HH Spartan Krush (HH Solstice Krush x HH Nadirah Krush), the young colt at Kim Davis’ in Capron, Illinois, is simply magnificent.
Carrie Slayton of the Al Khamsa Preservation Task Force has succeeded in placing the blind 1998 mare Jadah Kerasun (ASF Raphael x ASF Ubeidiyah by ASF Ezra), a rare Hamdaniyah Simiryah tail female to the Ibn Saudi mare *Samirah in the hands of preservation breeder Marge Smith of Oregon. The mare just got there yesterday. In related news, Carrie sent the following two pictures of the other remaining Samirah tail female mares: 1993 Jadah Samirah (ASF Hercules x ASF Ubeidiyah by ASF Ezra) and her 2008 daughter Samirahs Adlayah (by Jadah Echos Amir). Pictures are the mares’ owner Stephanie Theinert McCloud. Both look very good. By the way, this is the same tail female as some of the Rushcreek Endurance horses.
Does anyone know which mare Major Upton is referring to in this section of his “Gleanings”, Chapter 4, “Visit to the Sabaah”? “Towards the close of a long and trying day, we made repeated offers for a bay mare, five years old and unblemished; she was a beautiful creature, just under fifteen hands in height, very bloodlike, but wildly excitable, glared at us like a tigress, and resented our approach even. Crowds gathered round as we frequently repeated our offer. The Shaykh indicated she was not to be taken away, and we thought we were on the eve of obtaining her, but suddenly, among the sound of many voices and loud talking, the mare was taken off by her owner. […] It was Sulayman ibn Mirshid who put the halter rope in my hands; her price was told out on the table, exactly that which I had offered, and handed over to her former owner, and the mare was picketed at our tent. A very simple certificate of the mare’s breeding and family was written out at my request, in the presence of the two Shaykhs, to which they placed their seals, one as a guarantee, the other as a…
This nice portrait of the Syrian desert-bred stallion Nimr Shabareq unfortunately sold on Feb. 2013. I wish I had know about it.
The horses of Mustafa Jabri, located in rebel-held areas, were stolen and sold to Turkey, and so were the horses of Fouad al-Attar and other breeders. Half of the horses of Radwan Shabareq have died, not from starvation (plenty of grass there) but from inhaling strange and suspicious gases. The other are sick. Their caregivers has to endure countless ordeals to prevent the remaining horses from being stolen or confiscated. Sigh.
I am now told that the two horses offered by the King of Bahrain to the Queen of England are stallions, not mares, and that the Bahrainis brought over 7 or 8 stallions which were displayed at the Royal Windsor Horse Show, partly as Bahrain was sponsoring the big FEI Endurance ride at the same venue. Each of the 7-8 stallions appear to be from a different strain. You can see amateur photos here, here and here. The one below is my favorite (URL copied and redirects to website, with credits to “AnnaMaisy25” who took the picture). He appears to be one of the two offered to the Queen.
Another piece of good news from preservation breeder Jeannie Lieb yesterday, with new hope for the Davenport *Hadba rare and endangered tail female. “RL Thunder Cloud x RL Bilquis delivered a beautiful chestnut filly with a perfect blaze, 3 white anklets and 1 white sock, last night around 11:00pm. Mother and daughter are doing great and this little gal is a firecracker!” *Hadba was the war mare of ‘Ajil ibn Zaydan al-Jarba and was taken by the Ottomans when this Shammar rebel Bedouin leader was killed. She was later resold and ended up with Homer Davenport who imported her to the USA in 1906. This is the same tail female line as the racing legend Kontiki.
It’s that time of the year again, and Arabian foals are popping up here and there. One of the newborns I chose to feature is little Niinah Nufoud (AEP Kamar x AB Dafiinah by HHA Manabi), a 2013 bay Kuhaylat al-Ajuz tracing to *Nufoud of the Saudi Royal Stud. This little filly traces twice to *Nufoud as her sire, Monica Respet’s AEP Kamar is also from this line. She is her dam’s and her owner Linda Uhrich’s first filly and represents a ray of hope for this precious tail female line. Congrats to both Linda and Monica.
Read the story here. Hopefully these would end with Jenny Lees of Pearl Island Stud, and be bred to the Bahraini stallions already there (thanks Jeanne Craver for the link).
