This is the text of Jane Ott’s obituary by Edie Booth on the Blue Arabian Horse Catalogue Facebook page: “On Wednesday, April 24th, 2013, at 1:50 AM, Miss Jane Llewellyn Ott slipped peacefully away. Miss Ott is a major historic figure and prime mover in recognizing the loss of the original desertbred horses among American breeders. Her primary research work is The Blue Arabian Horse Catalog. The Catalog listed all the horses Miss Ott could find, frequently with the help of Carl Raswan, that were authenticated as the original horses of the Bedouin tribes of Arabia. These horses were jotted down in a notebook with a blue cover, and the additional grouping of a star/asterisk was added for the horses that were without the Managhi strain of horses anywhere in their pedigree. This separation was due to unknown background on some of the Managhi horses, and as Miss Ott might say, the separation may not matter at all, but if it does matter and all the horses have been mixed, there is no way back. My introduction to Miss Ott was in 1986 after reading an interesting full page ad in EQUUS magazine. Located about 180 miles and under 3…
Just love this photo of Flourishes CF (Lydian x Fragrance CF by Regency CF) on Randal Abler’s Facebook page. That Anthesis dynasty (Fragrance, Chancery, Firebolt, Lexington) is quite something within the Davenport lines.
Randal Abler posted this photo of Vice Regent CF son Laarado (x Laarisa EAF, who is by Alaadri). He is owned by Kathy Kelly in Georgia. My Jamr Al Arab (out of Jadiba) is his half brother.
This she-camel recently won first prize in a regional Gulf beauty contest in the category of white camesl “al-wuduh”. I am increasingly interested in the production of camel beauty criteria in modern Arabia, because unlike Arabian horses, the lack of significant camel breeding in the West could mean that the codification of such criteria for camels may have taken place without Western influence.
That’s how the clerk at the Egyptian consulate in Washington DC spelled my name on my visa’s receipt, when I dropped my passport last week.. I had always thought of myself as a Ma’naqi, but this fellow did not seem to agree.
HH Spartan Krush (HH Solstice Krush x HH Nadirah Krush), the young colt at Kim Davis’ in Capron, Illinois, is simply magnificent.
Carrie Slayton of the Al Khamsa Preservation Task Force has succeeded in placing the blind 1998 mare Jadah Kerasun (ASF Raphael x ASF Ubeidiyah by ASF Ezra), a rare Hamdaniyah Simiryah tail female to the Ibn Saudi mare *Samirah in the hands of preservation breeder Marge Smith of Oregon. The mare just got there yesterday. In related news, Carrie sent the following two pictures of the other remaining Samirah tail female mares: 1993 Jadah Samirah (ASF Hercules x ASF Ubeidiyah by ASF Ezra) and her 2008 daughter Samirahs Adlayah (by Jadah Echos Amir). Pictures are the mares’ owner Stephanie Theinert McCloud. Both look very good. By the way, this is the same tail female as some of the Rushcreek Endurance horses.
Does anyone know which mare Major Upton is referring to in this section of his “Gleanings”, Chapter 4, “Visit to the Sabaah”? “Towards the close of a long and trying day, we made repeated offers for a bay mare, five years old and unblemished; she was a beautiful creature, just under fifteen hands in height, very bloodlike, but wildly excitable, glared at us like a tigress, and resented our approach even. Crowds gathered round as we frequently repeated our offer. The Shaykh indicated she was not to be taken away, and we thought we were on the eve of obtaining her, but suddenly, among the sound of many voices and loud talking, the mare was taken off by her owner. […] It was Sulayman ibn Mirshid who put the halter rope in my hands; her price was told out on the table, exactly that which I had offered, and handed over to her former owner, and the mare was picketed at our tent. A very simple certificate of the mare’s breeding and family was written out at my request, in the presence of the two Shaykhs, to which they placed their seals, one as a guarantee, the other as a…
This nice portrait of the Syrian desert-bred stallion Nimr Shabareq unfortunately sold on Feb. 2013. I wish I had know about it.
