I am waiting to see when their muzzles will start bending upwards and then backwards to reach their ears. At the rate things are “evolving”, I am saying ten years. Meanwhile, I will be busy breeding real Arabian horses, with straight or slightly concave profiles, a triangular nor rectangular head, a small muzzle and deep jowls.
That will be the pompous official name of my new Ma’naqi colt. He is so named in memory of the foundation sire of Lebanese Arabians. The original Shaykh Al Arab (1940s) was an ‘Ubayyan Sharrak but he was sired by a Ma’naqi Sbayli. His owner Henri Pharaon named him after his breeder, Rakan Ibn Mirshid, the Shaykh of the Gmassah Bedouins and of the larger Sba’ah Bteynat tribe (b. 1892 in the desert — d. 1982 in Kuwait). Rakan (photo below, I think by Carl Raswan, and another photo holding his mare) was the son of Bashir, the son of Sulayman Ibn Mirshid, the leader of Sba’ah from whom Captain Upton bought Haidee in 1874. The new colt traces to Haidee in the maternal line. Rakan was a progressive and open Bedouin leader, who called for peace between the tribes and for them to abondon their nomadic lifestyle. Rakan was preceded in the leadership of the Sba’ah by his father Bashir, his uncle Ghatwan, his other uncle Hazza’, his father’s paternal cousin Butayyin (the Beteyen of Lady Anne), his father’s other paternal cousin Mashhur, and his grandfather Sulayman. Sulayman had led a rebellion of his tribe against the Ottomans. He…