Regina and Warren from Germany wrote the other day to give me an update about their asil Arabians which are from desert bred Saudi and Bahraini lines (no Egyptian blood) by way of the US, and from the rare and precious Dahman Shahwan strain. Here is the 2009 Dahmah mare AAS Muharraq (AAS Theeb x AAS Ghazala by Ibn Taam-Rud), whose tail female is to *Savannah, a mare bred by Shaykh Salman Ibn Hamad al-Khalifah of Bahrain and imported from Bahrain to the United States of America in 1954 by K.M. Kelly. Note the striking resemblance with the mare Bahraini Bint El Bahrein of Lady Anne Blunt in Sheykh Obeyd, of same strain, marbat and same provenance (the Royal Stud of Bahrain, we need to run an mtDNA test). Striking, no, even though AAS Muharraq has not one ounce of Bint El Bahrein blood! This one is Ralihadiyyah, Muharraq’s brother. Note the shoulder. This one is his brother Gudaibiyah, Muharraq’s other brother.
I was re-reading Edouard’s December 11th, 2012 post on the photo of Haleb in 1906 with the Anazah Bedouin and how he is a “benchmark”. Haleb was a huge early influence on me as a novice because I noticed this minimalist aesthetic that he had in the photos that I had seen — the same quality in which we admire the Gazelle for its natural beauty combined with supreme function. Nothing to excess and everything in its place as Homer Davenport once said. No doubt this is what the Bedouin celebrated in their poetry. In a certain light, even the camel is a beautiful animal for its supreme function without any excess for its purpose. Now is wish to comment about benchmarks. I still tend to see the Egyptian horse in kinships with its tribal bred cousins rather than apart from them. I realize that modern tastes and a restless…
Philippe Paraskevas has posted dozens of photos of the asil Arabians of the Royal Stud of Bahrain on his Facebook page, the Egyptian Alternative, under three albums: stallions, mares, fillies and colts. If you don’t have a Facebook account, I would get one just for that.
Here are excerpts from the report the Al Khamsa Preservation Task Force submitted to the Al Khamsa Board of Directors at this January’s winter Board meeting: Al Khamsa Preservation Task Force January 2013 Update Task Force Goals for 2013: 1) identify bloodlines in danger of being lost, and classify them in order of most urgent to less urgent (Code Red and Code Orange lists); write about them and advocate for them; search for horses from these bloodlines and their owners; establish a database for these bloodlines; the task force is limited to endangered Ancestral Elements and Foundation horses, plus some rare and significant tail females that are not otherwise endangered when found in the middle of the pedigree. For example, it’s about preserving the *Aire tail female, rather than the line of *Aire in the middle of the pedigrees. 2) reach out to owners of horses from above bloodlines to encourage them to preserve these horses, and if they can’t find new preservation homes for them, help them find preservation homes; 3) provide assistance with registration issues faced by owners of such horses; Since the last update on October 2012, we did the following things: –locate five Davenport fillies of…
This is how of the rescued Davenport Hadban Enzahi mares, RL Bilquis (DDA Rasan x RL Boomerette) looks like when in the knowledgeable, caring and responsible hands of someone like Jeannie Lieb. This mare, 6 months pregnant, was a pack of bones when Jeannie rescued her, and it was not certain she would survive.
