Some thoughts about the strain of the desert-bred horses *Munifan and *Munifeh

The account of the visit of Dr. Ahmed Mabrouk of the Egyptian RAS to Prince Saud Ibn ‘Abdallah Ibn Jalawi (or Jluwi), Governor of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia in 1936 can also be used to shed some light on the desert-bred stallion *Munifan. The same reasoning used in the recent blog entry about *Al Hamdaniah also applies to *Munifan.

*Munifan was also born in 1940, four years after Mabrouk’s visit. He was gifted to George O’Brien by Ibn Jalawi, and imported in 1947 to the USA by O’Brien. His Saudi export document indicates that he was by an ‘Ubayyan out of a Kuhaylah.

His sire could be any of the five Ubayyan horses Dr. Mabrouk saw on his visit two Ibn Jalawi: a 7 year old bay stallion, an 11 year old dark bay stallion, a 7 year old chestnut stallion himself sired by a chestnut ‘Ubayyan stallion, and two bay colts, both sired by a bay ‘Ubayyan, likely the first one on this list, who appears to have been the head sire.

Dr Mabrouk’s list of the mares he saw at Ibn Jalawi includes several mares of strains typically classified as branches of the generic Kuhaylan strain. Dr Mabrouk lists them by their specific strain, without the usual mention of Kuhaylan: two “Krush” mares; one “Krush El-Kurry” (parenthesis here: the strain of Kuhaylan al-Kray of the ‘Ajman Bedouins, or Krayaan, is itself a branch of the Krush, itself a branch of the Kuhaylan); another “El-Kurry”; one “El-Mosana” and her daughter, from the Kuhaylan al-Musinn strain; and one “El-Harqa”, from the Kuhaylan Harqan strain (another ‘Ajman strain).

Any of these could be the dams of *Munifan, because all belong of branches of the Kuhaylan strain. However, the following two additional mares are far more likely candidates, because their strain is explicitly listed as Kuhaylan without additional elaboration:

10. El-Kouheila El-Zarka, grey, ex the old El-Kouheila El-Safra, 4.5 years 

12. El-Kouheila El-Hamra, bay, 8 years

I am not sure why mares from other Kuhaylan strains in the Ibn Jalawi stud, like the Harqan, were explicitly identified while these two were not. Maybe these two mares were from a strain that did not have much “thickness”, in terms of passing from tribe to tribe, which is how strains build their history. In that case, the mares would be from a local East Arabian branch of the Kuhaylan.

For example, the ‘Ajman who were one of the main tribal sources of Ibn Jalawi’s stud (and of the Bahrain stud as well), maintained a highly regarded “home” strain known as Kuhaylan Wuld Umm Surayyir, a branch of which now still exists in Bahrain. The Bahraini studbooks render it as “Kuhaylan Omm Zurayr”. Stallions from this strain appears in the Abbas Pasha Manuscript under the generic name “the dark Kuhaylan”, and were collectively known as “al-Duhm” (the dark ones, different from the Dahman strain ) because they tended to be of dark bay or black color.

I am not saying Munifan was from this strain, because there’s just not sufficient information to make this assumption. However, the lack of a specific strain of Kuhaylan in both the export document of Ibn Jalawi’s *Munifan’s and in the two mares at Ibn Jalawi’s which Dr. Mabrouk identified as Kuhaylan four years earlier “only” , is noteworthy. It makes it likely that the *Munifan and either or both of these two mares are related.

By the way, the same logic applies to the desert-bred Kuhaylah mare *Munifeh, also from Ibn Jalawi, and one year younger than *Munifan. Too bad her line died out in 1980 or mtDNA would have made it possible to test a few hypotheses.