More photos, this time from a Syrian village, from this Delcampe.net old memorabilia auction site. I am more and more eager to find the source of these photos, and exactly where and when they were taken.
Enjoy these photos from an auction site, Delcampe.net, which have never been published before. I don’t know their source, but I suspect they were taken during official government buying missions. A breeder from Algeria, Farid Chaoui, shared them with me, and should know more. The legend for some of them say “Hadideen”, the name of a Syrian Bedouin tribe, for others they say “Raqqa”. There are more.
I extended the pedigree of some foundation horses of the Bahrain royal studs by a few generations drawing on information from Vol. 1 and 2 of the studbooks, and other sources (like the pedigree of South Africa’s Tuwaisan). You can see it on allbreepedigree here. The only Bahraini sire line now extends beyond the Shawaf stallion “Felhaan Alshawaf” to his sire “Dhahmaan Aloud” (al-Oud meaning “the ancient”), which must have been active towards the end of the XIXth century. Other than being the sire of “Old Jellabi Speckled”, a.k.a. Jellaby Almarshoosh Alawal, b. 1914, “Felhaan Alshawaf” now appears as the sire of the Jellabieh that is the maternal granddam of the three foundation Jellabi brothers (Jellaby Alwasmiya, Jellaby Sakhir, and Jellaby Najib). In turn, “Old Jellabi Speckled” is the sire of “Wathnan Bay” a.k.a. “Wadhnaan” (photo below).
I made a small but interesting breakthrough in further understanding old Bahraini pedigrees, and I am excited to share it. It concerns the background of one of the Bahraini foundation mares of the Ma’naqi strain. This is the mare “Managhieh Bin Hiddfa Al-Murra”, the maternal grand dam of the two Royal Stud stallions Managhi Al Kabir, and his brother the superb Managhi Al Saghir (photo below). It just occurred to me, after reading a letter from Jens Sannek to Edie Booth, where the name of the mare was spelled slightly differently as “Ma’anaghieh (Bin Hidfah Almorrah)”, that the part of the name between brackets referred to her breeder and his tribe. Al-Murra/Almorra refers to the South-Eastern Arabian Bedouin tribe of same name; Bin Hidfah/Bin Hiddfa would be the breeder’s clan. I set off looking for a clan by the name of Bin/Ibn Hidfah among the Aal Murra, and I found many mentions of it online. There is a reference to the warrior/poet Dayes Aal Hidfah, where he refers to “al-Mu’niq” in his verses, here. There are also many references to social events involving men from the Aal Hidfah clan on the tribe’s social media outlets, which are also maintained by a…
This is “Maanaghieh Safra Marshoosha”, literally “the yellow fleebitten Ma’naqiyah mare” from Bahrain. The photo is from Volume 1 of the Bahrain Studbook, and I think by Danah Al Khalifah. I don’t have it in a better resolution. I need help figuring out whether the mare is sticking her tongue out in the photo. It sounds stupid, but there is a reason for this request: ‘Atiyah Abu Sayfayn, the Fad’aan Bedouin from Syria who owned one of the most reputable XXth century Ma’naqi marbat told Kamal ‘Abd al-Khaliq who told me several years ago that ‘Atiyah once (in the 1950s-60s?) gave a grey/yellow Ma’naqiyah mare to Jad’aan the son of Miqhim Ibn Mhayd who in turn gave her to a senior member of the royal family of Bahrain. ‘Atiyah told Kamal that the mare’s nickname was Umm Lssoon, the ‘mother of tongues’ because she always stuck her tongue out. He also told him that she was closely related to Atiyah’s mare Wadeehah (b. 1970), photo below taken by me at Kamal’s stud outside Aleppo in the early 90s.
This section of the same Youtube video features horses at the Studfarm of the sons of Sh. Mohammed B. Salman. A pure delight, with many thanks to the person who filmed it.
Another series of amazing videos of the presentation of Bahraini horses at the WAHO conference in Feb. 2017. Thanks to Chuck Saltzman for sharing. This is part 5, sharing in no order.
Jessie Heinrick send me these nice photos of her Wadd, who seems to be enjoying the vast expanses of the Oregon High Desert. He has never looked so happy, and that makes me happy for him. Thank you, Jessie. I hope he will show his worth with your new mares. The last and smallest photo in the evening light, shows similarities with the XIXth century Arabian horse lithographs of Carle Vernet and Victor Adam, very much in the style of his mother Wisteria: an arched neck, a powerful shoulder, a broad chest, a deep girth (deeper than many of his relatives I have seen), a short back, a round barrel and that small Wisteria croup.
