of Syrian horse-breeders. The stallion Najm Yarob is interesting pedigree-wise, because he trace to two completely different branches of the Kuhaylan al-Krush strain. His sire, Fawwaz, comes from an old-established marbat of Kuhaylan al-Krush in the city of Hama in central Syria. This marbat traces a branch of the Krush horse family originating from the Fad’an Bedouin tribe, and know as Krush al-Sane’. The mare *Werdi, a Kuhaylat al-Krush mare imported by Homer Davenport to the…
In the entry below, I wrote about how I liked arabian mares that have long eyelashes, which magnifies the human-like expression many of these mares have anyway. Below is a picture of of such mare. Bint Mawj al-Athir was an asil (heck, she is the mother of all asil) Kuhaylat al-Nawwaq (that’s the right spelling, other spellings include Nowag, Nuwwag, Nawag, Nawaq, etc), or Kuhaylah Nawwaqiyah, from Lebanon. I never saw that mare in person, but my father, who took this picture of her in the 1970s when she was in her late twenties and in very poor condition, holds her and her particular lineage in the highest regard. I will no doubt come back to Bint Mawj al-Athir to introduce you to her pedigree, which by the way contains the blood of many horses now represented in the USA. For now, I just wanted you to look at the expression in the eyes of this beautiful, classic, regal Arabian mare. If you have more pictures of arabian mares with long eyelashes and a “human eye”, feel free to send them to me.
Jeanne Craver just sent me this headshot of my Wisteria CF (by Triermain x HB Wadduda by Mariner), which Charles Craver took a couple days ago at Craver Farms. They made my day. There is something unique about the eyes of every Arabian horse. Sometimes it’s the shape. Or the size. The darkness. The bulge. The sparkle. The white in the eyes. Some horses have all these features. Others only some of them. In Wisteria’s case, it’s the long, long eyelashes that make her look almost human. I’ve always had a soft spot for Arabian mares with long eyelashes. Maybe it’s because I like Arabic poetry. Arabic poetry, mainly that of the pre-Islamic kind, is replete with descriptions of the eyes in general, and of eyelashes in particular. It can be women eyes (often), camels’ eyes (even more often), or horses’ eyes (somewhat less often).
I recently shared with you my plan to propose the mare *Lebnaniah for inclusion in the Roster of Al-Khamsa horses as of 2010. The process is very thorough, usually involving several individuals putting their research skills together. It typically takes several years to complete. As part of this process, I will be sending the Al Khamsa Board original information about *Lebnaniah’s ancestors – information that was not available before. Much of this information is actually included in “Al-Dahdah Index” (don’t laugh), an annotated catalog of noteworthy asil and non-asil horses that were bred in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, the northern Arabian desert, etc) throughout the twentieth century. I have already shared with you the entries on the stallion Shaykh al-Arab and Kayane. The “Al-Dahdah Index” is a living document, which I have been patiently working on for the past twelve years, and I update as often as I can. The information is based on oral and written primary sources from the Middle East — i.e., it is not extracted from books written by Western travelers, horse buyers, and other occasional visitors. I would like to see the “Al-Dahdah Index” published some day, but not before I add a couple thousand more entries. I think I’ll give it another…
This little lady, Labwah al-Shaykhah (DB Krush x HS Marayah), represents a new ray of hope for the endangered Shaykhan (a branch of Ubayyan, formed in Lebanon and named after a Ubayyah mare called al-Shaykhah) strain. Only two or three mares of breeding age are know to be alive today, in the USA, one of which is HS Marayah, Labwah’s dam, owned by Jenny Krieg of Maryland. Labwah, whose name means lionness in Arabic, has the long ears for which the Shaykhan strain was known for back in Lebanon. Photo of Labwah courtesy of Jenny. July 20th update: By the way, Jenny and I have an article on that strain in the next Khamsat issue. You should subscribe!
Pure man just sent me this small photo of the masculine stallion Al Fateh, a Ubayyan from Saudi Arabia, by the stallion El Basheer, a Suwayti, out of the Ubayyah mare Al-Sayida. I like this horse.
Kuwait recently announced the launch of its brand new state stud, Bayt al-Arab, to replace its older Arabian Horse Center. Their nice website includes an interesting — but too sketchy — historical timeline. Most of the founding stock is of Egyptian bloodlines, and was imported from Germany, Qatar and the USA, mainly from Ansata Arabian Stud.
