Yesterday night, as I was sitting to draft notes for my presentation at National Breeder’s Conference tomorrow in Atlanta, I had some thoughts on the evolution of asil Arabian breeding, which I thought I’d share with you, for feedback: The greatest risk – and there are many – facing the asil Arabian horse today is the “decoupling” of the “Straight Egpytian” Arabian from the rest of the asil Arabian community. The “Straight Egyptian” brand/label is so strong, so prevalent, so well-marketed that your average Arabian horse breeder — including an ever increasing number of Middle Eastern breeders, completely disconnected from their ancestors’ breeding legacies and traditions — now believes that the only asil Arabian horses left in the world are the “Straight Egyptians”. The implications of this disconnect are several, and they play themselves out on many levels: at the financial level, where the gap between the prices of some “Straight Egyptian” horses and those of other asil horses is ever widening; at the genetic level, where the gene pool of the “Straight Egyptian” horse is ever narrowing; finally, and perhaps most significantly, at the cultural level, where the “Straight Egyptian” horse is being experienced, branded and understood as more “Egyptian” and less “Arabian” (less “Arabian” as in less from…
The Dahman stallion Barakat is the paternal grandsire of three “Straight Egyptian” mares: Folla, Futna and Bint Barakat. The Tahawi family website, maintained by Mohammed son of Mohammed son of Othman son of Abdallah son of Seoud al-Tahawi, has these few lines on Barakat: As to the dam of the stallion Barakat, she is the mare of Mnazi’ ‘Amer al-Tahawi, and she is Dahmat Shahwan“. Somewhere else on this website, there is the mention that “the Dahman horses of Mnazi’ ‘Amer al-Tahawi are from the horses of Ibn Maajil of Syria.” Now here’s what the Arabic edition of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript, edited by the late Saudi royal historian Hamad al-Jasir, has to say on these Dahman horses of Ibn Maajil, in the section about a specific descendent of the Hamdaniyah Simriyah mare known as Al-Khadeem: “The mare, and she is a green [a shade of grey] daughter of the yellow [another shade of grey] Rabdan the horse of al-Dahham, had these foals while in a possession [a list of two foals follows, of which is the second is] a filly whose sire is Duhayman [‘little Dahman’], the stallion of Ibn Rashid, from the horses of Ibn Maajil.” You can find this except on pages 408…