The photo below comes from the Imperial War Museum’s Ministry of Information Second World War Collection. The description from the Imperial War Museum’s page reads as follows: CONTINGENT ARRIVES IN ENGLAND FOR VICTORY PARADE, LIVERPOOL, LANCASHIRE, ENGLAND, UK, 1946 (D 27677) Sergeant Major Mahmoud Zahaire of the Trans Jordan Frontier Forces tends to the two horses he was tasked with bringing to England on the deck of the ORBITA. The horses are a gift from the Palace of Prince Amir Abdullah for the Princesses Margaret and Elizabeth. A colleague from the Trans Jordan Frontier Forces helps to feed the horses. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205202314
I like this fuzzy video screenshot of Nelyo, the 2015 dark bay Ubayyan stallion I got from Edie Booth a couple of years ago. It shows his “style” when moving and his flowing lines, including the arch of the tail “comme un jet d’eau” as the French would say. The lines are such that one wants to grab a pencil and make a sketch. That deep black-bay color is called asda‘ in Arabic (from sada‘ = rust). He is part of this plan of mine to inject “newer” (ie, 1940s and early 1950s, so mainly the ARAMCO horses) desert blood into my mares from older (ie, 1880s-1900s) American lines, and see where that takes me. The asil Arabian horse is one. Compare with that even fuzzier photo of Nelyo’s ancestor Jalam Al Ubayyan, another Ubayyan stallion direct from Ibn Jalawi. Jalam’s photo is from Edie’s collection, I think.
The circumstances of the acquisition by Lady Anne Blunt of the Bahraini mare Bint El Bahreyn, an existing line in Egyptian Arabian horses, are well documented in her Journals and Correspondence, which Rosemary Archer and James Fleming published in 1986. The published Journals, however extensive, are only a curated subset of Lady Anne’s original handwritten journals at the British Library. They do not represent a full record of what Lady Anne recorded about Bint El Bahreyn in her journals, including a controversy about the mare’s actual strain. Read on. Sometime in late 2021, as Judith Forbis and I were working on the publication of the book “The Arabian Horses of Abbas Pasha“, she shared with me typewritten excepts that she had transcribed from Lady Anne’s manuscript journals at the British Library visit in 1974 — so before Archer’s and Fleming’s publication. What follows below is a compilation of the journal entries about the purchase of Bint El Bahreyn, from the published journals and as well as in Judi’s typewritten notes. [From the published J&C] December 4, 1907: “He [Prince Mohammed Ali] says [his brother] the Khedive is also selling the two mares, Dahmeh Shahwanieh’s from I. Khalifeh, so I said…
The Abbas Pasha Manuscript was completed in 1853 and is a compilation of accounts dating ca. 1850. Its Kuhaylan section has three short but interesting accounts about the “Five, the Mares of the [Prophet’s] Companions [al-Sahabah]. Account of ‘Arar Ibn Hunaydi, an elderly man, in a Ruwalah majliss of more than thirty people: “one Ma’naqiyah Hudrujiyah, one Jilfah Istanbalutiyah, one Saqlawiyah, and two that slipped my mind“ Account of ‘Ali ibn Daham, aged around seventy or eighty years or more, and Hamdan ibn Sani’, aged around seventy years or more, in a Bani Sakhr majliss of around fourty people: “one Ma’naqiyah Hudrujiyah, one Jilfah Istanbalutiyah, one Mukhalladiyah, one Kubayshah [uncertain reading], and one Saqlawiyah” Account of Tariq Ibn Dalmaz, owner of al-Saqlawiyah, of the Arabs of al-Sardiyah: “one Ma’naqiyah Hudrujiyah, one Jilfah Istanbalutiyah, one Saqlawiyah, one Mukhalladiyah, and one that’s not on my mind” A few quick observations on these accounts: 1/ Nowhere are the Five referred to as being the Five mares of the Prophet Muhammad [khams al-Rasul]; rather, they are referred to as the Five of his Companions [khams al-Sahabah]; it’s an important difference. In this regard, the Mukhalladiyah, which is listed in two of the three accounts,…
In my earlier dives into the Abbas Pasha Manuscript, I had somehow missed this statement on the origin of the Saqlawi Jadran strain: Talal Ibn Ramal [a Shammar Bedouin notable from Najd] was asked: from whom did the Jadraniyah originally reach Ibn Jadran? The aforementioned stated before the gathering that these were ancient utterances [qaalaat mubtiyah, meaning that recollections about them were faint]; but that they had heard from their first forefathers that the Jadraniyah was originally a Kuhaylat ‘Ajuz from amongst the Five [al-Khams]; that at the time of the [Prophet’s] Companions, the Kuhaylah had kicked [saqalat] another mare and injured her, and was named Saqlawi after that [incident]; that Saqlawi was a name [ie, for that Kuhaylah]; that she had originally passed to Ibn Jadran from one of two tribes, either from al-Dhafir or from al-‘Issa; that was what they had heard from the ancient ones. It is especially hard to disentangle foundational myths and legends from historical fact. In oral cultures, it’s almost impossible. That the source of the account acknowledged upfront “that these were ancient utterances” should be in this case be taken as a disclaimer of sorts, or at least a healthy dose of distancing;…
