The authentication document — in Arabic, hujjah — of the Blunt desert-bred import Meshura is not done yielding more information. One year after having published its translation and commentary into English in the book The Arabian Horses of Abbas Pasha, I keep learning new things about it. As background, Meshura great-grand-dam, “The Mare of Daghir”, a Saqlawiyah Ubayriyah of the Marighi strain, was imported to Egypt by Abbas Pasha. The episode of the sale of this mare is narrated in the hujjah, as follows: “This mare was bought by Abbas Pacha from the house of Dirri and the sale transaction took place in the house of Jad’aan in the presence of Mujayhim ibn Dari and her price was 4000 ghazis [two illegible words] Muhammad Ali Sharif with Ali Bek and he was our guest in [three illegible words, including one place name] before the uprising of Aleppo ([illegible word] (the verification of the date of the year needs to be done)“; I was unable to unlock the meaning of that “uprising of Aleppo” (in the Arabic text of the hujjah qawmat Halab), nor to date it precisely — until now. While browsing a selection of Ottoman archives online, I came across…
Arnault Decroix posted this gorgeous photo of his stallion Shueyman Fahad on social media today. The horse was bred by Jean-Claude Rajot from his Shuwayman Sabbah line, tracing to the beautiful Hamada of Robert Mauvy, and before that to the desert-bred Cherifa of the Sba’ah Bedouins. His sire Mahboob Halab and paternal grandsire Mokhtar, were both born in the desert, of Shammar lineage. So happy and proud to see that old type of horse alive in the West in 2023. My kind of horse. The real deal. Not a sea horse, not a china doll, not a gimmick, not “living art”, not “extreme”.