The horses of Mustafa Jabri, located in rebel-held areas, were stolen and sold to Turkey, and so were the horses of Fouad al-Attar and other breeders. Half of the horses of Radwan Shabareq have died, not from starvation (plenty of grass there) but from inhaling strange and suspicious gases. The other are sick. Their caregivers has to endure countless ordeals to prevent the remaining horses from being stolen or confiscated. Sigh.
I am now told that the two horses offered by the King of Bahrain to the Queen of England are stallions, not mares, and that the Bahrainis brought over 7 or 8 stallions which were displayed at the Royal Windsor Horse Show, partly as Bahrain was sponsoring the big FEI Endurance ride at the same venue. Each of the 7-8 stallions appear to be from a different strain. You can see amateur photos here, here and here. The one below is my favorite (URL copied and redirects to website, with credits to “AnnaMaisy25” who took the picture). He appears to be one of the two offered to the Queen.
Another piece of good news from preservation breeder Jeannie Lieb yesterday, with new hope for the Davenport *Hadba rare and endangered tail female. “RL Thunder Cloud x RL Bilquis delivered a beautiful chestnut filly with a perfect blaze, 3 white anklets and 1 white sock, last night around 11:00pm. Mother and daughter are doing great and this little gal is a firecracker!” *Hadba was the war mare of ‘Ajil ibn Zaydan al-Jarba and was taken by the Ottomans when this Shammar rebel Bedouin leader was killed. She was later resold and ended up with Homer Davenport who imported her to the USA in 1906. This is the same tail female line as the racing legend Kontiki.
It’s that time of the year again, and Arabian foals are popping up here and there. One of the newborns I chose to feature is little Niinah Nufoud (AEP Kamar x AB Dafiinah by HHA Manabi), a 2013 bay Kuhaylat al-Ajuz tracing to *Nufoud of the Saudi Royal Stud. This little filly traces twice to *Nufoud as her sire, Monica Respet’s AEP Kamar is also from this line. She is her dam’s and her owner Linda Uhrich’s first filly and represents a ray of hope for this precious tail female line. Congrats to both Linda and Monica.
Read the story here. Hopefully these would end with Jenny Lees of Pearl Island Stud, and be bred to the Bahraini stallions already there (thanks Jeanne Craver for the link).
I have always been intrigued by some of the early sources of RAS foundation horses, and wanted to learn more about them. I am not only referring to the Princes (Mohammed Ali, Ahmad Kamal, Yusuf Kamal, Kemal el-Dine Husayn, etc) and Lady Anne Blunt, but also by the more minor sources. One of these is “H.E. Lewa Ibrahim Khairi Pasha”, the owner of the mare Badaouia (RAS), the dam of Kheir and grand-dam of Gassir. Lets deconstruct that name for a second: “H.E.” is obviously “His Excellency”, a senior mark of respect for ministers and other high level officials. Lewa, as I once told Joe Ferriss and Jeanne Craver who reflected it in the revised entry for Badaouia (RAS) in Al Khamsa Arabians III, means “Major General”, and is a senior army rank. My father, General Salim Al-Dahdah, a retired two-star army general, is a Lewa, in Arabic. Pasha is the title of nobility we all know. This yields “His Excellency, Major General Ibrahim Khairi Pasha”. Armed with this new understanding, I looked up his name in Arabic in Google, for starters. Here is what I found: 1) In one source: 19-year old Gamal Abd al-Nasser (Egypt second military ruler…
I am extremely impressed with the structure and conformation of Jenny Krieg’s filly, Ubayyat al-Bahrain, one of two daughters of the twenty seven year old desert-bred Bahraini stallion Mlolshaan Hager Solomon, out of the Ubayyah mare DB Kalilah. I don’r think she is even two years old. To be honest, I have never seen such depth of girth, shortness of back, strength of musculature, and length of ear (all marks of an asil ware mare) in any Arabian horse in the USA before. She reminds of war mares I have seen in Syria including Mari a Shuwaymah Sabbah at Radwan Shabareq and Nawwarah a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah at Abdel Mohsen al-Nassif. That’s how war mares in the desert were like. Really. Seeing this photo encouraged me to breed to this Bahraini stallion and I will do it as early as this spring, even if I would have preferred not to have to fork out 1,000 USD in breeding fees. The image below is copy of Loan Oak Photography.