I have always been intrigued by some of the early sources of RAS foundation horses, and wanted to learn more about them. I am not only referring to the Princes (Mohammed Ali, Ahmad Kamal, Yusuf Kamal, Kemal el-Dine Husayn, etc) and Lady Anne Blunt, but also by the more minor sources. One of these is “H.E. Lewa Ibrahim Khairi Pasha”, the owner of the mare Badaouia (RAS), the dam of Kheir and grand-dam of Gassir. Lets deconstruct that name for a second: “H.E.” is obviously “His Excellency”, a senior mark of respect for ministers and other high level officials. Lewa, as I once told Joe Ferriss and Jeanne Craver who reflected it in the revised entry for Badaouia (RAS) in Al Khamsa Arabians III, means “Major General”, and is a senior army rank. My father, General Salim Al-Dahdah, a retired two-star army general, is a Lewa, in Arabic. Pasha is the title of nobility we all know. This yields “His Excellency, Major General Ibrahim Khairi Pasha”. Armed with this new understanding, I looked up his name in Arabic in Google, for starters. Here is what I found: 1) In one source: 19-year old Gamal Abd al-Nasser (Egypt second military ruler…
I am extremely impressed with the structure and conformation of Jenny Krieg’s filly, Ubayyat al-Bahrain, one of two daughters of the twenty seven year old desert-bred Bahraini stallion Mlolshaan Hager Solomon, out of the Ubayyah mare DB Kalilah. I don’r think she is even two years old. To be honest, I have never seen such depth of girth, shortness of back, strength of musculature, and length of ear (all marks of an asil ware mare) in any Arabian horse in the USA before. She reminds of war mares I have seen in Syria including Mari a Shuwaymah Sabbah at Radwan Shabareq and Nawwarah a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah at Abdel Mohsen al-Nassif. That’s how war mares in the desert were like. Really. Seeing this photo encouraged me to breed to this Bahraini stallion and I will do it as early as this spring, even if I would have preferred not to have to fork out 1,000 USD in breeding fees. The image below is copy of Loan Oak Photography.
This is one of the foundation stallions for the Blue Star program, he is a Hamdani Simri, a son of the imported Sindidah, and of the Ibn Jalawi stallion Jalam Al Ubayyan. The more I look at this picture, the more he reminds me of old Lebanese asil horses. The photo was posted by Susan Whitman on the Blue Arabian Horse Catalog Facebook page.
The stunning AAS Haizum (Desert Dhellal x Hawla Al Badia by Ibn Taamri), owned by Edie Booth of Canton, TX.
Susan Whitman recently sent me this picture of a promising and very correctly built 2011 colt from her tail-female Turfa program, MD Turfairan (MD Ibn Hattairan x MD Bint Turfaira by El Rabih). I especially like the photo of his maternal grandsire El Rabih (Al Felluje x Sharifa Abkar by Famaje), a Ubayyan stallion, with prominent facial bones, a sign of authenticity in Arabian horse breeding.
The Al Khamsa Preservation Task Force is just done with the re-homing of two mares from the rare and precious Ma’naqi Sbayli strain tracing to Lady Anne Blunt’s desert bred import Ferida: the 1997 CSA Amira Kista (Sharif Zaraq x Takelma Rosanna by Prince Charmming), and the 2000 CSA Zaraqa (CSA Maneghi Amir x Takelma Velours by Prince Charmming), which is not registered, but a full sister of this horse. I am happy these mares are getting a second chance at leaving offspring, after the good work Carol Stone has done with this strain over the past twenty five years. Yesterday, Carol shared pictures of their two dams which I post here: Takelma Rosanna is the chestnut, and Takelma Velours is the grey, and their common maternal grandsire, the Egyptian stallion Prince Charmming (Ibn Alaa Eldin x Egyptian Charm by Shamruk), which I found to be impressive.
This is the asil Hamdani Simri stallion AAS Najl Enan (AAS Enan x AAS Ardal Rafiqa by Ibn Taamri) bred by Edie Booth of Antique Arabians Stud for Canton, TX. A promising young stallion. He is very reminiscent of some of Lebanon’s asils of the 1940s and 1950s.
