Bev Davison tells me my beautiful Ginger, 20 years old, is confirmed in foal. I am over the moon with this news. I had been trying since 2015 and the aborted pregnancy from the Bahraini stallion Mlolshaan Hager Solomon, which was a big blow. I am so hoping for a filly. The outcome of this breeding will be high percentage Abbas Pasha and old Crabbet blood up close, which I find miraculous. Kualoha (Ghadaf x Rabanna) and Jady (Jadib x Im Gulnar) are four generations away on Ginger’s side, and Parnell (Ibn Gulida x Bint Ghadaf) and Subani (Ghadaf x Im Gulnar by Nusi) three generations on the sire’s side. The lucky future dad, if all goes well, is one of Bev’s stallions, Subanet Jabbar SDA. Jabbar means mighty in Arabic. He sure looks so in this photo.
I keep marveling at this horse, and how close to the desert bred Arabians the Hadban Enzahi stallion Wahid CW (Wahid CW x RL Zahra Assahara) looks like, 112 years after the importation of his ancestors from North Arabia to the USA. Photo by Hannah Logan
I love these photos of my friend Yasser Ghanim, riding the Shuwaymah mare Challawieh of Jean-Claude Rajot who appears in the other photo on her dam, Naalah. Here he is on the Syrian asil stallion, Mahboub Halep, while JC is on Dahess Hassaka, the other Syrian stallion.
Jenny Lees posted this superb photo of the Bahraini stallion Tuwaisaan Thaathaa on Facebook the other day. The Tuwayssan reportedly strain came to Bahrain from Syria in the 1920s, and prospered there. It has disappeared everywhere else, and is now mostly associated with Bahrain and thought of as a Bahraini strain. The strain was formed in North Arabia, and is one of the oldest Arabian horse strains. I personally know of two branches of it: Tuwayssan ‘Alqami (‘Algami) and Tuwayssan Qiyaad. It will forever hold a special place in my heart because of my beloved Halima (registered in the Lebanese studbook as a Al-Tuwayssa), the grand-dam of which hailed from the ‘Anazah east of Homs, Syria.
I am so intrigued by these Iranian Asils. Some eight years ago, pictures of these were a fixture on my blog. I confess always having felt uneasy about the purity credentials of Iranian Arabian horses, mostly because Iran falls outside the cradle countries of the Arab horse. Pienaar Du Plessis and I were talking about this recently, and I confessed my attitude has more to do with my ignorance of these horses’ backgrounds than anything else. Above, the Iranian stallion Gap (Charis x Yeltakin) from an Instagram thread. Strain Hamdani Simri, bred by Shirin Salartash, and owned by Harandi Kerman. He is stunning, and not unlike the good Bahraini horses.
… poetically, as Pienaar Du Plessis put it to me. I am soo excited.. a 25 year old (yes!) dream of mine has come true, five generations later.. UPDATE: Less cryptically, Pienaar Du Plessis gave me the opportunity to realize a 25 year old dream of acquiring an asil mare from the Egyptian Kuhaylan Mimreh line. We had been looking for a mare from this line but without show blood, and he found this 21 year old grey beauty, which his family had owned years and years ago, MH Egyptian XTC, a couple hours down the road from his farm in the Western Cape Province of South Africa. She had been the owner’s daughter’s riding horse, and his daughter had gone to college. The mare is a problem breeder and has never had a foal. She is now at Pienaar’s Saruk’s Stud, with Mlolshaan Mutab, her future husband (top photo). The idea is to do embryo transfer at a clinic in George in the Western Cape. She carries eight diverse lines to Morafic (3x through Ibn Moniet El Nefous, 2x through Ahir, 1x through Shaker El Masri in the tail male, 1x through Inas, 1x through The Egyptian Prince) and otherwise plenty…
Today marks the 100th year anniversary of the end of World War One, and incidentally the real beginning of the end of the horse’s era as a creature of war. Without getting too political, I have been reflecting on the loss of so many Arabians in the breed. The Polish studs were virtually decimated in WWI, and along with them a very high percentage of horses that were likely asil. And what might well be one of the greatest tragedies of the Blunt horses (and there are a good many, alas) is that Mesaoud, one of the most influential herd sires to come out of the program, was sent to Russia in 1903 and was presumably lost to the world in the slaughter of the Russian Revolution, shortly before the end of World War One. A ghastly end for an elderly stallion such as he. Nothing much else to say, except that I am glad that our horses have survived modern warfare and are still with us today. It’s a precious thing.
The original scan of this photo has cut off the name of the horse, but it’s fairly legible even so, and the following page is able to identify this horse as Osman III: As you can see, he was sired by Aslan and out of the mare Ablulu (Aslan x Hazam), born Oct. 27th 1890. The article this photo was found in dated to 1902 at the very earliest, making this horse 12 years or younger at the time of it being taken. Osman III was owned by Nathan Miers Cox. Interestingly enough, in this same series of articles, Aslan is said to have been imported in 1871, and the same paragraph indicates that he was around 29 years old in 1896 – putting his date of birth at around 1867. Both of these dates are different than the previous information listed for Aslan, but the proximity suggests that we may be on the right track with those dates.
