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 where did the Ubayyah al-Hunaydisiyah come to you? Which marabet [plural of marbat] do you recognize? To whom did she pass from you? He declared: “She passed to my grandfather al-Hunaydis from al-Sharrak in person. Al-Sharrak was the maternal uncle of al-Hunaydis, and he gifted her to him as an elderly mare. As to her passing to outsiders [i.e., beyond his tribe], I will not tell you about it. So Farhan al-Jarba went to see him, and from noontime till the evening he tried to trick him [into discussing the horses from his stud]; he even threw his children in the lap of al-Hunaydis [a Bedouin way of pleading with someone] so that he traces his horses, but he would not trace them. Al-Hunaydis was eventually coerced to tell that: “a mare passed from us to al-Sardiyah [a small noble tribe in North Arabia] and…
This is not a photo I would have shared a few months ago. I don’t remember who sent it to me. It features a member of the Islamic State (IS) on the Kuhaylan al-Wati stallion Shamikh Al Jabri. The background to the photo is the equestrian club of Raqqah with its conspicuous blue gate. The club was destroyed in the US coalition bombings. Many horses perished. Shamikh and a few mares survived. He died last year, but several mares are alive that are in foal to him. His pedigree is one of the best in Syria, and certainly one of the cleanest. The sire of Shamikh is Wesam Halab (Raad x Aaliyah), a Hamdani al-‘Efri of the breeding of Omar ‘Anbargi. His dam is Fattanah (Faris II x Dawhah), a Kuhaylat al-Wati. Dawhah was one of the original Kuhaylat al-Wati mares of Mustafa Jabri, from the breeding of Hakim al-Ghism. Faris II was by the Kuhaylan Mimrah stallion Basil (Mahrous x Halah) out of the ‘Ubayyah Suhayliyah mare Qatheefah. Below, from top to bottom: Halah the chestnut, Qatheefah the bay, and Dawhah the chestnut. Three mares I have known through the 1990s and continue to admire. I don’t think either…