Month: July 2012

My heart is bleeding every day with what is going on in Syria, and Aleppo and Homs in particular, where I spent the nicest childhood and teenage days. Ever since things have started taking an uglier turn over the past months, I have lost all sense of joy and laughter, and I now find that life has no taste. A part of me is collapsing before my eyes, as I am watching (and sometimes even looking away) powerlessly. I lost an old uncle in Homs, family members were wounded, and most of my extended family has been displaced from Homs and now Aleppo; my grandfather’s house in the old Christian neighborhood of Hamidie in Homs has been reduced to rubble, and many of the places I grew up in no longer exist. For those of you who do not know Aleppo, it is the jewel on Syria’s crown, one of those rare and precious places like Rome, Paris, Istanbul or Fes in Morocco or Ispahan in Iran, which if destroyed, would bring down with it a sizable chunk of our collective human heritage.. it’s the oldest city in the world, a place where cultures have converged for millennia, where Arabs of…

While Edouard is preparing to return home, I thought it would be fun to post a few images. Being a visual person, I so often see common features among unrelated bloodlines that I thought it would be fun to post these two sets of comparisons. The first is the Davenport bred chestnut stallion Plantagenet, born 1976 in the U.S., a popular sire in the 1980s and below him is the straight Egyptian stallion Nasr, born 1918 in Egypt, sire of Sirecho and grandsire of Rabanna. I love this light airy trot exhibited by both which when seen almost leaves no sound as the horse’s feet touch ground. The Pritzlaff stallion Oracle RSI also moved like this.                                         The second set of images is the EAO grey stallion Akhtal, born 1967 and an important sire in Egyptian bloodlines, and below him is a Muniqi Hadruj stallion who was the senior stallion of the Tai Bedouin tribe when I visited the tribe in 1996. I found some interesting comparisons here in overall proportions and I believe they probably had similar body language as…

I saw this pretty 16 year old desert-bred Kuhaylah Nawwaqiyah mare during my visit to the Tahawis last weekend. She belongs to Mrs Helga, the wife of Sh. Sulayman al-Tahawi. She is perfect. She is one of the tribal mares the Tahawis are trying to register with the EAO. I always forget if her name is Farida or Mayssa. One is the daughter of the other.

Monica Respet and Linda Uhrich — both great friends and amazing persons — took a day trip to see my Jadiba and her new colt Jamr, and they sent me this picture. Monica painstakingly uploaded and emailed me 36 pictures of mother and son.

Friday July 13, Jadiba delivered a chestnut colt by Vice Regent CF, while I was in the Nile delta area visiting the Tahawis. She is doing well, and so is the foal. I am told he has a large blaze and two diagonal white socks and a hot temper. I am happy all went well, yet I can’t help whining: given her age (24 years this summer) and her importance to my preservation program of Old American lines (she is basically of Doyle and Davenport lines and tail female to *Wadduda), I was really hoping for a filly. I don’t have photos yet, but I will get some soon. While I was complaining, I also found a name for the colt, in keeping with the J letter: he will be named Jamr. Jamr means ember(s) in Arabic, and, other than being a really old Arabic word, I think it’s fitting for a chestnut colt full of fire. I especially like the Wikipedia definition of it: “An ember is a glowing, hot coal made of greatly heated wood, coal, or other carbon-based material that remain after, or sometimes precede a fire. Embers can glow very hot, sometimes as hot as the…

Page 133, where he discusses big race-horse stables at the Beirut racetrack: “Walking on the footsteps of H.R.H. Prince Mansour [son of King Abd al-Aziz ibn Saud, and the owner of a large stable at the Beirut racetrack] is his brother H.R.H. Prince Badr ibn Saud, who launched his own stables in Beirut, which brought together a nucleus of the best horses; [his stud] will grow and prosper because of his efforts, which we thank. Good results [i.e., in the races] have begun to show. The stars among his horses have begun to rise, and among these Namnum and Balaybil and Sawlajan, and others. God willing, they will be followed by others among the best of his horses.”  Barazi was a very cautious and diplomatic writer who made sure he never angered anyone, and you have to read between the lines. The words “nucleus”, “stars among his horses”, “among the best of his horses” leave no doubt to the fact that he had other, less good, less authentic horses beyond the “nucleus”, the “stars” and the “best of his horses”, who, how to put it, were not so reputable. Another thing: you will hear more about this Balaybil, once I have done my due diligence on him. This may take years.…

Anthesis CF (Plantagenet x Meringue by Sir Marchen), now 30, is one of the nicest asil mares of Davenport lines alive today, in my opinion. She has produced a string of very special horses including Firebolt by Clarion CF, Lexington CF by Regatta CF, Fragrance CF and Chancery CF by Regency CF, and others.

I feel so very lucky that Mohammad Abdallah Saoud al-Tahawy and Yasser Ghanim al-Tahawy gifted me a xeroxed copy of the book of Ali al-Barazi on Arabian horses, which I had lost several years ago. That book revives bits and pieces of Northern Arabian Bedouin oral history which had died with the passing away of the old story tellers of Homs and Hama in the 1980s and 1990s. This was the time when the last of the people who had known the old Bedouin way of life passed away. I was lucky to have met these people toward the end of their lives. This era is now over forever because the old people of today, those who are 80 in 2012 were born in the early 1930s, came of age in the 1950s and so were too young to have witnessed the last Bedouin raids and other aspects of Bedouin lifestyle. Anyway here’s one snippet from the Barazi book in case I lose it again, with my rough translation: “among the famous Ma’naqi Sbaili horses was the stallion of Darwish Ibn Damnan of the Sba’ah, which large numbers of Bedouins used to flock to from far away places to breed their mares. This stallion was…

Full sister of Bint al-Barra above, Cinnabar Myst (ASF David x Mystalla) was bred to Clarion CF (Regency x Chinoiserie) last week. Also on lease from Trish Stockhecke.

