Month: February 2018

Una CF (Saranad x Femina by Ibn Alamein) is the rarest mare in Davenport breeding. She has no lines to Tripoli, no lines to Schilla, and is of the Kuhaylan Haifi strain. Here with her owner’s daughter, who is very proud of her. The mare looked thin in that photo taken last July and had just arrived from Oregon a couple months before. Una CF is in foal to Gilad Ibn Dubloon and due in April 2018. They are wishing for a colt.

From his new owner Jessie Heinrick. He has never looked better.

I have been working on a translation of Abu ‘Ubaydah al-Taymi’s (died 822-823 AD in Basra) masterful “Book of the Horse” for close to eight years now, on and off. I am doing for my friend Radwan Shabareq, on my free time — meaning some nights and some weekends, with Jeanne Craver as editor and Joe Ferriss as designer. All of us believe its publication will be a big deal. Yassine raised the issue of the mysterious, hidden signs of purity by which Bedouins determined the purity of the Arabian horse. I have heard some of these from XXth century Bedouins, and written about them before (here), and ‘Ubayd al-Hafi al-‘Utaybi has also written about them on this blog (here), a few years back, and a fascinating conversation ensued. Here is on one of these signs, by Abu ‘Ubaydah, some twelve hundred years ago. Translation mine (as part of the upcoming book). Arabs like the forelocks [al-nasiyah] and the downy hair [al-zaghab] circling their root [al-shakir] to be soft, and the place from which the forelocks grow [al-’usfur] to subside; all this is for beauty. The softness of the forelocks and the softness of the downy hair at their root…

A lot has been said about “secret” signs, which Bedouins used to recognize and evaluate the purity of a horse. Rszewuski mentioned them, claiming that he possessed an empirical knowledge of these signs, shared by his Bedouin friends. Nothing about these was found in  his personal archives after his death. Was he boasting ? Is this all a matter of tradition and superstition without any scientific basis? Or do we have lost an irreplaceable treasure thousands years old? Can we find and collect some of this knowledge, if not all of it , and use it to select and improve the asil Arabian and perhaps other horse breeds ? There is very little I can bring to that topic, and most of it is about the sloughi, the North African sighthound. A lot of signs exist in this breed, constituting a real and valid standard. For example, the prominent occipital bulge, the terminal ring of the tail, the marks on the metatarsal bones, the amount of fur in some places of the face … Some of these signs are very useful clues aboupt stamina, speed and the general quality of the sighthound. Back to horses, I met a renowned horseman in…

Two rare photos of Egyptian stallion El Sud El Aaly (Nazeer x Lateefa), born in 1957 at the Egyptian Agricultural Organization and gifted to the King Mohamed V of Morocco in 1960. Original post from the Facebook group Straight Egyptian Arabian horses in Morocco through Sheila Cone and Olivier Wibihal. A full brother to Hansi’s Serenity Ibn Nazeer (aka Lateef).  

My favorite city in the entire world: Shibam, in Yemen, the “Manhattan of the desert”, and it’s six-centuries old mud skyscrapers. One day, I will go back there, and give back to Yemen and its wonderful civilization and people a sliver of what it has given me.

“And a crest like a tall frankincense tree set on fire by an offender” (“wa-saalifatun ka-sahuuqi al-Labaani adrama fihi al-ghawiyyu al-su’uru”) The vision of a blazing frankincense tree is fitting for a chestnut horse.   Below, a frankincense tree:

To the upper right is Bab Tuma, one of Damascus’ Christian neighborhoods, with the Armenian Catholic church standing out. In the upper left is the neighborhood of al-‘Amarah. In the lower right is the Jewish quarter, ‘hayy al-Yahud’. Note the inner courtyards of many of the houses. In the center, the Mariamite church; in the center left is the prestigious Maktab ‘Anbar, which at the time the photo was taken was school for the Damascus elite, and before that the house of one of the city’s Jewish notables, ‘Anbar. Below, the women’s courtyard of Maktab Anbar as it stands today.

