Day: March 28, 2020

I was talking to Lee Oellerich earlier today. It had been a while since we last spoke, more than two years. I always learn new things from him. He told me that he acquired Sawannah then thought to be 22 from Mrs. Kelly and her daughter *Hadriya then 16 (for free) [see amendment in the comments below] from Mrs. Ott in 1970. Both mares were then at the Searle’s ranch in Arizona and running with Ibn Fadl. Sawannah never took but *Hadriya did and foaled a filly (Al Hadiyya) at Lee’s in Canada in 1971. Sawannah died before Lee could come down from Canada to Arizona to pick her up. Both mares were turned down by an AHA inspector because they were “too small”, so had to be registered in IAHRONA. Canada accepted their papers from IAHRONA and registered them. Lee has pictures of both of them unseen before. Lee also told me that Sawannah was given by a member of the Bahraini Aal Khalifah Royal family to a Saudi prince who in turn gave her to the Kellys. He also told me that Danah Al Khalifah had told him that she had shown the well known photo of Sawannah…

Last week I received an unexpected call from a Syrian gentleman living in Dhahran, Saudi Arabia. His name is Muhammad al-‘Aqub. His family belongs to the Bedouin tribe of Harb, a tribe long affiliated with the Tai tribe. He wanted to tell me about their horses and their origins. We spoke for about an hour, but I was driving for most of the time and I did not take any notes. He told me that his family, the ‘Aqub, had owned the strain of Rabdan for more than 200 years without interruption, since around 1810 or 1815. Here is my recollection of what he told me about how they got the strain: There was a battle between Ibn Haddal, the leader of the ‘Amarat ‘Anazah Bedouins, and a Kurdish tribe around 1810 or 1815. It took place north of the town of Ras al-‘Ayn which is in the extreme tip of North Eastern Syria today. The Kurds held their own, taking several mares and even one prisoner from the ‘Anazah. The Kurds did not care to know the strains and origins of the horses they took, just in their being war mounts. At the time, his seventh paternal ancestor (I…