If any of you want to know what it feels like for a Western woman to live in today’s Saudi Arabia, then you ought to check out Susie of Arabia’s Jeddah Daily Photo Journal. Nothing to do with Arabian horses, but interesting still 😉
This is another picture of the beautiful Hearst stallion *Mounwer (b.1942), the subject of a recent entry. The picture is from the website of Ariena Arabians, and is courtesy of Nyla Eshelman. *Mounwer’s handwritten pedigree by his Lebanese breeder George Khamis indicates that he was sired by the stallion Kayane, out of the chestnut mare Bint El Berdowny, who seems to have raced at the Beirut racetrack in the 1930s. I have a lot of information on Kayane here. Bint El Berdowny, “the Daughter of the Berdowny”, is a name commonly given to racing mares hailing from the town of Zahlah and its vicinity, in the central part of the fertile Biqaa valley of Lebanon. The Berdowny is the name of the stream on the banks of which Zahlah lies. View Larger Map According to Khamis, *Mounwer’s dam Bint El Berdowny was sired by a black Ma’anaqi Sbayli, and his maternal grand-dam, a chestnut mare by the name of Subayha that may have also raced in Beirut, was sired by a desert-bred, grey Ma’anaqi Sbayli stallion of the French Army, which controled Lebanon and parts of Syria at the time. [The French Army maintained a large military base in Rayak, the village of…
Did you know that there were monkeys in Arabia? Hamadyas baboons live — proliferate — in southwest Saudi Arabia and in Yemen. Check these pictures out! and this video too:
Commenting on a recent post, RJ Cadranell mentioned the CMK Record, a publication that replaced the Arabian Visions Magazine. Below, a scanned article of the CMK Record, Fall 1988 issue, courtesy of Michael Bowling, where he discusses the 1942 asil stallion *Mounwer. *Mounwer was imported to the USA by W. R. Hearst in 1947. He was a Shuayman Sabbah by strain, and was bred by the Khamis family of Rayaq, Lebanon, by Kayane out of Bint al-Berdowni. Check out my entry on Kayane here. *Mounwer is the paternal half-brother of the mare *Layya, also bred by the Khamis family and imported by Hearst. While *Layya has left (too few) asil descendants, and was accepted by Al Khamsa in 2002, the blood of *Mounwer is now completely lost to asil breeding. (If you have a PC, right-click on your mouse, and download Michael’s article to be able to read it without damaging your eyes. If you have a Mac, I don’t know what to tell you…) And that’s a photo of *Mounwer, who really looked like he was a lovely horse. More on some of his ancestors later.
These days I seem to have less and less time to devote to writing longer articles that aim to make a point in a well-documented, systematic way. That’s why you’re seeing more and more photos and videos these days. It’s not that I ran out of things to say. I just ran out of time to put things together in a more organized way. That’s why I thought I’d create a special section on this blog where I’d put more crude, quick-and-rough thoughts (bullet points really – they love bullet where I work), waiting to be organized into a full-blown blog entry. It’s also a way to offer some leads to those of you who’d want to take the research further. So check My Scrapbook section from time to time. My Twitter account is also supposed to play a similar role, although I haven’t quite gotten hooked on it yet.
… and this is Mazfufah (Haleem x Ma’zufah), who is Matrubah’s full sister. Matrubah was featured in an another post I wrote earlier today. Pure Man, who sent me Mazfufah’s picture, also told me the two mares are almost total look-alikes. Of course, one needs to recognize that Matrubah’s picture was taken by a professional, while her sister’s was taken by an occasional photographer, and shows the mare in an ungroomed condition.
“Pure Man” sent me this beautiful picture of the desert-bred mare Matrubah (Haleem x Ma’zufah), an asil Kuhaylat al-Krush from Saudi Arabia. Matrubah is owned by Prince ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al-Sudayri and graces his new Aziziyah Stud. More on this original branch of the Kuhaylan al-Krush strain in this earlier post here. I know there is not many of you reading this blog who think that a desert bred horse cannot also be beautiful, but those of you who still think so, think again.
