A stunning aerial photo of the Syrian border town of al-Bu Kamal, on the Euphrates, before the river flows into Iraq. From the IFPO (French Institute for the Near East). The photo is dated March 6, 1936. The river to the left, the fertile plain, and the wide open desert, all the way to Iraq, Jordan and Saudi Arabia.
There are four references to the Mulawlish (also spelled Mulawlishan, Mlolshaan, Mlolshan, etc) strain in the Abbas Pasha Manuscript (APM). Both occur in accounts by members of the Ibn Khalifah family of Bahrain, who were already using stallions from that strain by the early 1850s, and perhaps earlier on the Dahman mares. The first is on page 251: “[she] was covered by Kuhaylan al Moulawlish and she foaled a safrafilly.” The second is on the same page: We covered the shaqra mare, daughter of alJallabi, by Kuhaylan al Moulawlish (ibn al Jallabi, ibn Kuhaylan Zoayr) and she gave birth to anashqar colt which died”. In both cases, the strain is referred to as a branch of the Kuhaylan.
One of the Western travelers to write about Arabian horse strains was the Swiss Johann Ludwig Burkhardt. His Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys: Collected During His Travels in the East were only published in 1831, but were based on information collected in the Hijaz between 1814 and 1815. Burkhardt died in Cairo in 1817. His book featured this anecdote: “The favourite mare of Saoud, the Wahaby chief, which he constantly rode on his expeditions, and whose name, Keraye, became famous all over Arabia, brought forth a horse of uncommon beauty and xceellence. The mare, however, not being of the khomse, Saoud would not permit his people to use thatfine horse as a stallion; and not knowing what to do with it, as Bedouins never ride horses, he sent it as a present to the Sherif. The mare, Keraye, had been purchased by Saoud from a Bedouin ofthe Kahtan Arabs for fifteen hundred dollars.” This account ties the strain of Kuhaylan al-Kray, a branch of the Krush strain that was present with the ‘Ajman Bedouins at the time of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript (ca. 1850), to the Qahtan Bedouins from a very early date. It corroborates the information which ‘Ubayd al-Hafi al-‘Utaybi…