I am irked that we still know so little about this horse. We know his color (chestnut), his name and his date of birth (1885). I also read somewhere that he was thought be a “high caste Arabian”. Probably a race horse, or an army horse. Probably exported from Basrah, or Kuwait to Bombay. Bombay/Mumbai may have kept customs documents. The British army too, perhaps. We know a lot more about Lord Herbrand Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford, who brought him from India to England in 1892. He served in Egypt in 1882, which is probably why he gave the horse this name. Mameluke sired the mare *Shabaka for another important Englishman, Lord Arthur Cecil. Shabaka was imported to the USA by Spencer Borden, who bred her influential son Segario. My 2013 mare Mayassah Al Arab is the last living Al Khamsa horse tracing to him. If a stallion is ever to rise from Mayassa’s line, I better start finding more information about Mameluke. India is the right place to start, but where in India?
I am back in Washington, D.C. for a few days. How I miss that place, especially in the fall season. I biked by the statue of General George Henry Thomas on the circle that bears his name. I wonder which horse served as a model for this statue. It looks nice, but certainly not as nice as Ibrahim Pasha’s equestrian statue in downtown Cairo. Now that’s a horse I would have liked to have seen. He must have been belonged to the collection of Viceroy Mohammad Ali.
Bev Davison posted these photos on Facebook. They feature the white belly spots of DA Ginger Moon (top) and her full sister DA Moon Sister (bottom). This follows an intense discussion on this blog about extreme white markings.
and Ginger is still wonderful. What a grand broodmare she is. Neck, hip, withers, ears, and what style on top of that. Jabbar is also a very good sire, and I think he deserves to be used more. Photo by Bev Davison who keeps her for me. I always quote this passage from Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals, on March 15, 1887, about her selection criteria when purchasing new horses: “He [Zeyd] is to be very particular about plenty of bone, height of wither, length, of course everything else perfect and origin mazbut.