Those of you who have looked at the Saudi Arabian Stud Book may have noticed that most of the horses registered in it trace back to a grey horse by the name of Al-Harqan, born in 1947. This horse is the sire of 25 horses in Volume I of the Saudi Stud Book. Pure Man, who by virtue of his knowledge of asil Arabians in Saudi Arabia, is a main contributor to this blog, tells me that Al-Harqan is Kuhaylan Harqan by strain. He also tells me that King Abdel-Aziz Aal Saud (d. 1953) asked a Bedouin from the tribe of Harb by the name of Ibn Fadliyah for a stallion from his famed Harqan horses, and that Ibn Fadliyah gave the king his best stallion: Al-Harqan. Pure Man also tells me that before Al-Harqan, the House of Saud maintained two other stallions of the same strain, but that they don’t appear in modern pedigrees because Saudi authorities did not keep written stud records back then. I think the strain of Kuhaylan Harqan is extinct in the tail female today, but I may be wrong, because there might still be desert horses of this strain in Saudi Arabia which I would not…
Every time I look for a substantive article on Arabian horses online, I keep stumbling on something that was written in “Arabian Visions” like this informative article on the Perdue’s Rudalaro breeding program in Lamar, Colorado. I am a big fan of this program by the way, and especially of one of its flagship stallions: Fa Raad (Fa-Turf x Raada), whose famous picture is featured below. Arabian Visions was the magazine R.J. Cadranell published in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Michael Bowling and Rick Synowski contributed to it from time to time. I never got the chance to ask RJ why he stopped issuing it. I wish he – or somebody else – would resume publishing it. It was such a precious learning tool. Check out Michael’s CMK website for a list of Arabian Visions articles and other good articles on the subject. That will make for a few dozen hours of good reading, for those who haven’t read these articles yet..
This is a rarely seen picture of the very pretty asil Babolna mare 25-Amurath Sahib (Amurah Sahib x 221 Kuhaylan Zaid, by Kuhaylan Zaid), courtesy of Jeanne Craver. The blood of legends like Kuhaylan Zaid, Siglavy Bagdady, Kuhaylan IV, Amurath 1881, Jussuf, Tajar, and Ghadir, to name but a few, flows in the veins of this mare and her living descendents, who are “living history” as far as the Arabian horse (in its asil and non-asil forms) is concerned. I am never tired of repeating that the blood of the descendents of this mare constitutes one of the last hopes for an outcross to the heavily inbred European asil bloodlines.
Here is the comment from Jehangir Rustomjee, Bahrain Royal Stud registrar: “It is with great regret that I inform you that neither of the Royal studs have any female Dhahma (Dahmeh) descendants left, my eyes well up and my chest tightens as I convey this to you. I am so pleased at the international interest in our horses about who so little is known outside Bahrain.” How tragic that a strain precious and ancient as that of the Dahmah would die out in its cradle. The link to the Dahman strain on the Bahrain Royal Studs website is still there. Check it out it while it lasts. Thank God a thin line to the mare Sawannah remains in North America, as well as the Bint El Bahreyn Egyptian horses too, of course. [Basil and Hazaim, if you are reading, this sad news makes Dahmat al-Tuwaymin all the more precious now.]
Jean-Claude Rajot, who has lately been a frequent visitor of Syria (more on these visits later, including from Jean-Claude himself), sent me these photos of a couple horses in the stud of Hussain al-Ghishm in North Eastern Syria. Both horses are of the Kuhaylan al-Wati strain. The al-Ghishm, a family of ranking shaykhs of the Shammar, have been famously breeding desert-bred Kuhaylan al-Wati for at least five human generations. Their horses are asil and are held in high repute across the desert. I have been meaning to keep these photos for a full entry on the Kuhaylan al-Wati strain, as part of the “Strain of the Week” series, on which I am way behind, but they have been sitting in my hard drive for some time now, and thought, hey, the pictures speak for themselves anyway.. The older stallion is al-Ghishm’s main breeding stallion. I think his name is Amer Hakem but I am not sure. I especially like the younger colt. Of course, even though both horses are in very good health, you shouldn’t compare their condition to that of horses grazing in Europe or America’s lush pastures. PS – this is the best blood in the Syrian desert.…
I am done reading my latest issue of the Khamsat magazine, which features the WAHO 2007 conference in Syria. Joe Ferriss has a nice article on “Some Reflections on the Continuity of the Desert Horse”, and Hazaim al-Wair and I have an article in that same edition with some nice photos too. Below is a photo of Joe Ferriss (to the right) and Pam Studebaker (current Al Khamsa President) with yours truly, during the 2001 Al Khamsa Convention in Springfield, IL.