The striking difference of the two stallions Dhahmaan Hoobeishi and Montasar demonstrate the large range of heads of the Arabian breed. The “modern” “dished” face with a pronounced jibha stands in opposistion with the more konvex profile of a “desert bred” stallion. There are many statements that the Bedouins did not favour horses with a dished profile, because it hinders air flow and results in horses not fit for speed and endurance. In order to investigate this further, I made an x-ray of Montasar´s head, that clearly shows, that this kind of profile of the head does not interfere with airflow at all. Montasar, by the way, was a fast and never tiring riding horse. There are also descriptions of the head of the Arabian by Upton and Raswan, indicating that a head with pronounced jibha was favoured for by the Bedouins. More on this topic can be found in the following PDF (an excerpt from my book BEDOUIN HERITAGE – The World of the Arabian Horse) The Arabian´s Head

In order to start a discussion on the controversial topic of the Arabian´s head two photos of very different stallions of the Dahman Shahwan strain follow: the dark bay Dhahmaan Hoobeishi (Kuheilaan Umm Zorayr Al Dheleem X Dhahma Umm Wajnah) 1998 from the Royal Stud of Bahrain: Grey straight Egyptian stallion Montasar (Madkour X Maymoonah) 1981 – 2009, breeder and owner the Seidlitz family, Germany:  

This spring Wadha’s mate will be the Bahraini stallion Shuwaiman Al Rais, thanks to Jenny Lees. He is seen here competing in endurance at Windsor, UK. Other recent photos that show the breadth of his chest, the length of his neck and that of his forelocks, the depth of his ribcage, the length of his hip, and his good disposition.

This spring will be the time to breed my Ginger, who is now at Bev Davison’s in Idaho. A strong contender is Bev’s junior stallion, Subanet Jabbar SDA (Summer Sonnet SDA x Bint Bint Subani by Ibn Saafaddan), a tail female Gulida, and an even blend of old Doyle and Babson bloodlines. I find it almost miraculous that this female line of Saqlawis to Ghazieh has more survived 170 years outside the desert first in Egypt, then in England then in the United States, uninterrupted, in asil form.

The first picture features Dixie Cup (Prince Hal x Dixie), which must have had one of the nicest set of ears on an Arabian of Davenport bloodlines. Abu ‘Ubaydah’s “Book of Horses”, written ca. 803 AD, has more than eighteen description of horses’ ears, and of features Arabs appreciated in them, long, upright, pricked, finally shaped, with soft fur inside, like Dixie Cup’s. The second photo is of Viola (Prince Hal x Cressida), and shows her beautiful flowing forelocks. Forelocks were really important to Arabs, and Abu ‘Ubaydah’s “Book of Horses” has no less than twelve descriptions for them. Ancient Arabs composed and recited poetry about forelocks, which they liked to be long, smooth, abundant and covering horse’s foreheads and even eyes, like Viola’s.  

These 1929 photo depict the entrance gate of the royal palace of Guzana (modern Tall-Halaf, in Northeastern Syria), capital of the Aramaean kingdom of Bit Bahiani. King Gabara of Guzana built the palace in the Xth century BC (so three thousand years ago). The palace was discovered by Max Von Oppenheim (of “Die Beduinen” fame, for Arabian horse enthusiasts) in 1911, who dismantled it and took it to Berlin with other artifcats (below) where they was displayed in a museum especially dedicated to Tell Halaf. In 1943, a British warplane dropped a phosphorus bomb on the museum, which burnt down to the ground. The royal gate and all the other artifacts were smashed into dozens of thousands of pieces, some of which were stored away, awaiting their reconstitution. Before leaving Syria, Oppenheim had casts made of the entrance gate of the palace (and some of its sculptures), which now form the entrance of the Aleppo Museum. I saw it there several times (below). The casts are a poor, plain copy of the originals. Between 2001 and 2010, some 30 sculptures were painstakingly reconstructed from 27,000 fragments. The reconstruction of the palace gate will be completed in 2025. That’s 92 years after…