As Moira has pointed out in the comments on the post on Gomussa there is an unexpected curve ball in the matter of Gomussa’s parentage. In the 1896 Harper’s Weekly Vol. 40, Borden quotes Vidal as saying that Kouch “was an undoubted Saglawi Jedraan, a blood bay, 15 hands, the most beautiful horse I ever set my eyes on”. Earlier in the same volume, Borden mentions two full sisters bred by Vidal, by Kouch out of an Exmoor mare named Mitre. These pony mares were Coquette and Beauty, and the photos accompanying the text show Coquette to be bay and Beauty chestnut.
A new mare has joined my preservation herd of old American Arabian bloodlines. In what is by now a long-standing Edouard practice, she is 23 years old.. She is a Kuhaylat al-Krush tracing back to *Werdi. Her name is Nuri Al Krush. She was bred by Trish Stockhecke of Ontario, Canada, from the Krush stallion Janub Al Krush out of the Krush mare Mystalla. She carries some of the very last lines to the desert-bred imports *Haleb and *Azra in Al Khamsa. She has produced two outstanding colts before, one for Trish, gelded, and another for Kim Davis in Illinois. This latter one, dead in a freak accident, was the colt of the century in my opinion (photo below). I also owned her two half-sisters, and still own a daughter from one of these sisters, Mayassa. She will be bred to my Jamr al-Arab, to line-breed to Hanad (Tripoli, Sanad, Mainad, Ibn Hanad, Ameer Ali), but also he will complete her physically, with his short back, stronger coupling, and long hip. I am grateful to Laura Fitz for letting me have her.
The subject has come up in earlier entries, so I wanted to get a discussion going about where the black color came from in Arabian horses bloodlines in the West. In Crabbet bloodlines, it’s clearly through Queen of Sheba (and I think Mahruss and Sobha too, personally). In Egyptian bloodlines, it’s through Ibn Rabdan, but where from before that? Is is El Sennari and hence Muniet el Nefous (dark bay, says Lady Anne Blunt). In Blue Stars, it’s through *Furtha Dhellal, and perhaps *Muhaira? In Davenport bloodlines, it’s through *Jedah. Notice the connection of the color to the Hamdani Simri strain of both Muniet El Nefous and *Jedah, and maybe Sobha.
In 1971, Judi Forbis took this beautiful and timeless photo of a Kuhaylah Jallabiyah mare in Bahrain, the daughter of an old speckled Jallabi stallion. The photo was published in Arabian Horse World, in Judi’s series of articles “Pearls of Great Price”. The croup is short as in many Bahraini horses, but otherwise, what a mare, what look. She oozes Arabness. When will be go back to breeding horses like this, instead of the china dolls and ‘living art’ of today? And, this is by far my favorite color in Arabians.
Here is the proposal I submitted last year on the inclusion of 14 Bahraini horses and their offspring in the Al Khamsa Roster, for reference purposes. It passed the first year, and there will be another vote next year.
Shared by Miguel – this is Gomussa (or Gomuza), the son of Naomi and Kouch*, born in England in 1884. * Spencer Borden appears to have attributed Gomussa’s sire as the bay stallion Kars, which I find myself curious about, now – Naomi was red, and Kouch was grey, but Gomussa is bay. Kouch was probably heterozygous grey, but I have no idea what his base color was – black or bay**, if he is in truth the sire of Gomussa. I can’t find any discussion on this, though – anyone want to spitball? ** Interestingly enough, Kate and I were speculating a little bit ago that perhaps one of the reasons that black was seen so infrequently in the desert was not that it was necessarily ‘rare’, but because because black was generally not bred for, those born with black pigment were winners of the genetic lottery in that they had both a recessive ‘aa’ agouti expression AND at least one copy of grey. After all, all horses are born with either black or red as their base extension, with the agouti controlling whether a horse is black, or bay – with most non-grey horses presenting phenotypically as red…
Amurat II is by Aslan, and out of the German Weil mare Hazam, a full sibling to the mare Ablulu. It looks like this is a male horse. In ‘El Stud Book del Valparaiso Sporting Club’ (1895) a list of registered Arabian horses reveals that there is a registered horse, also by Aslan and out of Hazam, named AMURATH. What is unclear at this time is if Amurat II is in fact the son of Amurath, or if Amurat II is a typo, with the ‘II’ having been switched in the stead of the ‘H’. Hopefully more will be revealed when the full studbook is accessed.
This is MAHABA, the full sister of the mare I posted yesterday (Aslan x Ramdy). She has a quality about her – she could gladly grace my stable anytime, I think.