This morning I was looking up “Ibn Duwayhiss” , owner of an excellent marbat of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak in my notes — why? I will tell you later; this is more like a note to myself at this stage — and I found the following: “Ibn Duwayhiss, a family from al-Mawazin, from al-Jabbar, from al-‘Umayrah, from al-Husayn, from al-Bteynat, from al-Sba’ah”
Few passages from Lady Anne Blunt’s (LAB) Journal and Correspondence have left me thinking more than this one, from May 14, 1906: “Saw Mutlak for some time going through old list I had of families in various tribes, owners of special strains of blood. Found most of them correct.” How I wish I had access to LAB’s list. Over the past twenty years I have been compiling from various sources and updating a list of Bedouin sheykhs, notables and rank-and-file warriors and trying to match these to strains of blood (marabet) associated with them. The list is pretty extensive for the Shammar and ‘Anazah (in all its branches) tribes of Northern Arabia, but thinner for the other tribes. I will be publishing this list progressively here.
I am sure I have said this here before, but here it is again: Lady Anne Blunt’s Jauza is my favorite Arabian mare of all time.
I am so fond of this picture of Lady Anne’s Radia/Ghadia (Feysul x Ghazala) and can’t stop looking at these eyes and muzzle. Why did so many of today’s Egyptian horses, as beautiful and pretty as they are, lose these soulful eyes? Their eyes now have the size, the sparkle, the stare, the dark skin, but not the soul. Where has the soul gone? From time to time, it makes a comeback in a few individuals, and then it vanishes again.
There are a couple of hypotheses that could be tested. If anyone has a horse that is tail female Bint Kareema or knows someone who has one, please contact me: ealdahdah@hotmail.com
The Institute of the Desert Arabian Horse has undertaken a study of the following US and international asil maternal lines of Arabian horses. A lot of us are eagerly awaiting the results.
The other day I spent a most beautiful day between Abu Kebeer and Geziret Saoud in the Sharqiyah province of Egypt with the Tahawis. Yehia Abdelsattar al-Tahawi, Mohammed Abdallah Saoud al-Tahawi and Yasser Ghanem Barakat, their friends and I spent hours talking about horses and looking at them. One can hardly find people with a richer and better preserved equine tradition. As always with them, I learned new and interesting things that could benefit Egyptian horses. It is about the Kafr Ibrash farm, which is where the Inshass foundation mare Bint Kareema was purchased from by the Inshass Stud. Here’s what we know about Bint Kareema: — She was a roan grey mare, born in 1935 and acquired from the “Kafr Ibrash Farm” by the Inshass Stud of King Fouad and his son King Farouk; — She was by Lady Anne Blunt’s Rasheed (Jamil Blunt x Zareefa), out of Kareema, a mare by a “Dahman” out of an “Obeya”; — She was sold to a Abd el Samad el Gayar on July 5, 1953, according to Pearson and Mol, first edition. — According to Judith Forbis’ Authentic Arabians, Volume 1, page 274, her strain was ‘Ubayyah’; this is perhaps an inference from her grand dam’s…
Here is a comment from Gerd, from Chile: “Three friends, readers of his blog, also inspired by the Blog, joined forces to try to keep the line of a Tahawy Arabian mare who arrived in Chile. So they found 3 mares.The only Arabs asil there are in chile are Egyptian, so they must continue in that line. Dreaming,they hope someday import semen from some asil stalion. It shall be from France as health formalities are easier for chile.”
(This post will remain on the top of the page of Daughters of the Wind for a month. Fore more recent posts, scroll down please) If you want to support the goals of the Al Khamsa Preservation Task Force of rescuing, rehoming and advocating for Al Khamsa Arabian horses from rare, precious and endangered lines, you can now make donations by PayPal, by visting this page (click here). Over the past week alone, we raised 2,450 USD from generous Al Khamsa supporters, and the goal is to reach 5.000 USD by the end of next week. You can also get there by going to to the Al Khamsa website site main page (www.alkhamsa.org) and click on the “Donations” banner to the right. There, you can either chose to support the Al Khamsa General Fund, the Preservation Task Force, or the Al Khamsa Endurance Award. The goals of the Al Khamsa Preservation Task Force for 2012 are to: 1) identify bloodlines in danger of being lost, and classify them in order of most urgent to less urgent (Code Red and Code Orange lists); write about them and advocate for them; search for horses from these bloodlines and their owners; establish a…
Black Sambo (Mahroun x Biroufa by Khebir) was the sire of the two Managhi Sbayli mares Milanne and Velours who are the source of the asil Ferida tail female in the USA, through the excellent mare Fejr (Rijm x Feluka out of Ferida), also photo below. You’ve go to love that powerful Crabbet hindquarter on Fejr.
