Lady Anne Blunt on the false difference between “Anazah” and “Najd” horses
From Lady Anne Blunt’s “A Pilgrimage to Najd” (1881):
“To the present day in the North, the Anazeh distinguish the descendants of the mares brought with them from Nejd as “Nejdi” while they call the descendants of the mares captured from the tribes of the North, “Shimali” or Northerners.”
and:
“The Anazeh have disappeared from Nejd. They began to move northwards about two hundred years ago, and have ever since continued moving by successive migrations till all have abandoned their original homes. It may ben that the great name which Nejd horses undoubtedly have in the East, was due mainly to these very Anazeh, with whose horses they are now contrasted.”
I had noted these two passages in comments on an earlier thread from 2019, but I thought they were worth bringing back.
The thirst for mares by the Sauds was already described by Rzewuski. The tribes with good horses could choose to fight for Saud, give up their horses or move out of his reach. He also said that mares, normally never available, were being sold out of fear that Saud would take them or that the owner would be forced to fight for Saud.
A couple decades after Blunt during & after WW1 the situation has shifted even more when the Hashemites moved into Transjordan, Syria and Iraq while at the same time they were pushed out of Hejaz by Saud.
Most people don’t understand that between the works of Guarmani, Rzewuski, Blunt & Raswan the many horse breeding tribes have slowly been moving from Nejd to Hejaz, Syria and Iraq. Other like the Mutayr remained loyal to Saud but even they raided far up north. If I recall well the Mutayr formed later the Ikhwan (together with the Otaibah) who raided as far as Damascus. Although they raided on camels, I read several times that these tribes also had to give up their horses when Saud disbanded the Ikhwan.