Thanks to Jenny Lees, I had the chance to visit the stud of the late Sh. Mohammad Bin Salman Aal Khalifah, now property of his sons. My camera phone (yes, I know) battery died within the first minutes, but not before I took this video video of the stallions at rest (click here). You will recognize several of the stallions Matthias Oster and featured here over the previous days and weeks. The first one is a Jellabi, the last one a fleebitten Mlolshaan, the handsome chestnut Sa’idan is right behind the first Jellabi by some sort of yellow manger. You can spot the Rabdan Al Aswaj by another manger towards the first third of the video.
Republishing this beautiful post, which I first published on October 7th 2013 after a visit to my friend Yasser Ghanem Barakat in the Nile Delta. We were chatting today and he confirmed to me the original ‘Amarat provenance of that line (see below). In the 1950s, Shaykh Mahrooth Ibn Haddhal, Shaykh of the ‘Amarat Bedouins, had responded to an inquiry by Shaykh Tahawi Said Mejalli al-Tahawi about the origin of the Tahawi Ju’aythini line with a hujjah that the line belonged to his Ibn Haddal clan. Yasser tells me he thinks the line came from the Syrian desert to the family of Mejalli al-Tahawi then to Sh. Soliman Eliwa al-Tahawi, but that is to be confirmed. Original post follows. Last weekend I was Yasser Ghanem’s guest at his countryside farm in Abu Kebir in the Nile Delta area of Egypt, and I took this photo of him and his powerful Kuhaylah Ju’aytiniyah mare Bushra (Malek El Khayl x Bint Bombolla by Najm Tareq). It shows the quality and strength of some of these Tahawi desert bred Arabians. While there, I learned from Yehia Abdel Sattar al-Tahawi that his grand father Abdel Hamid Eliwa got the original Ju’aytiniyah mare from the Mawali Bedouin tribe of Syria…
Rabdan Alawsaj M291, grey stallion, born 2001, by Jellaby Sultan M49 out of Rabda Salha M125
Jellaby Maroof M309, bay stallion, born 2001, by Jellaby Alyatim M130 out of Jellabieh Rayana M50
Third mare not in foal this year, after Thalia CF and RL Zahra Assahra. SS Shadows Aana is at, 17 years old, the youngest of the three, is a built like a tank and is a personal favorite despite her lameness. I long for a colt by her. And a filly. Why is it that the best mares have the hardest time conceiving?
One of Hungary’s veteran Asil Arabian horse breeders, Laszlo really needs no introduction. Laszlo owns and edits a horse magazine owner and editor Lovas Nemzet, an historian of the breed, and a believer in the universality of Asil bloodlines. Suffice it to say he owns some of the last lines to Babolna’s Siglavy Bagdady VI and 25-Amurath Sahib, and the very last line to Abbas Pasha’s Selma that runs through Musgrave Clark’s Courthouse Stud, and that he has been successfully breeding them to some of the best Egyptian lines in addition to the Davenport bloodline of Delicate Air
Jellaby Faiz M448, grey stallion, born 2007, by Jellaby Mansoor M152 out of Jellabieh Dora M54
Saidan Toofan M346, chestnut stallion, born 2002, by Jellaby Alyatim M130 out of Saida Fajer M72
“Le Naceri”, Nicolas Perron’s (1798-1876) classic translation into French of the masterpiece of Andalusian author Abu Bakr Ibn Badr Eddine Ibn al-Mundhir al-Baitar, who was master of horses and head veterinarian of Mamluk Sultan Al-Nasir ibn Muhammad ibn Qalawun (1245-1341) is now available in Gallica, the digitalized archives of the French National Library. The publication of Perron’s translation caused quite a sensation in nineteenth European equestrian horse circles, and helped spread the idea that Arabic veterinary science and horsemanship was the most advanced of its time. The full reference to the book is “Abu Bakr ibn Badr, Le Nâçerî. La perfection des deux arts ou traité complet d’hippologie et d’hippiatrie arabes. Traduit de l’arabe d’Abou Bekr ibn Bedr par M. Perron. Paris, Bouchard-Huzard, 3 vol., 1852, 1859 et 1860.” The original manuscript titled “kitab kashif al-wayl fi ma’rifat wa ‘ilaj amrad al-khayl” appears to have been written in Cairo for the Mamluk Sultan in 1333 AD, and is available somewhere in Istanbul. A later copy from the XVIIIth turned up at Christies’ a few years ago, and my friends Yahya Eliwa al-Tahawi and Muhammad Saud al-Tahawi have two later copies from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, done by a Syrian copyist.