A blog on desert arabian horses, past, present and future
Tomorrow I will be hitting the Oregon trail with the family to attend the 2009 Al Khamsa Convention, my first since 2005, as well as the CMK Symposium. This time I will be taking my video camera with me, so you should expect a couple video uploads when I return (September 1). While I doubt … Read more
Thanks Edouard for posting that picture of Al-Awar. I agree with you that he is much more impressive in person than in photos which explains my difficulty in getting a good photo of him at the Racing club in Aleppo, nearing dark time in November 1996. When a horse makes a good impression on me, … Read more
You ought to read the absolutely lovely story of how a British breeder Jenny Lees of Peark Island Stud, got aquainted with Arabian horses while living in Bahrain. Jenny writes that her Hamdaany Kuwaiti was said to bred by the Anazah and had come to Bahrain through Kuwait, hence his name. Back in the 1960s, … Read more
Now that’s my Zahrah (Dinar x Hanadi by Krush Juhayyim), a Kuhaylat al-Nawwaq from the marbat of Shaykh Abdul Jalil al-Naqabashbandi, a sufi leader from the area of Der al-Zor, in the Middle Euphrates region of Syria. My father and I picked Zahra from Kamal Abdul Khaliq’s herd when she was 10 days old, in … Read more
Ma’anaqi Zudghum is one of the most respected marabet of Sbayli, owned by a Bedouin of the Sba’ah tribe called Zudghum. Dinar’s sire, the Hamdani Simri al-Aawar, was pictured in an earlier entry. This photo was taken by my father at Mustafa al-Jabri’s stud in Aleppo, where Dinar, then a growthy two and a half … Read more
This venerable, glorious horse, one of my all-time favorite stallions, will be featured in detail in an upcoming post, which I am taking my time to write. Meanwhile, enjoy the picture, which I took at twilight at Radwan Shabareq’s stud in Aleppo, Syria, sometime in the mid 1990s. Al Aawar was in his 20s.
The mountain region of ‘Asir, in south western Saudi Arabia is one of the areas of the Middle East that fascinates me the most. Historically it was part of Yemen until 1934, I think. I have recently bought Thierry Mauger’s beautiful book, “Undiscovered Asir”, and recently Pure Man sent me this video of the moutain ‘Asir … Read more
Check these two articles (Part 1 and Part 2) out. I hope to see Joe in Redmond, OR, next week. He’s traveling by bus with some indians as we speak.
The mare *Subaiha and her daughter *Taffel were bred in Saudi Arabia, by Prince Saud ibn Abdallah ibn Jiluwi, a close relative of Saudi Arabia’s founder King Abd al-Aziz, and governor of the eastern, oil-rich Hasa (al-Ahsa’) province starting from 1938. His father Abdallah was governor of Hasan from 1913 to 1938. They were imported … Read more
The desert-bred Kuhaylah Hayfiyah mare *Reshan, imported by Homer Davenport to the USA in 1906 has two surviving asil tail females, and we are lucky to have them both. Â The first is through her grand-daughter Antarah (Antez x Hasiker, by Hamrah x *Reshan), and that line bred on thanks to the efforts of Charles and … Read more
This video by C. Mingst shows several of the stallions at Craver Farms: Regency (Hamdani), Triermain (K. Haifi), Zacharia (Haifi), Regatta (Hamdani), Brassband (Haifi), Badawi (Hamdani), and a group of mares, some of which are identified. Javera Thadrian is not there. If anyone has a video of this horse that they’d like to share, can … Read more
I have decided to start a new series called “barely surviving lines”. In doing so, I was inspired by both the latest issue of the Khamsat magazine, which focuses on rare asil lines in the USA, and by Anne McGaughey’s excellent website “Rare Al-Khamsa Strains“. These “barely surviving lines” are still in existence, or likely to … Read more
As the 2009 Al Khamsa Convention in Oregon approaches (and this time, I plan to be there), here’s a video by Carol Mingst of the 1994 Oregon CMK Symposium, showing asil stallions of Davenport breeeding Mandarin CF (Regency x Lotus), Sportin Life and SA Apogee, among others. A good chunk of the video features Mandarin showing … Read more
This is a great tool for breeders of asil horses in the USA.
