A blog on desert arabian horses, past, present and future
A few days ago a friend asked me if I knew whether anything about the Egyptian stallion Ibn Ghalabawi and I said I didn’t. Then I consulted his pedigree on allbreedpedigree.com. Granted, this is by no means a reliable source (anybody can enter, remove or edit whatever the want), but in this case I suspect … Read more
Gertrude Bell took this view of the rooftops of the Arabian city of Hail in march 1914. Her collection of pictures at the University of Newcastle is a treasure trove.
Now look at these Assyrian wall panels, from a palace in Nineveh, in Northern Iraq today. Note the short back, rounded croup and arched neck. And the slightly dished profile and inflated nostrils of the one on the left. We should go back to breeding horses like these.
I still taken by the realism and accuracy of the Assyrian representations of horses of distinct Arabian type on the walls of their palaces. Here is one more. Note that I am not saying “desert-bred Arabian horses” but rather “horses of distinct Arabian type”, because there is no way to tell whether these horses came … Read more
Here’s an interesting and well-referenced analysis on the social transformations of Bedouin society in Jordan spanning 150 years from the middle of the XIXth society until today, from Rami Zurayk’a blog Land and People. Rami teaches at the Faculty of Agriculture of the American University of Beirut (my alma mater).
The photo in the entry below got me looking for more Assyrian wall panels representing horses of distinctly Arabian type, like the one below. Compare with this shot of the Crabbet stallion Abu Zeyd (Mesaoud x Rose Diamond).
I realize I haven’t written for two weeks and I apologize. These are busy days at work and in general, with little time left to other endeavors. I received my Khamsat magazine in the mail last week, and I have been reading it in the metro on my way to work. In it is an … Read more
Since this blog is not just about horses but also but the people who breed them, I am thinking of starting a new series on some of the twentieth century most influential yet most controversial horsemen of the Middle East. It will likely include the following horsebreeders who were also noted political and social figures … Read more
I just emerged from more than three days of power outage due a record setting snow storm that buried the Washington area under 30 inches of snow. I lost my telephone and internet connection last Friday night and did not get it back until this morning. I apologize to those of who wrote and were … Read more
Bien que je suive très attentivement et très régulièrement les articles de ce blog merveilleux , je me rends compte avoir laissé passer de nombreuses occasions d’apporter commentaires et précisions. Je m’empresse donc de réparer cette négligence en ce début d’année 2010. Tout d’abord , je m’étonne de la perplexité qu’a suscité la petite maxime … Read more