A new Hamdani project

I have long been a fan of *Al Hamdaniah, the desert-bred mare that was imported to the USA in 1947. This “bloody-shouldered” mare bred by Saudi prince Saud ibn ‘Abdallah ibn Jalawi, governor of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia — was the subject of the first entry on this blog, more than 16 years ago. Joe Ferriss had commented on that thread about mares from her lineage that he had seen and liked at the Otts, noting their clean bone. RJ Cadranell had observed how someone whose “eye” he trusted had told him that a daughter of *Al Hamdaniahs, a mare bred by the Otts and named Blue Star, was one of the best mares he had ever seen.

More recently, I wrote about the connections between *Al Hamdamiah, born in 1940, and the 1936 visit of Dr. Ahmed Mabrouk of the Egyptian Royal Agricultural Society (RAS) to the stud of Ibn Jalawi, where he saw a heavily fleabitten grey mare of the Hamdani strain that was likely the mare’s dam.

Today, I am excited to announce that Becky Stanfield Burckheart and I are working on putting a close descendant of *Al Hamdaniyah into production. This is Becky’s mare Luinil TOS, a 2004 great-great-granddaughter of *Al Hamdaniah. Luinil was inseminated yesterday with semen from my stallion AAS Nelyo. Nelyo (photo below) is the son of another of Becky’s mares, from another line of Ibn Jalawi’s — that of *Mahraa, an ‘Ubayyah. If the offpsring is a female, she is mine, while males would be Becky’s.

Below is are two recent photos and one older one of Luinil, who displays the same clean legs and structure that Joe and RJ saw in her close ancestors. Her heads looks like *Al Hamdaniah’s in that famous picture. I do not mind the straight profile one bit, because the jowls are deep, the distance between the eyes good, and the ears alert and pricked.