Check out this really nice picture blog about Egypt.
Mohammad Mohammad Osman Faysal Abdallah Saoud al-Tahawi sent me this beautiful photo of his grandfather Faysal on a Ubayyat Ibn Thamdan mare, taken around 1955. I like everything about this photo: the whitewashed tombs in the background, straight out of the Arabian Nights, the mud brick walls and the mud houses and the oasis, the old Shaykh on the mare, and the electric pole as a lonely testimony of creeping modernity in a scene that could otherwise have taken place a thousand years ago. And the mare of course: look at that perfect specimen of a desert mare: the full powerful croup, the walk, the carriage of the neck, and the long head so full of character. The strain above all: Faran Ibn Thamdan of the Sba’ah Bedouins was the owner of one of the three or four best strains of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak in North Arabia, a strain which produced some of the best foundation horses of the Arabian breeding program on my home country of Lebanon some fifty years ago. More about the strain of Ubayyan ibn Thamdan later, once I am done staring at this picture.
I grew up in Lebanon during the civil war, witnessed my shared of charred bodies and bloodstains on the sidewalks, and consider myself rather immunized against violent sights, but this photo of a little one sobbing after Thursday’s suicide bombing near a school in Damascus (83 dead, including several dozen children) broke my heart, and haunts me at night since I saw it first three days ago. If hatred-filled “grownups” want to kill each other until no man is left standing, and no stone left on top of another stone, it’s their problem, but what do this little one and his dead and injured classmates have to do it with it? In the name of what was this done to this little one? Freedom? This word loses its value when such crimes are committed in its name.
Some time ago, I announced on this blog a series of blog posts on “ten myths about Straight Egyptian pedigrees”, which I contended were harder to dispel than misconceptions about other groups of Arabian horses (see here, and the ensuing discussion). I did not plan to start with this one, but a recent side discussion about El Samraa (INS) on this blog prompted me to do it. So here’s the first “myth” in this series: The 1924 Inshass Stud foundation mare “El Samraa”, entry is #13 in the “Inshass Original Herd Book“, is listed as sired by a stallion named “Hab El Reah” and out of a mare named “Bint El Sheik”. I always thought these were unusual names for horses but did not second guess the information until recently. It turns out these are not horse names at all, and the explanation is fascinating. Here’s why: In a number of hujaj (original Arabian horse certificates in the Arabic language) dating from the early to the late twentieth century, references are made to individual horses being “from Habt El Reah and Nabt (not Bint) El Sheeh”, in Arabic “min habbat al-reeh wa nabata al-sheeh”, a phrase which rhymes in Arabic. Below…
Is anyone interested in going through the online roster and tracking down how many tail female Rabanna mares of breeding age?
Then send US$ checks payable to Al Khamsa Inc. designating the money for the Preservation Task Force. Send by postal service to Al Khamsa Business Office, 7275 Manchester Road, Capron, Illinois 61012, USA.
Photo by Syrian traveler Hussain Ibish, who was accompanying faculty from the American University of Beirut (AUB, my alma mater) to a trip to the Syrian desert in 1935. I am sure the AUB library has a lot of hidden treasures about this period and part of the world.
Gleaned off the internet.. an announcement about the spring festival of 1937 in Deir El Zor, Syria.
See what you could with mtDNA? Modern breeders who knowingly cheated with Arabian female lines should be scared… “Despite this, a team of enthusiasts and historians traced the likely area – and, crucially, also found a 17th-generation descendant of Richard’s sister with whose DNA they could compare any remains recovered. Genealogical research eventually led to a Canadian woman called Joy Ibsen. She died several years ago but her son, Michael, who now works in London, provided a sample. The researchers were fortunate as, while the DNA they were looking for was in all Joy Ibsen’s offspring, it is only handed down through the female line and her only daughter has no children. The line was about to stop […]. She added: “There is a DNA match between the maternal DNA of the descendants of the family of Richard III and the skeletal remains we found at the Greyfriars dig. In short, the DNA evidence points to these being the remains of Richard III.” Read the full article here, and a related article here.
Marie Arthur shared this photo of RL Boomerette (DDA Ihsan x DDA Hadba by Letarnad), a 2000 mare of the Hadban strain from Davenport bloodlines.
