Read this entry in the stud book of Faysal ‘Abd Allah Sa’ud al-Tahawi, excerpted from the tribe’s website: “Then, in the year 1356 H, we bought the bay ‘Ubayyah Sharrakiyah from Ibn Samdan, when she was in foal, and she gave birth, while in our ownership, to a chestnut colt whose sire is the [Kuhaylan] Nawwaqi who was [standing at stud] with the Arabs of Sba’ah, and whose owner was Fanghash, on the first day of Rabi’ al-Awwal 1356 H [equivalent to the 12th of May, 1937]. And we solt that colt to Cairo.” And further down: “And on July 27, 1949, Faran Ibn Samdan came to us, and we each took our shares [in horses], and he gave up his shares in al-‘Ubayyah and received from us 172 pounds. This was the bay ‘Ubayyah which came from Salih al-Misrab at the hand of Husayn Abu Hilal in 1356 H.” Now please tell me, how many people in 1950, just over sixty years ago, had the luxury of receiving Ibn Samdan, the breeder of the best and most authenticated marbat of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak among the Sba’ah, in his own house, to pay him his share of the ‘Ubayyat Ibn Samdan,…
The more I am reading through the materials recently posted on the Tahawi website, the more I realize that the people within WAHO and the EAO who have denied registration to the asil Tahawi horses in the 1980s must have a lot on their conscience — nothing less than the destruction of one of the most authenticated group of horses in the Arabian breed.
In the XIXth and early XXth century, there was a famous and well-respected marbat of Dahman ‘Amer with Ibn Hemsi of the Gomussah clan of the Sba’ah Bedouins. The Blunts purchased two horses from that strain: Dahma, which they bought from “Oheynan Ibn Said” of the Gomussah (who had bought her from Ibn Hemsi), and Rataplan, which they bought from India. Ibn Hemsi’s was the only marbat of Dahman ‘Amer among the Sba’ah. The horse to which the Blunt mare Hagar was in foal when they bought her on Jan. 4, 1878, was also from the same horses, because Hagar was still owned by the Sba’ah when she was bred to him (she was taken in war from the Sba’ah by the Ruwalah in the winter 1877/78, says Lady Anne, and then purchased by a Mawali Bedouin from the Ruwalah). It is also very probable that *Wadduda’s sire, also a Dahman (no marbat mentioned), was or traced to the horses of Ibn Hemsi. The Syrian horsebreeder, Ali al-Barazi, reports in his book this old Bedouin saying about a Dahman ‘Amer stallion which stood at stud with Ibn Hemsi, who used to charge one gold pound to breed from him: ‘”al-dhahab ‘ind Ibn…
Recently, Mohammad Mohammad Uthman al-Tahawi, who maintains the very rich Tahawi tribe website, uploaded an important document, which is like a Abbas Pasha Manuscript in miniature. It is the herd book of his great grandfather, and leader of the Tahawi clan, Shaykh ‘Abdallah Saoud al-Tahawi. Mohammad found it among the horse related documents of his grandfather Uthman, and was told that the book was started by Shaykh ‘Abdallah, and kept up by the latter’s son Shaykh Faysal. When the sons of Shaykh ‘Abdallah divided their father’s horses between them upon his death, they passed book to each other to keep it updated. Mohammad copied it by hand in 1980, and has now uploaded it online. Rather than tell you about it, I will translate some of its parts, with Mohammad’s permission: In the name of God, the Most Merciful and Compassionate, blessings upon God [follows a string of religious invocations…] This is a record of the history of the origin of the horses of the Kuhaylat origin, the Tamriyah branch, established by the glorified Shaykh of the Arabs Sa’ud [son of] Yunis al-Shafi’i of the Arabs of [the tribe of ] al-Hanadi may God rest his soul and welcome him…
I found this family tree of the Shammar Bedouin clans from the section of the tribe known as Zawba’ (Zoba). It can be found online on an Arabic genealogy website. Most Shammar genealogies were put together by Western travelers, often basing themselves on more or less reliable Bedouin informants. This one was compiled by a Syrian ‘traveler’ in the years between 1963 and 1971 across three countries Iraq, Syria and Kuwait ( to where many Shammar Bedouins from Syria emigrated in the 1960s). It is special in that it references its sources, the tribal elders who were used as sources when compiling the information. The document says it will be published [was it already?] in an upcoming book about the Shammar Bedouins in three volumes. I have been trying to compile such a list for many years, and was facing three challenges — other than the logistical challenge of locating and reaching the sources, which were getting increasingly scarce as time was passing by: 1) first, the difficulty of reconciling tribal genealogies, as they was always a point were the elders’ versions differed, like in all oral histories; one would claim his clan is related to another clan; the elder from…
I need help identifying several horses in photos I took in my June 2002 visit to Carol and Diane Lyons. They are all beautiful horses, but I failed to remember the names as I was taking the photos. I have several more. The stallion in the first photo looks like he has some Monsoon not to far in the pedigree, judging from his hindquarter. Maybe SA Apogee? The mare in the middle I have no clue. The last one is Dulcet? or Lustre? Carol was very proud of her.
