Month: June 2020

Georges Philippe Tabet’s short booklet “Arabian Horse Lineages” (Ansaab al-Khayl al-Arabiyah, Dar al-Ahad, Beirut, June 1937, 56 pages in both Arabic and French) features a long list of Arabian horse strains. This is the “yellow booklet” I mentioned in an earlier entry. The list is different from lists of Western travelers — Blunt, Upton, Raswan, … Read more

Today was a special day. As a child, I used to treasure the times spent talking with my father about Arabian horses. In the evenings, I would sit by his bedside,and read from the same books or magazines he read from. There was a white nightstand near his bed. In one of the nightstand’s drawers, … Read more

I finally located the original reference to the famous account of the gift of a really expensive desert-bred mare to al-Malik al-Nassir Muhammad Ibn Qalawun, Mamluk Sultan of Egypt, Syria and Hijaz. He reigned from 1293 to 1341 CE, with two interruptions (1294-99 and 1309-10). Al-Nassir Muhammad was really fond of desert-bred horses from Arabia. … Read more

I have been reading and writing a lot about the Dhafeer Bedouin tribe lately, because of its link with the origins of the Hamdani and Hadban strains. So here is a rare picture of ‘Ajmi ibn Suwayt (died 1988), the tribe’s Shaykh during most of the twentieth century. While the tribe’s traditional dira (i..e, the … Read more

From the “History of Najd” of ‘Uthman Ibn Bishr: Under the year 1670-71 CE: In the year 1081 [Hijri], was the battle of al-Kaythal, a well known place in Najd, between al-Dhafeer and al-Fudul. Under the year 1674-75 CE: In the year 1085, [came] the famous time known [as] Jarman during which prices increased, and … Read more

It’s an exaggeration but this is what Hamid ibn Mudhi al-Suhayyan, the Shammari owner of the marbat of Ubayyan Ibn Suhayyan, told me in 2006. At the time I did not fully grasp the significance of what he had said. After reading the initial stories about the foundation of every strain in the Abbas Pasha … Read more

I take special interest in the origin of Arabian horse strains. I am particularly keen on establishing the approximate dates when the main strains first came about. In the context of oral Bedouin culture, this can present obvious challenges. Before the advent of modernization and mass literacy in the twentieth century, Bedouins did not assign … Read more

This entry compares two Arabic primary sources some 53 years apart: First, my translation of a passage in the Abbas Pasha Manuscript (1853) about the Hamdani Simri strain, with my notes in brackets. “Mughir Ibn Buraykan of the Gmassah [a clan of the Sba’ah tribe], a man aged one hundred years, was queried. He testified … Read more

Syrian racehorse owner Ali al-Barazi was an authority on the horses of Homs and Hama in Central Syria. He was also a primary source of information about the horses of the Sba’ah Bedouin tribe, whose summer encampments were near these two cities. His family acquired many horses from the Sba’ah. His information about the racehorses … Read more

I love reading the Abbas Pasha Manuscript in its Arabic version. I find it entertaining, a bit like a novel. This is one of my favorite passages — my translation, and my annotations in brackets: Shahata al-Hunaydees was asked: “Do tell us about your marbat [a Bedouin stud], by your honor and good fortune. From … Read more