Regina and Warren from Germany wrote the other day to give me an update about their asil Arabians which are from desert bred Saudi and Bahraini lines (no Egyptian blood) by way of the US, and from the rare and precious Dahman Shahwan strain. Here is the 2009 Dahmah mare AAS Muharraq (AAS Theeb x AAS Ghazala by Ibn Taam-Rud), whose tail female is to *Savannah, a mare bred by Shaykh Salman Ibn Hamad al-Khalifah of Bahrain and imported from Bahrain to the United States of America in 1954 by K.M. Kelly. Note the striking resemblance with the mare Bahraini Bint El Bahrein of Lady Anne Blunt in Sheykh Obeyd, of same strain, marbat and same provenance (the Royal Stud of Bahrain, we need to run an mtDNA test). Striking, no, even though AAS Muharraq has not one ounce of Bint El Bahrein blood! This one is Ralihadiyyah, Muharraq’s brother. Note the shoulder. This one is his brother Gudaibiyah, Muharraq’s other brother.
Philippe Paraskevas has posted dozens of photos of the asil Arabians of the Royal Stud of Bahrain on his Facebook page, the Egyptian Alternative, under three albums: stallions, mares, fillies and colts. If you don’t have a Facebook account, I would get one just for that.
Here are excerpts from the report the Al Khamsa Preservation Task Force submitted to the Al Khamsa Board of Directors at this January’s winter Board meeting: Al Khamsa Preservation Task Force January 2013 Update Task Force Goals for 2013: 1) identify bloodlines in danger of being lost, and classify them in order of most urgent to less urgent (Code Red and Code Orange lists); write about them and advocate for them; search for horses from these bloodlines and their owners; establish a database for these bloodlines; the task force is limited to endangered Ancestral Elements and Foundation horses, plus some rare and significant tail females that are not otherwise endangered when found in the middle of the pedigree. For example, it’s about preserving the *Aire tail female, rather than the line of *Aire in the middle of the pedigrees. 2) reach out to owners of horses from above bloodlines to encourage them to preserve these horses, and if they can’t find new preservation homes for them, help them find preservation homes; 3) provide assistance with registration issues faced by owners of such horses; Since the last update on October 2012, we did the following things: –locate five Davenport fillies of…
This is how of the rescued Davenport Hadban Enzahi mares, RL Bilquis (DDA Rasan x RL Boomerette) looks like when in the knowledgeable, caring and responsible hands of someone like Jeannie Lieb. This mare, 6 months pregnant, was a pack of bones when Jeannie rescued her, and it was not certain she would survive.
Based on the racing records of some specific horse lines in the Middle East, and on the identity of horses from these lines imported to the USA, here is a list of US Arabian horse lines that would be expected to do well in the competitive racing and endurance realms, in addition to the *Hadba Davenport line, already discussed below: — Any line tracing to any of the Hearst imports, especially *Layya, *Lebnaniah, *Bint Rajwa, *Mounwer, *Bourhane and *Kouhailane. All these were good race horses in Lebanon prior to their importation to the USA in 1947. There is one Al Khamsa line left to *Layya. — Any line tracing to *King John, a good race horse himself when in Egypt, and a representative of the superior line of Saqlawi Jadran of Dari al-Mahmoud, many representatives of which were either race winners in the Middle East or sires and dams of race winners (e.g., the desert bred Saqlawi Ebbo, a close relative of *King John’s, and the sire of ‘Ataba, an outstanding race horse who sired the Hindi US import of *Bint Attebe). *King John had a thin line in Al Khamsa through Beau Nusik, but it is now gone. —…
Jeanne Craver just shared with some of us on the Al Khamsa board this video of the WAHO 2007 convention in Syria. Jeanne expresses it well when she writes: “It is such a bittersweet film, linking our minds to that wonderful trip and all of the spectacular photos, with the constant reminder of the disaster in Syria now….”