Based on the racing records of some specific horse lines in the Middle East, and on the identity of horses from these lines imported to the USA, here is a list of US Arabian horse lines that would be expected to do well in the competitive racing and endurance realms, in addition to the *Hadba Davenport line, already discussed below: — Any line tracing to any of the Hearst imports, especially *Layya, *Lebnaniah, *Bint Rajwa, *Mounwer, *Bourhane and *Kouhailane. All these were good race horses in Lebanon prior to their importation to the USA in 1947. There is one Al Khamsa line left to *Layya. — Any line tracing to *King John, a good race horse himself when in Egypt, and a representative of the superior line of Saqlawi Jadran of Dari al-Mahmoud, many representatives of which were either race winners in the Middle East or sires and dams of race winners (e.g., the desert bred Saqlawi Ebbo, a close relative of *King John’s, and the sire of ‘Ataba, an outstanding race horse who sired the Hindi US import of *Bint Attebe). *King John had a thin line in Al Khamsa through Beau Nusik, but it is now gone. —…
I enjoyed the story that Edouard related about the Shammar Hadba female line and indeed it has fame in American racing bloodlines through Kontiki. It also interesting to note that in the Al Khamsa bloodlines one branch of the Hadba Davenport dam line has distinguished itself in racing according to AJC and DataSource. First of all, posted above are two chestnut mares and a yearling colt. The first mare is the Davenport mare Waddarlah (El Alamein x Trisarlah) and the second mare is her full sister Letarlah. Both of these mares were bred by Carolyn (Kiki) Case of the famed Glorieta Ranch. Glorieta is mainly renowned for the straight Egyptians it bred which have a big international following particularly in the Gulf and Egypt. However Kiki also had these two Davenport mares, one of which was at Glorieta when I visited in the mid 1970s, that was Letarlah. Waddarlah had just gone to Illinois before I arrived and became well known in Davenport breeding, particularly for her daughters Bint Oberon and full sister Aischia. Letarlah remained at Glorieta until the early 1980s when she then produced for Davenport lines. Prior to their Davenport breeding careers these two sisters at Glorieta…
Jeanne Craver just shared with some of us on the Al Khamsa board this video of the WAHO 2007 convention in Syria. Jeanne expresses it well when she writes: “It is such a bittersweet film, linking our minds to that wonderful trip and all of the spectacular photos, with the constant reminder of the disaster in Syria now….”
Today marks the 5th anniversary of Daughters of the Wind, and the 5th anniversary of my daughter Samarcande who inspired this website. She is now a young lady, a future champion swimmer and horse-back rider. She also loves ice cream.. I realize I have been less active than in previous years; this is partly because I am a much busier person now than I was before, and partly because the needs to act, and act fast, before it is too late on preservation emergencies in North America. This has increasingly shifted my focus from advocating for the preservation of the precious few Asil Arabian horses to actually helping undertake the time-consuming, labor-intensive, tedious and often uninspiring but oh-so-rewarding tasks of preservation in the context of the Al Khamsa Preservation Task Force: identifying the horses; contacting their owners, finding new homes; arranging leases, shipping, following up on breeding, etc. I will also be moving to Egypt for work in a few months, for a two or three year stint, and I hope I will be both less busy at work and more active on this website. Meanwhile, Samarcande was joined by a little sister three months ago. Solenn Hend Al-Dahdah is…
Last week I was talking with a Syrian friend from Aleppo over the phone. Conversations always start with updates on the security situation there, and end with what they were supposed to start with — horse talk. I was telling him about the recent concerted preservation effort that is underway in the USA, to conserve what remained of the Davenport Arabians of the Hadban Enzahi strain, which goes back to the desert mare *Hadba of the Northern Shammar Bedouins, imported to the USA by Homer Davenport in 1906. I was telling him how much I was struck by the racy, elongated, body structure of these Davenport Hadbans — see Anita Enander’s photo of the heavily linebred Hadban RL Boomerette as one example. He laughed, and told me how a now deceased horse merchant had told him that, in the past, the particular branch of the Hadban Enzahi strain from the Northern Shammar (which *Hadba belongs to) were very prized as racehorses across the Middle East, despite their small size. He told me the story of one of these Hadban stallions, who raced and won at the Beirut racetracks, was so successful there that he was sent to the Iraq racetracks, where…
The blind Hamdaniyah Simriyah mare Jadah Kerasun, one of the last four remaining tail females to the Saud Royal Stud import *Samirah seems to finally have found a permanent home with Marge Smith of Oregon. Pamela Klein agreed to haul the mare from the Midwest to the Northwest at a discount rate, and Carrie Slayton single-handedly fundraised to raise the money for the shipping expenses, through facebook and on this website. This constitutes one of the nicest examples of the Al Khamsa preservation minded groups coming together to take collective action.