Another rare set of photos, these of the Dahmat ‘Amer mare Ridaab also a the farm of Basil Jad’aan — with a young Basil holding her. She has a nice colt by Marzuk that year. Her sire was the Dahman ‘Amer stationed at the Military Housing in al-Hasakah in North-East Syria, and her dam one of the two Dahmat ‘Amer mares of Khidr al-Dairi of Ma’daan near Day al-Zur. Both sire and dam Dahman ‘Amer, but from different branches, the sire from a Jubur strain, but taken in war by them from the ‘Ajarrash clan of the Shammar ca. 1935, and the dam from a Sba’ah strain. Back in 1992, she was already the last Syrian mare from this precious strain, but her line survives today, thirty years later.
I took these two rare photos of ‘Abeerah, the black Shuwaymat Sabbah at the farm of Basil Jad’aan in 1992. Sired by the dark Ma’naqi Hadraji of the ‘Ufaytan clan of the Shammar, and out of a grey mare by the Saqlawi Jadran of Farhan al-Nayif of the Tai, and out of a black Shuwaymah by the ‘Ubayyan Suhayli of the leader of the Jubur, ‘Abeerah was one of the most beautiful desert-bred mares. She was much prized by Basil, and give him a beautiful black filly by Mokhtar, which he named al-Qahirah. ‘Abeerah traced to the horses of Sfuq al-Rahbi (al-Jarba), who obtained the damline from the leaders of the Bu-Mutaywit (a sub-tribe of the Juhaysh between Sinjar and Tall ‘Afar) who in turn got her (again) from the Jarbah leaders of the Shammar, who owned the strain. ‘Abeerah (alt. spelling Obeirah) was the dam of Khaldee, a horse present in almost every Syrian pedigree today, by the seal brown desert-bred Kuhaylan Ibn Jlaidan sire al-Asda’ (Khaldee was not by the Hadban Enzahi stallion Burhan, his official pedigree notwithstanding).