Check out Joe’s latest article in Arabian Essence. I love the comparison of some mares of the Egyptian Om Dalal family with the *Abeyah line, just as much as I love re-re-reading the late Carol Lyons “homogeneous background of Al Khamsa Arabians” article.
So the farrier came at his appointed time. With the farrier came the farrier’s apprentice. With the apprentice came her 2yo daughter, Jesse. Now, Jesse has spent a lot of time around horses, and obviously adores them, but she’s still two and needs to be reminded to approach them from the front, not the back. (A photograph that I missed taking: Jesse, in the hay feeder which is a repurposed water trough almost as tall as she is, squealing with delight as Recap ignored the old hay she was being offered in favor of wiggling her upper lip in Jesse’s hair.) And she was pretty good for a while, but there were four mares to trim and Jesse was gaining speed, so we put her on top of Petit Point. Petit Point was perfectly agreeable about balancing the child while her front feet were being done, but Jesse’s wiggling was picking up again, and she was slowly working her way back, until she was nearly sitting on Petit Point’s loins. The farrier’s apprentice asked for a back foot, and Petit Point — refused. She apparently calculated that the child was going to pitch off her back if she didn’t stay…
The reference to Alzabra Stud in connection with the Egyptian stallion Sharkasi got me interested in learning more about these small local Egyptian farms which, from time to time, appear in historical documents on Arabian horse breeding in Egypt as the suppliers of breeding stock to the Royal Agricultural Society’s studfarms and/or Inshass, the private stud of Kings Farouk and Fouad. One of these farms is that of Kafr Ibrash, which is where the mare Bint Kareema (Lady Anne Blunt’s Rasheed x Kareema) and others came from. All I succeeded doing for now is locating Kafr Ibrash (also spelled Kafr Abrash or Abraash) on the map of Egypt. It is in Egyptian delta fertile agricultural region, in the Sharkiyah province, where the Tahawi Arab tribe is settled (see Google Map below, where Kafr Ibrash is market as point B on the map, you may need to zoom out to see it). View Larger Map Next step is to ask some friends from Egypt to go there and see what they can learn about this place, and its owners. I suspect they were closely associated with the Egyptian Royal family in some way or another. Note in particular the close proximity of the…