And this is Bint al-Barra (ASF David x Mystalla), the Kuhaylat al-Krush which I leased from Trish Stockhecke of Canada.Photo by the same talented photogpapher.    

Here is the Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz mare Jadah BelloftheBall (Invictus Al Krush x Belladonna CHF), tail female to *Nufoud who is currently at Craver Farms to be bred to Triermain CF and who belongs to Jeannie Lieb.

 I am especially pleased with how my little Wadd is turning out; the father-to-daughter inbreeding on Triermain was a gamble, and it paid off. I was worried about him turning out “too pretty”, as in “feminine”, but he’s looking just fine, so far. Those of you who have been following this blog for some time know that I really dislike feminine stallions whatever their strain, and ‘refined’ (naa’im) is by no means  an adjective any Bedouin would ever use on a stallion to praise him. A true Arabian horse is not a poodle nor a china doll. A true Arabian stallion — and only Bedouins set the standard for what ‘true’ means here, at least that’s the truth I choose to abide by — MUST exude and even ooze masculinity, but can be gentle and kind at the same time, although he does not have to. A true Arabian stallion is a ‘lord of the desert’ — ‘un Seigneur’ as Robert Mauvy would put it; he rules over all the living beings within his sight, including us humans; he “occupies a territory”, in the zoological meaning of the phrase, like lions or wolves; the air in that territory is electrified by his presence; he inspires awe and respect; you don’t pet him, you…

and here’s Wadd (Triermain x Wisteria by Triermain) who is 9 months old and who looks a lot like the rest of the family, especially his older brother Tantris, now dead, by Javera Thadrian.   

Here’s Wadhah (Javera Thadrian x Wisteria)  

Yesterday Anita Westfall (photographer emeritus) was at Craver Farms and she took thousands of pictures. Anita is not a professional photographer, she does it just for fun, yet her name will come down in the breed’s hirtory as the creator of some of the Arabian breed’s most iconic shots, including these of Prince Hal (Tripoli x Dharebah), Brimstone (Dharantez x Tyrebah), Monsoon (Tripoli x Ceres), Tybalt (Tripoli x Asara) and Javera Thadrian (Thane x HB Diandra) — click on the links. Photos of Anita are known to have converted dozens of people, young and old to the Arabian horse cause. Anyway, Anita took some photos of my horses there, including the young Wadhah and Wadd, and the stallion Monologue, the latter jointly owned with Darlene Summers. Here’s Monologue’s:

I am in Cairo for work, for the next few days, coming from Tunis. Very interesting time, horse wise and politics wise. I can’t say the same about the traffic though. I will never get used to it.

Abdur Rahman Mohamed is the new owner of Lexington CF (Regatta CF x Anthesis CF by Plantagenet) and he sent me these photos of his stallion, which the Davenport breeders community thought was lost in a West Virginia sale. Not professional shots (heck, none of the recent photos on this website are professional shots but I couldn’t care less), but they do show some of the horse, who is one of the greats. He is happy and loved and lives near Chicago, IL.    

There an ongoing email conversation between a number of us about coming up with a list of existing priority stallions of Davenport lines with no progeny so far, which should not be gelded if at all possible, or only gelded after being collected and frozen, following the recent gelding (for valid reasons) of a good stallion. This goes along the lines of other ongoing conversations in preservation circles in the USA about prioritizing preservation projects, because we obviously can’t save them all. If you have suggestion for horses on this priority list, feel free to come up with them. One rule: it can’t be your own stallion. It would be too easy.

Not sure how clear this drawing of the mare Sahara is. She is the desert bred Kuhaylat al-Mimrah mare imported to Poland from Arabia in1845 by Count Julius Dzieduszycki, but don’t you think she looks an awful lot like the mare GH Janet (Thane x HB Diandra) at 0:21 in the youtube video here:    

I am back in hotel room in Tunis after a long way at work, and I am looking at a copy of Al Khamsa Arabians III I brought with me to give to a friend in Egypt. I just came across a paragraph from an aticle by Michael Bowiling, reprinted from the Sept/Oct 1997 issue of Arabian Visions that I had not noticed before: As to the notion sometimes encountered that preservation breeding is not compatible with selection for improvement or with breeding “quality horses”, I think there are two separate ideas here: we want to improve our individual animals, in the sense that breeding to combine more of the best features of our kind of horse in each individual. What we do not subsribe to is the conventional vision that one can “improve the breed”, which seems to mean, in practice, “make it look more like some other breed”. Most of us are breeding within specific pedigree limits precisely because in our experience they turn out specific kinds of good Arabians”. I wish I knew how to put things as concisely and eloquently as Michael does.

Today, my 27 year old Ma’naqiyah Sbayliyah mare Dakhala Sahra (Plantagenet x Soiree by Sir) was bred to Monologue CF (Riposte X Soliloquy CF by Regency CF), through artificial insemination at Tom and Jess Maiyer’s in Galion, OH. If she conceives, there will be an embryo transfer to one of the Maiyer’s mares. This is a foal I have been planning to breed for at least seven years now. Tom and Jess are piloting an experience in repro breeding services (AI, ET, embryo freezing) jointly with Galloping T vet services for preservation purposes. Another of my mares is there too, the K. Haifiyah Javera Chelsea (Thane x HB Diandra) as well as the Hamdaniyah Simriyah mare ASF Ubeidiyah from the Institute for the Desert Arabian Horse.