If any one is interested in the (very) early history of nomadic Arab tribes, then they ought to read Israel Eph’al’s book: “The Ancient Arabs: Nomads on the Borders of the Fertile Crescent: 9th-5th centuries BC. Google Books has a integral copy online. The books discusses the deeds of the little0known “Queen of the Arabs” … Read more
Before I move to discussing the two stallions just imported from Syria to France, and following the posting of Shahm’s photos a couple days ago, I want to share with you a couple pictures of the second stallion, Mahboob Halab, a 4 year old Shuwayman Sabbah from the marbat of the Jarbah leading family of … Read more
Last week, I wrote about the quest of Robert Mauy’s friends, Jean-Claude Rajot and Louis Bauduin of France, to regenerate the bloodlines of their Arabian horses with the importation of stallions from the Arabian desert, or North Africa. Jean-Claude and Louis’ quest first took them to Tunisian and Algeria in the late 1980s. They saw many … Read more
Anita Westfall has asked me to post this photo of Sir (Tripoli x Dharebah) at age 4, which was taken by Miss Ott at Craver Farms in 1962. Charles is in the photo. She wanted to use the photo to illustrate a comment in a comment she recently posted, which I quote below: “My very … Read more
*Aziza (Gamil Manial x Negma) was *Roda’s half sister. *Roda was mentioned in a recent post. In 1996, RJ Cadranell wrote an article on the two sisters in Arabian Visions, which you read here.  Like *Roda, *Aziza was imported to the USA by W.R. Brown in 1932. All this I knew from before. Having read F. … Read more
Also from “The Authentic Arab Horse”, but from Lady Wentworth, this time.. “Ears: these are all-important. A stallion’s ears should be small, exquisitely shaped, sharply cut, and thin at the edges. They should be also of marvelously delicate modeling, beautifully chiseled, the tip delicately turned inwards, the points being very sharply defined. Hearing is very … Read more
This is from a handwritten note which I copied from Lady Wentworth’s “The Authentic Arabian Horse”. I don’t have the book with me (it’s in Lebanon in my father’s library), but I vaguely recall that it is an excerpt from Lady Anne Blunt’s manuscript, which she was working on before her death in 1917, and which … Read more
This is one if from Jeanne Craver.
There have been interesting discussions along many of this blog’s topics over the past two weeks, and I am having a hard time catching up with all of these. I owe readers a number of new entries on these topics, and I will get to these in the next week. Jaspre, a son of … Read more
These an interesting dicussion currently going on on this blog, about whether this horse here is indeed Siglavy Bagdady VI (Siglavy Bagdady V x 250 Kuhailan Haifi I). In this context, here two more pictures of that asil Babolna stallion from Laszlo Kiraly of Hungary. The picture above distinctly shows the pink lips on the … Read more
Arab general al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf al-Thaqafi asked a man of the ancient Bedouin tribe of Hilal by the name of Ayub ibn Zayd ibn Qays about the characteristics of a good horse, the latter replied: “Three short ones; three long ones; three broad ones amd three clear ones; when asked to decribe these features, the man … Read more
One of the signs of ‘asalah‘ (purity, authenticity) in Arabian horses is the prominence of the lateral facial bones (see the two arrows in the photo below); this is a sign of authenticity (asalah) and ancient (‘itq) breeding. These bones are prominent and protruding only in Arabian horses. In Arabia, horses with these bones are chosen to become breeding … Read more
My friends Jean-Claude Rajot and Louis Bauduin have been breeding Arabian horses for a long time. They are the students and friends of the late Robert Mauvy. Robert Mauvy is, simply put, the Westerner who came the closest to understanding the Arabian horse and to breeding it as its original custodians, the Bedouins of Arabia, … Read more
Just felt like posting this photo of the stallion Dhahran (Sirecho x Turfara) when he was at the Sheets’ Arabian Stud Farms (ASF). The photo is from the collection of pictures the late Billy Sheets gave me. Dhahran’s tail female goes back to the mare *Turfa, a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz from the horses of the House of Saud, … Read more
In a recent comment, Joe Ferriss talked about beautiful Arabian horse ears, as exemplified by the asil stallions’ Brimstone’s short, prickled ears. So Jeanne Craver sent me this photo of Brimstone. A picture worth a thousand words. Aside from the ears, Jeanne tells me  that Brimstone, the sire of the black Sportin Life in the … Read more
[August 10, 2009 correction: The uplaoding of the picture below elicited a discussion between Laszlo Kiraly and RJ Cadranell, as a result of which the horse in the picture was identified as the non-asil Babolna stallion Koheilan XI (Koheilan X x 242 Kuhailan Zaid), a stallion with a distant line to the English Thoroughbred mare … Read more