One of the most interesting passages of Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals and Correspondence is her visit to the Bedouin Tarabin tribe of the Sinai peninsula and the Negev desert, during her and Wilfrid Blunt’s crossing from Cairo to Jerusalem in February 1881, and her account of their camel and horse-related traditions; here is on the camels, to set the stage for what will be more than one blog entry, and I will have to say more on the horses and legends associated to them: “A delul [female camel] or hajin [male camel] becomes asil like the English thoroughbred. Five generations of a thoroughbred sire are considered sufficient among Ayeydeh, Shuaga, Terabin, Naazeh [in reality Maazeh] and perhaps Howeytat, though as the last touch on the confines of [Arabian Peninsula Bedouin tribes of] Harb and Sherarat they ma others notions”. [February 11th, 1881] A lot of the tribes mentioned above appear in this map of the area in 1908: The Tarabin today number around half a million, spread across Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Jordan. In Egypt, they are mostly present in the Sinai, of which they are the largest Bedouin group, but also the Suez Canal cities and the…
During the Blunt’s visit to Jeddah around Christmas of 1880, “Wilfrid has met a man who came from Sana and told him that at some distance from Sana in the interior there are the Beni Husayn, Mohammed Bedouins who catch wild horses. They live in the district called Jofr [correction: it’s actually Jof] el Yemen and are very ‘adroit’ in riding….” [Lady Anne Blunt Journals and Correspondence, December 24, 1880] I am in Sana (San’aa) the capital of Yemen for two weeks, and although I am locked up in my work’s office and adjoining guest house for security reasons, it is the occasion for me too tell you about these Bedouins of Yemen: As Lady Anne wrote, these are the Dhu Husayn, an offshoot of the Dhu Mohammed, who hail from the large Yemeni tribal confederation of Bakil. Their tribal area is in Jawf/Jof el Yaman (the reference to Yemen is to differentiate it from the other Jawf/Jof of North, which is in Northern Saudi Arabia, just to the South of Jordan), to the north east of Sana. My colleague (a Senior Water Specialist at the World Bank office in Sana), Naif Abu Luhoum, is the from the chieftain family of the Dhu…
From Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals, December 15th, 1880, during her trip to Jeddah: “In the afternoon we called first on Omar Nasif. The chestnut mare still stands outside the little yard near the house…” Here are modern images of the Naseef house, one of the very few buildings still standing from the old down-town of Jeddah, which has all been razed to the ground, to give way to modern building in the 1960s (yet another beautiful Arab city destroyed…) For an inside tour of the Naseef house, and a view of the yard where that mare in Lady Anne’s Journals, see this blog entry here. The house as in other old Jeddah houses in apparently made of coral (yes, the stuff in the reefs) and of wood imported from what is today Indonesia, a legacy of the glorious (and little known) history of Jeddah as a cross-roads of trade between Egypt, East Africa and South East Asia (like Mukalla in Yemen, like Mocha, like Aden after that).
French equine librarian, collector and breeder, Philippe Deblaise just published the book “Tiaret, le reve Algerien” that will add tremendous value to the literature on Arabian horses, by pulling together the knowledge available about the glorious breeding program of the Arabian horse Stud of Tiaret, in Algeria. This stud was founded by the French in the 1870s, when France was the colonial power in Algeria, and relied exclusively on stallions and mares imported from desert-bred Arabians from Arabia. This stud is unique in the world as no stallion born outside desert Arabian was ever used at stud until Algerian independence in the 1960s. Click on the flyer (in French) to enlarge it.
It was in early 1928 according to French army officer Victor Muller in his book “En Syrie avec les Bedouins”. Hakim was the leader of the Fad’aan Bedouins when Davenport visited in 1906. Muller is a most reliable source since he was the military and intelligence commander of the “Bedouin country” (the part of Syria inhabited by Bedouins, from Jordan to Turkey and eastwards to Iraq) for several years. Among his feats was the peace treaty between the Fad’aan and the Shammar and the Bedouin conferences of Palmyra and Bu Kamal in the mid-1920s. Muller’s headquarters were in Deyr el-Zor.
Check it out here. By the way, the Homer Davenport collection is there too. Sample below, taken in the Cairo souk.
Today was one of those days when you receive a bottle you threw in the oceans of your memories ten years ago. Back in 2004, I made a note about a rare book I have long wanted to read or get a hold of. It’s French Army Commandant Victor Muller’s “En Syrie avec les Bedouins: les Tribus du Desert” (Paris, 1931). It’s a complete account of nomadic life in Syria in the early 30s, with references to horse-breeding, strains, and histories of battles during which horses were acquired. In my 2004 note, I was saying that only two copies of that book could be found for sale: one at a bookshop in Nice, France (which turned out to have closed); and another at L’Orientaliste bookshop in Cairo. I left it at that. Yesterday, I found this note, and this morning I entered L’Orientaliste, and asked them where they still had it. They did. I bought it and sent it for binding, as it’s in pretty bad shape. I still can’t believe I bought it, and that I will be able to read it soon (and share it with you). What a treasure.
Yesterday, Lee Oelllerich sent me these photos of the 1967 ‘Ubayyan stallion El-Haml (El Hamdan x Al Fellujah by Al Felluje) at 3 years old. What a horse, and what a combination of good horses. These BLUE STARs can surely improve any stock, Arabian or not, Al Khamsa or not. Click on the photos to enlarge them. Lee tells me El-Haml was a successful Race and Endurance horse who left for Germany in 1980, and ran his last flat race two weeks before exportation at age thirteen.
He was of course the owner of the “mare of Naqadan”, a Dahmah Shahwaniyah bred by Abdallah ibn Khalifah of Bahrain, which went to Abbas Pasha and is the tail female for ‘Azz, ‘Aziz, Sahab, Nasr (Kasida’s sire) and others. She is well documented here in the AK Roster. Together with the mare of Ibn Aweyde, she is one of the only mares mentioned in the Abbas Pascha Manuscript with modern day descendants. According to Muhammad Saud al-Hajri, Ibn Naqadan was ‘Abdallah son of Ali son of ‘Abdallah Naqadan frm the section of Aal Uthbah of the Aal Murra tribe, of which he was the leader at the time of Faysal Ibn Turki before the leadership went into another family. He was not from the ‘Ajman as Lady Anne mistakenly thought (one of her very few mistakes). On Aal Murra, everyone should read Donald Powell Cole’s: Nomads of the Nomads: The Al Murra Bedouin of the Empty Quarter.
He was obviously the owner of the bay Dahmah Najibah which went to the Abbas Pasha stud, and was the dam of the stallion Jerboa (“Jerbou”) the sire of Shueyman, who was in turn the sire of Helwa dam of Bint Helwa, etc. etc.His bay Dahmah Najiba of the Ibn Aweyde is one of the very very few horses described int he Abbas Pasha Manuscript with modern descendants today. The information about her is well summarized here in the Al Khamsa Roster. One minor correction is in order: According to the Al Khamsa Roster, translations of lists of Abbas Pasha horses published by Prince Mohamed Aly Tewfik [p89] confirms the acquisition of a bay Dahmah al-Najib mare, “mother the mare of Sami: owner Ibn-‘Uwaytah, father Duhayman.” It seems to me, reading the relevant entry in the Abbas Pasha Manuscript, that the “mare of Sami”, dam of the bay mare of Ibn Aweyde, should instead read the “mare of Shafi” and that would be her owner Shafi Ibn Shab’an, leader of the Bani Hajar of Qahtan, and the cousin of Ibn Aweyde. This mare is mentioned twice in this as “the mare of Shafi” in this entry. It looks like Prince Mohamed Aly…