Today the magnificent Clarion CF (Regency CF x Chinoiserie CF by Dharanad) owned by Kirby Drennan bred the Kuhaylat al-Krush mare Cinnabar Myst (ASF David x Mystalla by SL Jacob).
Is anyone keeping a log of part-Davenport Arabians? They used to be featured in Craver Farms’ newsletter Our Quest, but I haven’t seen a tally in many years. Isn’t this something an Al Khamsa volunteer would want to do? By the way, I am longing for a push to revive the identity of “Old American” asil Arabians as a group of horses, which are so different from the New Egyptian (post 1958) horses that constitute the overwhelming majority of show horses qualifying as Al Khamsa. These Old American Arabians, which as a group would include Davenports, Babson Egyptians, Doyles, plus *Turfa, Sirecho, Hallany Mistanny, plus horses from the Hamidie, Huntington, Harris, Brown and other older bloodlines, look a lot more like each other than each group looks like the New Egyptian horses as a group. They represent a set of horse types– which I lump under “Old American”, while recognizing wide variations within it– that is worth preserving in its own right, without further admixture of New Egyptian blood (the invading Nazeer and Moniet El Nefous influence, broadly speaking).
Check out this journal article by Louise Sweet in a 1965 issue of the “American Anthropologist” on “Camel Raiding of North Arabian Bedouin: A Mechanism of Ecological Adaptation”. The entire article is available for viewing free of charge.
Somehow I missed this 6 years old article on the Shammar of Iraq in French weekly Paris-Match newspaper, which is translated into English here. I wish I could find the original, so I can see the photos, especially that one: [PHOTO CAPTION (page 74): Proud of belonging to a dynasty of glorious horsemen, Sheikh Abdullah shows us a purebred Arab, one of the twenty horses in his personal stud farm.]
Abu al-Tayyeb is another one of these early Government Stud stallions in Syria, as was Sultan. That photo was also taken in 1958. He was reportedly a son of Krush Halba, the Kuhaylan Krush stallion from Lebanon that was sold to Turkey where he became a founding sire for the Turkish Arabian horse program. His dam was a Kuhaylat al-Krush from the Hama area in central Syria, and tracing to the Anazah Bedouins. His line is likely to be related to that of the Davenport imported mare *Werdi.
Video by Carol Mingst. I don’t know who the grey mare is, but she sure is impressive..
I just spoke to an old friend from Syria today. The economic situation is some parts of the country is so dire, cost of fodder has been multiplied by six, so much that people have been selling their asil mares and stallions to slaughterhouses in Iraq. I learned for instance that the young Kuhaylan al-Wati stallion from Shammar I had my eyes set on (below) was sold by the pound for meat. So sad, yet children are dying by the scores in both Syria and Iraq, so I will not shed a tear over a horse.
Bill Cooke gave Jeanne Craver permission, who gave me permission to use this previously unpublished *King John photo, courtesy the Arabian Horse Trust collections at the International Museum of the Horse in Lexington. He was a Saqlawi Jadran from the marbat of Dari al-Mahmud, Shaykh of Zawba’ Shammar in Abu Ghraib. This was the best marbat of Saqlawi Jadran in Arabia in the 1920s/30s. Please use proper credit (above) when using. The line died out in Al Khamsa with the death of Beau Nusik (Nusik x Reshan Azab by Janeo, a son of *King John) in 1984. Thanks, Bill and Jeanne.
I had never heard of this branch of Kuhaylan until Radwan Shabareq told me about a number of Kuhaylat al-Beed (plural of al-Abyad, femine al-Baida) at the stud of Dr. Iskandar Qassis in Aleppo in the 1960s. I don’t know from which Bedouin tribe they came from.
