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…