Kina Murray kindly shared with me this rare photo of the 1946 Bahraini bay mare *Thorayyah, which was recently posted by a research group on Facebook; she was bred by Sheikh Khalifah Bin Mohamed Al Khalifah, Bahrain, then imported by to the USA John Rogers of California. She was apparently by a Hathfan out a Tuwayssah. Unfortunately, she left no asil descendants.
Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals entry for December 31, 1907 (page 327) contains this interesting mention (in relation to the Ali Pasha Sharif stallion Harkan): “I must go through the Ali Pasha Sherif Memoranda that I have with Mutlak, hhe will be able to clear up several points.” An excerpt of a much earlier Journal entry, made on March 5th, 1891, gives one example of these memoranda (in bold, below), about the stallion Amir (Aziz x Horra) the purchasing of which Lady Anne was then considering: “I copy out the memorandum Mr Flemotomo enclosed to us from the Pasha on the following day. “Grey horse Seglawi Jedran of Ibn Sudan, son of Horra, sister of Wazir, sire chestnut horse (Aziz) Dahman Shahwan son of the daughter of the daughter of the mare of Makadan. Foaled the — 1297. Price 200 (). His name Amir.” “N.B. I have inserted the name of Aziz as in other memorandum it is put in, see below. I hope we may be able to buy this horse.” Another memorandum follows in the same Journal entry, with less details: “The second shown us was a chestnut colt 5–6 years old […] he is described by Ali Pasha Sherif as…
Yesterday, I spent some time reading the story of al-Kuhaylah al-Harqah in the Abbas Pascha Manuscript (not the English version of Forbis and Sherif, but rather the large excerpts in Hamad al-Jassir’s Usul al-Khayl al-Arabiyyah al-Hadithah). The story of al-Harqah is remarkable for its simplicity (it’s not hard to follow), its conciseness (relative to other strains’ long-winded accounts in the Manuscript), its consistency (most witnesses interviewed relate the same story) and its comprehensiveness (from the originating Kuhaylat ‘Ajuz down to the mares that went to Abbas Pasha). For all these reasons it could serve as a case study of how strains changed hands and moved from tribe to tribe in Bedouin Arabia. The story is also remarkable as an account of how strains names are formed, an account of several Bedouin customs and traditions, and it can also be used to reconstruct a rough chronology. I would like to document all this at some point. Here’s a summary of how the strain got its name: A Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz mare was part of the ransom the Shammar (then all staying in the Jabal Shammar) asked the captured Sharif of Mecca to pay in return for his freedom; a descendant of this mare (still a Kuhaylat…
Now that I have read the Abbas Pasha Manuscript — the equivalent of the Bible for Arabian horses — from cover to cover a fair number of times, I have learned that all Kuhaylan ‘Ajuz horses originate from two wellsprings: the Sharif of Mecca in the Hijaz, and the major tribe of Qahtan, and more specifically the Qahtan sub-tribe of ‘Abidah in Wadi Tathlith (SW Saudi Arabia). I don’t know yet what the connections between these two sources are. The story of al-Harqah (originally a Kuhaylat ‘Ajuz) is illustrative of the horses that came out of the Sharif of Mecca.