I am very fond of these, because Arabic names in the period before Islam did not yet have a religious connotation. One of my favorites is the masculine name Mu’awiyah. It’s the name of the first Ummayyad Caliph, Mu’awiyah Ibn Abi Sufyan (661-680 AD), as well as that one of the kings of the ancient South-Arabian kingdom of Kinda in the third century A.D, whose capital was Qaryat al-Faw, in south central Arabia. It’s also my cousin’s name.. Interestingly, although a masculine name, it means something like “barking bitches”, or better still, “whining bitches”. By the way, the article I linked to above mentions a number of Arabic inscriptions from the collection of Sam Roach of ARAMCO. I wander if that’s the same as the importer of four Roach Blue Start horses to the USA.
Bassam Hawarneh just informed me that the 2002 Hamdani Simri mare Jadah Selma (Paul Maud Dib x LR Jane by Maxxum CF), one of the last asil tail female descendants of the Blunt/Ali Pasha Sherif mare Sobha (Wazir x Selma) is now a riding horse in Alpharetta, GA. She is next on the Preservation Task Force’s agenda.
A lot has been taking place lately on the preservation front, which has not been appearing on this blog. It’s not quite for lack of time, it’s just that at some point this past year, I realized I needed to move from talking about things to helping get things done. And since a lot of that is process, and talking to people, and talking people into getting horses from vanishing lines, I have not been reporting on it here. The Al Khamsa Preservation Task Force, which I chair, has been particularly busy. Lately it scored a big success: the 2002 mare Jadah BellofTheBall (Invictus Al Krush x Belladonna CHF by Audobon out of LD Rubic), from the rare tail female line to the desert bred Kuahylat al-‘Ajuz mare *Nufoud of King Abd al-‘Aziz Aal Saud, and one of the last Sharp mares in the world (no Blunt/Crabbet blood in the pedigree) has been saved from a difficult situation and acquired by a dedicated preservation breeder. Jeannie Lieb of Carlisle, MA, is the new lucky owner of this nice mare, and a breeding to Triermain CF (Javera Thadrian x Demetria by Lysander) is planned for this summer. This development places the…
Teymur from Germany sent this old photo of the desert berd mare Fazila, a Jilfah by a Ma’naqi Sbayli, imported to Turkey in 1920s.
This weekend I went to see my mare 24 year old mare Jadiba in Pennsylvania. She is due in two weeks. I am praying for a successful delivery, and for a filly. These were the best photos I could get on the downhill lot.
Like Tripoli (Hanad x Poka), but even finer. Regatta CF (MV Reflection x Frill by Adrian) Photos by owner Cindi Pollman
Back in 2005, when we had just met, Hazaim al-Wair and I used to exchange horse photos on a quasi daily basis. One day he sent me this and two other photos of the stallions maintained by the Syrian Government’s Ministry of Agriculture in 1958. This photo shows the Ma’naqi Sbayli stallion Sultan.
Also from sporthorse-data.com is this photo of the 1969 ‘Ubayyah mare Bint Bint Muhaira (Ibn Fadl x Bint Muhaira by Sirech0), and the 1967 Hamdani stallion Sulka (Ibn Fadl x Blue Start by Ibn Fadl). Where are the descendants of these great horses? There should be hundreds of them today.
It’s the first time I see this photo of the 1946 Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz stallion Ibn Fadl (*Fadl x Turfa). I can’t help but marvel at how great a mare this *Turfa was. Photo from Sporthorse-data.com. It’s heartening to know he was put to good use and sired at least 50 foals.
Yasser Ghanim Barakat sent me this recent photo of the asil Kuhaylat al-Nawwaq Tahawi mare Felha (El Kharass x San’aa), aged 25. Felha was bred by Shaikh Soliman Eliwa al-Tahawi and is now owned by his grandson Hossam Abdullah Soliman. An ongoing campaign is currently taking place to get her and 11 other Tahawi mares accepted by the EAO and mtDNA testing was done to compare this line with that of another Tahawi Kuhaylat al-Nawwaq mare, *Malouma, as well with the existing K. al-Nawwaq lines in Syria and Lebanon.
A beautiful new website by Sandi Olson and Peter Bryant on another major passion of mine, Arabian archaeology.
Peter Harrigan’s latest article in Saudi Aramco World, on potential evidence for early equid domestication in Saudi Arabia.