Today marks the 5th anniversary of Daughters of the Wind, and the 5th anniversary of my daughter Samarcande who inspired this website. She is now a young lady, a future champion swimmer and horse-back rider. She also loves ice cream.. I realize I have been less active than in previous years; this is partly because I am a much busier person now than I was before, and partly because the needs to act, and act fast, before it is too late on preservation emergencies in North America. This has increasingly shifted my focus from advocating for the preservation of the precious few Asil Arabian horses to actually helping undertake the time-consuming, labor-intensive, tedious and often uninspiring but oh-so-rewarding tasks of preservation in the context of the Al Khamsa Preservation Task Force: identifying the horses; contacting their owners, finding new homes; arranging leases, shipping, following up on breeding, etc. I will also be moving to Egypt for work in a few months, for a two or three year stint, and I hope I will be both less busy at work and more active on this website. Meanwhile, Samarcande was joined by a little sister three months ago. Solenn Hend Al-Dahdah is…
Last week I was talking with a Syrian friend from Aleppo over the phone. Conversations always start with updates on the security situation there, and end with what they were supposed to start with — horse talk. I was telling him about the recent concerted preservation effort that is underway in the USA, to conserve what remained of the Davenport Arabians of the Hadban Enzahi strain, which goes back to the desert mare *Hadba of the Northern Shammar Bedouins, imported to the USA by Homer Davenport in 1906. I was telling him how much I was struck by the racy, elongated, body structure of these Davenport Hadbans — see Anita Enander’s photo of the heavily linebred Hadban RL Boomerette as one example. He laughed, and told me how a now deceased horse merchant had told him that, in the past, the particular branch of the Hadban Enzahi strain from the Northern Shammar (which *Hadba belongs to) were very prized as racehorses across the Middle East, despite their small size. He told me the story of one of these Hadban stallions, who raced and won at the Beirut racetracks, was so successful there that he was sent to the Iraq racetracks, where…
The blind Hamdaniyah Simriyah mare Jadah Kerasun, one of the last four remaining tail females to the Saud Royal Stud import *Samirah seems to finally have found a permanent home with Marge Smith of Oregon. Pamela Klein agreed to haul the mare from the Midwest to the Northwest at a discount rate, and Carrie Slayton single-handedly fundraised to raise the money for the shipping expenses, through facebook and on this website. This constitutes one of the nicest examples of the Al Khamsa preservation minded groups coming together to take collective action.
Here’s of one of the joys of maintaining a website like Daughters of the Wind: a few weeks Husayn al-Mansur al-Yami of Najran in Saudi Arabia sent me the following message, which I reproduce here in full: Hello Edouard, Under the” Video of the Day” section of your blog, I read something about Najran horses and especially, Khumayssan or Khameesan as we pronounce it. I would like to add what I know about the strain and wish to know more about it and the people who still preserve it. Al-Khameesah horses are bred and preserved for one and only one purpose, the war. In addition to their beauty, they are fast, strong, brave, smart, loyal, and alert. They can carry heavy weights, and run for long distances. They can stand harsh weather and geographic conditions. Their solid hooves and bones, and massive muscles enables them to perform well in the mountains and the desert. So, I guess having Al-Khameesah horse in the old days is like having a modern war vehicle today. Even though it is well known in our area and in the neighboring areas of the country of Yemen, it is not listed among the Arabian horse strains.…
I was looking at the current Babson Egyptian Arabian stallions tonight, and I was struck by this younger stallion, bred by Dan Ulm. The 2001 chesntnut Saqlawi Jadran stallion Du Akhir Flame (Ibn Mahrouf x Serra Afina by Serr Rou) is quite something. He is really well built, and I especially like the shoulder, the depth of girth and the withers. I even like the color. He is owned by Kim Cooper of Missouri Virginia.
A couple blocks from the Casdagli palace, in the Garden City district of Cairo, lies the palace of Princess Nematullah Kamal El Dine, wife of Prince Kemal El Dine Hussein, and daughter of the Khedive Tewfik. The palace, restored and renamed Qasr al-Tahrir (Liberation Palace) but amputated of its garden which became part of the now-famous Tahrir square, now belong to the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Click here for a slideshow.
