Faras Mattori

The desert-bred ‘Ubayyah Suhayliyah mare Reem al-‘Ud, bred by the Shammar tribe in northeastern Syria, also known as “the mare of Mattori” from one of her past Bedouin owners, was featured several times on this blog. Here is yet another photo of her in extreme old age, which shows well the black skin around her … Read more

Jackson’s stallion

I have always admired the bright bay horse pictured on Jackson Hensley’s Bedouin Arabians website (one photo below, with Jackson’s daughter), without knowing who the horse was. Jackson, as an artist, emphasizes the essence of the Arabian horse more than it’s official identity, and this is perhaps why he does not mention the names of his … Read more

Babolna’s Mikhail el-Hadad travels to Iraq in 1901/2

The book from these pictures were taken was published in the Hungarian language in 1904. It was translated  into Arabic language in 2004 by Mr. Tha’er Saleh with the support of the Hungarian Translation Fund. The original photos are at the Museum of Hungarian Agriculture in Budapest. The book is about the travels of Austro-Hungarian … Read more

Salome, 1935 asil Shuaymah Sabbah from Algeria

Voici une photo inédite prise sur le vif en 1949: la grande Salomé née à Tiaret en Algérie, fille de Bango DB et Maâna par Safita DB au soufflage! La scène se passe au haras de Sidi Bou Hadid en Tunisie, près de Bizerte. L’homme au béret n’est autre que l’amiral Anatole Cordonnier, c’est la seule photo de … Read more

A plea

Today, preservation breeders of asil Arabians in the USA breed on a small scale. They are fewer breeders than before and they are far between. Many of these breeders don’t always have the stallions their mares need, whether in their barns of just around the corner. Some breeders have the stallions but not the mares. … Read more

On Sa’dan Tuqan as Kuhaylan

The Abbas Pasha Manuscript [1993, edited by J. Forbis and G. Sherif], which is essentially the transcription by Abbas Pasha’s envoys of Bedouins’ testimonies about their horses, is the foremost primary source on the Bedouin-bred Arabian horse available today. Its hundreds of testimonies is the precious remnant of an oral culture, now long gone. No wonder modern Saudi families and clans … Read more

On hujaj as bona fide documents

The thread below contains very interesting and valuable observation by Joe Ferriss on Western need for a systematic classification of Bedouin strains, and by Lisa on the value of written versus oral information in Bedouin culture. Let me add the following general principles: The Bedouins’ culture was an oral one; information was transmitted orally between people of the same … Read more

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