Today I took — yet another — deep dive into the Saqlawi Marighi section in the Arabic version of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript as published by the KAPL from the original of Gulsun Sherif. What I like the most in the book are the snippets where Bedouins share their views on breeding and conformation. These are usually buried within accounts of how horses passed from person or tribe to another. As such there are not gathered in one place. For example, here’s what al-Hudayri, a Bedouin from the Frijah clan of the Ruwalah, and otherwise a key source on the histories of the Saqlawi Jadran, Saqlawi Ubayri and Saqlawi Marighi strains, had to say about the impact of inbreeding Saqlawi Marighi mares to Saqlawi Marighi stallions on the size of their progeny: Whether the body of the mares is large or small has to do with the stallions, because the mares were not “struck by” (i.e., bred to) other stallions, only [to ones] from within and among them, the strain to itself, so they became the medium-sized mares that you are seeing now; and it is common knowledge that the shape [of the mares] is from the stallions; so when…
In my book The Arabian Horses of Abbas Pasha: New Discoveries: The 1860 Abbas Pasha Sale List and Other Original Documents (Ansata Publications, 2022), with Kate McLachlan and Moira Walker, I showed how the strain of the Blunt mare Basilisk and hence that of her female descendants, including the Pritzlaff mare Rabanna and her own descendants, is actually Saqlawi Marighi. I made this discovery using two surviving original Arabic sources: the Abbas Pasha Manuscript, and the hujjah (Arabic certificate) of the Blunt mare Meshura, a close relative of Basilisk’s in the female line. The Abbas Pasha Manuscript was translated into English by Gulsun Sherif and beautifully published by Judith Forbis (Ansata Publications, 1993). The Arabic manuscript was then acquired by officials of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and published in Arabic under its original title Usul al-Khayl al-‘Arabiyah. An image copy of the hujjah of the Blunts’ mare Meshura was originally published in the book of her daughter Lady Wentworth, The Authentic Arabian Horse (1945). I published an English translation of it for the first time on this blog in May 2008 (link here), before publishing a slightly revised translation in my book in 2022. In summary, both primary sources…
From Rehan Ud Din Baber’s page, quoting King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud in the book ‘Ibn Sa?oud of Arabia, his people and his land’ by Ameen Rihani: “The Arabs of the North,’ he said, ‘ are heavy of foot and stolid; the people of Najd are quick, light, wiry. They snap and break not. Like our camels. The zelul of the North is strong but slow; that of the south is fast, although he has not so much enduring power. But the people of Najd are like the Bedu in hardship and adversity. We train ourselves in endurance. We put up with much that is hard and onerous. It is our land, our habit of life, our destiny —all one. We have to be always ready and fit. I train my own children to walk barefoot, to rise two hours before the dawn, to eat but little, to ride horses bareback, —sometimes we have not a moment to saddle a horse—leap to his back and go! This is the Najdi —the Najd spirit—the Najd condition of life. Especially the Najdis of the South — we are like our Bedu in this. ‘The people of Al-Qasim are traders and are not,…
I am happy to introduce Silvia Bacci as a guest blogger from Argentina on Daughters of the Wind ab horse in the way it came to us, when they were taken away from their cradle land. From Silvia: I have loved horses since I was born. And that love hasn’t diminished with age but on the contrary grew to encompass all and everything horse related. Was riding horses in the open fields by myself at 3 years old and riding in the sierras fresh-off-the track TB at 8 and enjoying them like the horse crazy kid that I was – and in part still am. My professional career took me away from the horses that I loved but the first thing I did when I stopped traveling and finally settled in one place was to buy a horse. My first Arabian horse. I have loved and admired Arabian horses and their history and relationship with their people all my life. Since discovering the Arab horses I have been a student of them – and I guess I can say, I will keep studying, learning and loving them until the end of times. With the study and learning of the Arabian…
In the British Museum lies this wall panel relief believed to represent queen Shamsi of the Arabs following her defeat at the hands of Tiglath-Pileser III’s Assyrian armies in 732 BCE. The four camels and the vase she holds in her hand are a representation of the tribute her Arab tribes had to pay to their victor. The relief dates from 728 BCE and was set at the central palace of Nimrud in today’s Northern Iraq, where British orientalist Sir Austen Henry Layard excavated it and moved it to London in 1848.