Old Egyptian Arabian horse records have preserved the trace of a Mr. Kasdughli, who owned Arabian horses which he obtained from Lady Anne Blunt during her last years at Sheykh Obeyd near Cairo and from Prince Kemal El Din Hussein of the Egyptian Royal family, and perhaps other sources as well. Here’s on the Dahmah Shahwaniyah mare Durra of LAB in the Al Khamsa Roster (I use it because it’s online and easily accessible, in addition to being a precise source): Durra (BLT), 1917 bm 1.36 RAS; Breeder: Lady Anne Blunt; A Dahmah Shahwaniyah bred at Sheykh Obeyd Stud. Purchased by the Royal Agricultural Society from Mr. Kasdoughli in 1924. Died 1930. NOTES: The above information is from the RAS History, p36. Durra was probably purchased by Mr. Kasdoughli from Prince Kamal al-Din, who purchased the horses (including several pregnant mares) left at Sheykh Obeyd after Lady Anne’s death, and re-sold some of them. Another reference to him is in the Al Khamsa Roster entry for the horse Aid, to whom Durra was bred to produce Bint Durra, bred by Mr. Kasdughli: Eid (RAS), 1920 _s RASp-*Bint Bint Durra; Breeder: A Dahman owned by Mr. Kasdughli in Egypt. NOTES: The above information is from the 1932 pedigree for *Bint…
My kind of mare. By Sportin Life out of Sarra Al Krushah by Asar Al Krush. Davenport lines. She reminds of Qadheefah, a bay Ubayyah Suhayliyah from the stud of Mustapha Jabri outside Aleppo. Note the high withers, the deep girth, the hocks well let out, and the long ears. As long as there are still mares like that 100 years after Davenport’s importation from Syria to the USA, then there is hope for this breed.
Jose Manuel from Spain sent me this nice note: “I am a follower of your blog and I would like to tell you thanks so much for your wisdom about the arabian horse and the Bedouins because they go together. following your suggestions I saw the stallion Najm Yarob in abrash krush stud near Madrid( if you want you have photos of him in the stud website) and I bought him to breed to my Egyptian mares. Please continue writing; you are helping many asil arabian horses (for exemple, najm yarob). I THINK IF YOU SEE THIS HORSE YOU WOULD LIKE HIM. YOURS SINCERELY.” I want to tell him: your courage (yes, this requires courage) encourages me.
Photo from the Davenport Project on Facebook. This was the benchmark for an Arabian stallion, by the way. Today’s beauty champion winners belong to another race, a distant descendant from the original one. They are post-Arabians, and it is time to recognize this fact.
I have one thing to say to those Arabian horse breeders around the world who cheated by replacing a mare with another, and registering the progeny of the second mare as being from first: with mtDNA scientific progress on your doorsteps and the genetic tracing of female lines, you are doomed. You, your horses and your reputation. For those who did a similar deed by registering one stallion’s progeny as another’s, your turn is coming soon.
Something needs to be done for the Syrian Arabian horses in the Aleppo area, fast. The price of fodder has been multiplied by ten, and horses from solid studs are starving. Some of us are trying to think of long term solutions, fast. A question here: it is currently difficult to get export papers from the government. Suppose horses are made to cross the border with Turkey, without export papers, vet papers, but with their registration papers, what would happen to their registration? Would it be possible to register them in another country post-factum? Or are they not register-able forever? Is one harming the potential future contribution of these horses to the breed by getting them outside of the country without proper papers?
I am stuck in the Frankfurt airport on my way to Cairo (again) because of a snowstorm, and was reading this future studies article on what the Middle East will be looking like fifty years from now. The scenarios outlined are quite grim. Most of them involve a combination of large-scale and extended droughts, environmental degradation (salinity and rapid urbanization are rapidly killing the Nile Delta), water shortages (San’aa, the capital of Yemen will be the first city in the world to completely run out of water by 2020– that’s in 7 years), water wars, demographic explosion, urban unrest in sprawling slums, large scale unemployment, violence, etc. This brings me to the subject of the survival of the Desert Arabian horse in its original homeland, which is seriously threatened. It reinforces my belief that the valuable genetic material still available in the Middle East will need to find its way to more stable parts of the world (like the USA or Canada, because I just don’t see Western Europe on a path of long term stability) where it can be preserved for generations to come. I am not talking about the high-end, overbred, delicate Egyptian Arabian horse creatures that grace Egyptian and Gulf studs; the blood of Nazeer, Moniet, Bukra, etc, is all over the world, and it’s not…
Jamal Pasha, known as al-Saffah (“The Blood Shedder”) was governor of the Ottoman Vilayet of Syria just before World War I. He is shown here surrounded by the Shaykhs of Iraqi Bedouin tribes, celebrating the completion of the al-Hindya dam on the Euphrates river near al-Hilla, south of Baghdad. Photo from Wikipedia.
I had never seen this one of him. From the Davenport Project on Facebook. Titled: “Muson at the New Jersey State Fair, 1907”
I have just returned from an exhausting trip to Cairo, Egypt, and will be back on Daughters of the Wind soon. Sorry for the prolonged absence.