The below account of the origin of al-Hadb is an application of the way I propose to date the origin of Arabian horse strains. I translated it from the Arabic version of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript. My own notes follow. The accounts of al-Hadb with al-Dhafeer: In the presence of Sultan Ibn Suwayt and a crowd of people at the gathering, Shabat al-Mani’ of al-Suwayt, a man advanced in age, and ‘Ali al-Mani’ the son of Shabat’s brother, were queried about al-Hadb, how they came about, their origins, and which of the strains they trace back to. The two aforementioned reported that: “Mani’ was at the time of Bani Lam. He was from our grandfathers. Between us, O those present here and Mani’, there are four grandfathers. We do not know how she passed to Mani’, except that we hear and know from our elders that there is no Hadbah other than the horses of Mani’. She [the strain] traces back to Kuhaylat Umm Ma’aarif. The reason for her being called Hadbah is that there was a mare at Mani’s with profuse hair, so abundant that it covered her crest. For this reason, she was called Hadbah. She [the strain]…
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 numerical values to years the way literate societies did. They linked years to important events that took place in the same time period, e.g., “the year Sfug al-Jarba was murdered“. This was 1847, according to British spies’ cables to London. The Abbas Pasha Manuscript helps resolving the dating problem to some extent. It features hundreds of pages of written testimonies from several dozen Bedouins. The preamble to the manuscript mentions a completion date in 1269 Hijri, which extends from November 1852 CE to October 1853 CE. This means that Abbas Pasha’s envoys to the tribe must have gathered their accounts in 1851 or 1852 at the latest. Incidentally, one of the accounts refers to “the year Sfug al-Jarba was murdered” (1847) in the recent past, so the accounts must have been collected in or after 1848. A date of 1850 is therefore a good estimate,…