This morning while looking at old pictures I stumbled on two photos of my first mare (or at least the first mare of my father’s stud that I considered mine): Halima, registered in Volume 1 of the Lebanese Studbook as Al Tuwayssa (Malik x A Tuwayssah mare by Radwan), was a 1986 grey mare of the old Tuwayssan strain, and will forever be my favorite Arabian mare. She is the reason for and the earliest manifestation of my passion for desert Arabian horses. She was bred by my father, who bought her 26 year old dam from the late Fawaz al-Rajab, a horse merchant from Homs in the early eighties. Her sire was the Saqlawi Jadran stallion Malek, the last asil stallion of Lebanese lines and a favorite of my father’s. I posted photos of him on this blog a few years ago. Click here to see them. Her dam was a very small bay mare with a beautiful classic head, sired by the Ma’naqi Sbayli stallion Radwan. Radwan traced to Sba’ah ‘Anazah bloodlines, and was standing at stud in Homs after a good career at the racetrack in Beirut, although he did not produce many race winners himself. The small…
This facebook website pictures some of the widespread desctruction that befell several historical sites and old cities in Syria. “Like it” or rather, dislike it..
I am quoting this passage of Wilfrid Scawen Blunt’s “My Diaries, being a personal narrative of events, 1888-1914” about his visit to the stud of the Ottoman Sultan in 1893, page 126: “In the evening we drove to the Sweet Waters and were shown the Sultan’s mares. There were, I believe, about 150 of them, all ‘mares from the Arabs’, but the greater part of them of very small account. Among the herd, however, one was able to pick out about a dozen really good ones, and two or three of the first class. But there was no mare there at all equal to Ali Pasha Sharif’s best, or the best of our own. The best I found had come from Ibn Rashid who, two years ago, sent thirty. But the Egyptian who manages the establishment tells me they will insist upon tall horses, and I fancy the Bedouin who send the Sultan mares get the big ones on purpose for him, and keep the little ones, which are the best. There was a great hulking mare which Sotamm Ibn Shaalan had brought with him, one I feel sure was never foaled among the Roala. Of horses, they showed us…
Check out the hundreds of beautiful photos of Davenport horses in Christine Emmert’sfolder of the ‘not yet sorted’ section of the Davenport Arabian Horse Conservancy website. Most photos were taken at Michael Bowling’s open barn/house in September 2012. Wonderful collection of horses including: Pretty Special CF, Eldar HD, Poeticus HD, Latitude HD, Porte CF, Pirouette CF, ADA Lionne, Almohada, Aurecole CF, etc, and the gorgeous Fragrance CF, pictured below. Photos by Christine Emmert.
I am going to start a new series on this blog on “ten myths about Egyptian pedigrees”. Stay tuned.
Jeanne Craver sent me this photo of the black Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz stallion Jadah Sharuuq (Lifes Capade LD x Belladonna CHF by Audobon), a Sharp (no Blunt/Crabbet blood) stallion bred by Randall and Mary Sue Harris of Peoria, IL, from lines from Carol Lyons. This rare and precious stallion is just five generations removed from the 1925 desert bred Saudi mare *Nufoud, in the dam line. He combines in my opinion, the best of American asil Arabian bloodlines: the Davenports, the Saudi Arabian imports of Albert Harris, the blood of *Turfa up close, and the Egyptian lines of H.H. Prince Mohammed Ali (*Fadl and *HH … Hamida). Jeanne had already sent me a photo of his beautiful dam Belladonna CHF — click here.
Recently I reactivated my “Daughters of the Wind” page on Facebook. Everything I post here will show there, and so will the comments you post here. One basic rule I learned from the social media types at my work is that, if you want to reach more people, you’d better go where they already are (i.e., to Facebook) rather than have them come to you (i.e., this website). Of course I will also write from this website here, and those among you who are blessed enough not have a Facebook account will not be missing anything.
The other day, Jeannie Lieb pointed me to an excellent Davenport Hamdani stallion which I had not heard about before: Titian CF (Riposte x Neroli by Regency), a full blood brother to my and Darlene’s Monologue CF. Look at his long neck and his balanced conformation.
Also from Facebook — and I gave up on trying to compete with it here, lol — comes this gorgeous photo which Edna Ehret posted of the asil 1984 Ma’naqi Sbaili stallion Dakhala Bashiq (Plantagenet x Soiree by Sir), the full brother of my 1985 Dakhala Sahra, both bred by Jeanne Craver. Two failed embryo transfer attempts on Sahra so far, third is the charm, please wish me luck. Mrs. Ehret sold him to a person whose name she does not remember.
Bonnie Brown Duecker posted this photo on Facebook of her lovely 28 year old Kuhaylah Hayfiyah mare Pretty Special CF (Lysander x Pretty Fancy by Ionian), one of the last Lysander daughters. Photo by Ch. Emmert.
These two photos of Ribal (Berk x Rijma by Rijm) I had not seen before.
One reason I enjoy keeping this blog is the unexpected encounters that I had the chance to make through it over its nearly five years of existence. One such encouter was the one with Obeyd al-‘Utaibi (“a.k.a Pure Man”) a ‘Ataiba Bedouin of Saudi citizenship who maintains the spirit of old Arabian Bedouin horse breeding — as opposed to the new Arabian horse breeding spirit largely prevailing in the Gulf today, which is not based on old Bedouin knowledge and practices and is basically just mimicking Western practices, minus the West’s knowledge (there are exceptions, of course). Another was the encounter with the Tahawi clan (Yehia, Mohammed, and of course Yasser) a couple of years later. Great things happened as a result of both encounters, knowledge gaps were filled, missing pieces of puzzle put together, and in the Tahawi case great progress was made on the preservation of the few remaining asil mares they have. The latest encounter of this type took place when Jibril Kareem Melko of the UK contacted me recently. He is the grandson of Mrs. Nazeera Qassis who was the niece of Dr. Iskandar Qassis. Dr. Qassis was the foremost preservationist Syrian horse breeder in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, a well of…
Just like “code is poetry” to the WordPress blogging community, to me the way sires and dams, strains and names, tail males and tail females combine to make a pedigree come to life feels like the rhymes and rythm of verses in a poem. Bad pedigrees are like bad poems, I cannot read them without cringing. A good pedigree on the other hand is something I can gaze at for hours, marveling at the delicate craftsmanship and genius — sometimes unintentional — behing them. Look at this one for instance, or this one, or this one: can you hear them speaking to you? Below, my favorite poem, from Rimbaud
A great article by Rick Synowski by Michael Bowling and RJ Cadranell — of course, sorry — on “Reconstructing Domow”, that matriach of old American breeding. I never tire of re-re-reading it. I leased two Krush mares with Domow in the pedigree. The usual instruction with this photo: flip your head 30 degrees to the right when looking at it.