Jeanne Craver just sent these along. They are the first official pictures of my filly, by Javera Thadrian out of Wisteria CF. She will be named Wadhah (pronounce it WAD-ha), in keeping with the “W” tradition, after which her dam, her older full sister Walladah CF, and her grand-dam HB Wadduda were named, and after Wadhah bint Falah al-Subaylah, a Bedouin princess of the Bani Sakhr tribe, whose romance with Nimr bin ‘Adwan of the rival ‘Adwan tribe was the subject of many beautiful poems by the latter. These poems, some of which you can read in English here (click on the arrows to read the entire article), are still recited today. The popular story of Wadhah and Nimr was also the subject of the first Arab colour TV series in 1975, which was produced in Jordan and aired in several other Arab countries. Wadhah’s sister was named after an Arab princess from Andalusia, Walladah bint al-Mustakfi. I confess liking these princess names, in no small part because of the temper of the Wisteria fillies, which Jeanne Craver refers to as “princess temper”. They’re distant and not easily approachable.
RJ Cadranell and Jeanne Craver are the custodians of the hujaj (original Arabic certification documents) of the horses imported by Homer Davenport from the Arabian desert to the USA in 1906. They kindly gave me the permission to use these hujaj on this blog for educational purposes, and I would like to thank them for doing so. The hujaj are a treasure trove of information which can be readily exploited. As these original desert-bred imports are the ancestors of today’s “Davenport Arabians”, I will first seclect one of today’s Davenport horses at random- say Jauhar El-Khala, whose lovely pictures are below – and look at the hujaj of her desert-bred ancestors, and second link these hujaj to those asil horses living in Syria today, wherever possible. If you take Jauhar El-Khala’s pedigree as displayed on the Davenport Arabian Horse Conservancy website, you’ll see that she traces exclusively to the following 11 desert-bred imports, all obtained by Homer Davenport in his 1906 trip to the northern Arabian desert: *HAMRAH, *URFAH, *WADDUDA, *DEYR, *MUSON, *JEDAH, *RESHAN, *HAFFIA, *ABBEIAN, *ABEYAH, and *WERDI. In other words these 11 horses, crossed with each other, constitute all the original imported ancestors of the mare Jauhar El-Khala. It is actually possible to reduce the number of…