Jenny Krieg, referring to a discussion on straightegyptians.com in 2007, tells me that it seemed that the late Lady Anne Lytton apparently told Carol Mulder, who told someone else (who was writing on se.com under the username “BasilisBelka”) that the famously ugly photo of Mrs. Dillon’s imported Arabian stallion El Emir (below) was not of him, nor of an other Arabian horse but rather that of an English Lord’s carriage horse. Can this be confirmed?
The other day I was looking at foundation horses (i.e., original Arabian horses imported to the USA and the UK from the Arabian desert) in the pedigree of my new mare Jadiba, trying to gauge how “comfortable” I felt about the information currently available to us in terms of their ‘asalah’ or authenticity. “Comfort” is an particularly subjective notion, by my own admission, partly because I am setting the bar, and I tend to set it very high, and partly because of the relativity of the very notion of ‘asalah’. Of course, my level of ‘comfort’ is a function of the amount and quality of information available on these horses, and here a relative classification is possible by growing level of ‘comfort’. I for instance feel very ‘comfortable’ about most of the information on most of the Davenport horses in Jadiba’s pedigree, because many of them have surviving hujaj, or original authentication documents, especially *Wadduda, *Urfah, *Hamrah, *Muson, and *Jedah. I also feel similarly comfortable about many of the Blunt horses in her pedigree, especially those who were bought directly from Bedouins like Rodania, Hadban, Pharaoh, Azrek, and Queen of Sheba. The ones like Kars, Basilisk, and Dajania who were bought…
This is the first time I see a photo of Nusi (Gulastra x Nusara by Abu Zeyd), a 1928 Kuhaylan Da’jani stallion bred by W.R. Brown in Berlin, New Hamsphire, USA.
Another asil horse bred and owned Lee Oellerich in Canada was the 1977 asil stallion Naizahq (Mirath x Dahma al-Shaqra by Ruta-Am), also a Dahman Shahwan of the Bahraini line that traces back to *Sawannah. Lee tells me: “He is a winnner of numerous match races, against all comers, including English Thoroughbreds (TB). He ran 4 F. (1/2 M.) in 47.2 and beat a TB in a morning work, carrying close to 20 pounds more than the TB. He sprinted a F. (1/8 M.) in 11 seconds. He could also run a distance and beat TB’s over 1-1/2 and 2 mile match races. Many Arabians ate his dust, mostly in 1/2M. and 1M. Races. Typically they would, get a 5 to 10 length moving start, and he would break from a starting gate. He also won over his sire Mirath, by a head, in a 5 F. Race. His daughter Hulaifah produced the mare Saudah and the two stallions Hulaif and Haziz. All sired by Bahri. Although they never raced, they show a “good turn of foot”, reminiscent of their grandsire Naizahq.”
A grand mare of very close desert bloodlines from Saudi Arabian and Bahrain, of the Dahman Shahwan strain now extinct in Bahrain. Hadiyeh (Dahman Al Bahrain x Qasidah by Mirath) is an asil 1994 mare bred and owned by Lee Oellerich in Canada. Photos from Lee.
This nice picture of the mare Fairfax KH (Atticus x Fair Naomi UF), bred and owned by RJ Cadranell in Washington state is from the DAHC website.
Yesterday, Jeanne Craver sent me this picture of my other mare Wisteria CF, and her 2010 daughter Wadha by Javera Thadrian (his last offspring). Wisteria is in foal to her sire Triermain for a September 2011 foal. Judith Franklin, who was visiting, took the picture.
Yesterday, I went up to Pennsylvania to see the mare I recently bought. This time Jadiba looked much better than the first time I saw her (thanks in part to the great care Sue Moss, the lady in the photos, is giving her), and I was pleased with her overall. I thought she had some nice features I had overlooked last time: a deep jowl, a fine muzzle, a tail set high, and well let out, a strong girth, a round croup and a well sloped shoulder. Her back is shorter — although still long in my opinion — and her ears longer than I had initially thought, too. I still think her eyes are set a little too high, and I also noticed that her forehead was narrow: her face is rectangular instead of triangular when seen from the front. Anyway, I will let you judge from these photos I took. There is a definite Crabbet air to her (obviously, since she is about 90% Crabbet/Doyle) and the influences of Rijm (Mahruss x Rose of Sharon), who is Ribal’s maternal grandsire, and Gulastra (Astraled x Gulnare) were some of the easy ones to spot. She also has some nice…