Stan, now 10 years old (big boy!) and Haykal, 5 months, are equally handsome and are good friends.
Walid’s mare, Mouna (Kesseb x Mamdouha by Ilamane), a 2000 grey, is one of the last, if not the last, asil Shuwaymah Sabbah in Tunisia (Tosca line back to Primevere, a foundation mare of the Tiaret Stud in Algeria). She is special in that she is a younger mare that is very close to the desert (Barr, Cheikh El Ourbane, Mansoura are very close, and Bango and El Managhi are not far behind). She is also special in that she does not trace to Esmet Ali, who is ubiquitous in Tunisian breeding. She is also rich in bloodlines from the stud of French Navy Admiral Anatole Cordonnier, as it is very rare to find the blood of Cordonnier’s 1959 Ilamane (David x Berriane by Titan) so close up in modern Tunisian pedigrees. Judging from the photos, Mouna looks like she is a strongly build, well-conformed, deserty mare of the style to be found in Syria before the civil war. Walid is selling his mare, and wants her to remain in purist hands. If you know anyone who fits the criteria, please let him know.
Still digging into photo archives from ten years ago. These two pictures of the beautiful Rishah Shar’abiyah mare of Khudr al-Khawwaf, taken at sunset in October 2005 near Qamishli, Syria are one of them. Her dam is a daughter of al-Aawar, and the strain traces to the marbat of Hawwash al-Hatmi of the ‘Abdah clan of the Shammar.
This is one of the few photos I snapped of the young stallion Al Ameer Dahess (Dahess x Mari by al-Aawar) in Garhok, north-eastern Syria in 2005. He is the sire of the Syrian stallion in France Dahess Hassaka (below).
The hamlet of al-Talibiyah near Gizah in 1931. How did such beauty give way to ugliness? From the Facebook archives of Ahl Misr Zaman.