One of my all-time favorite pictures of Arabian horses is this famous photo of the superb 1977 Kuhaylan al-Krush stallion Janub Al Krush (Pompey x June by El Alamein) with a young Kim Davis at his side. The first time I saw this picture, all I could think is that I wanted to be Kim, and be owned by a horse like Janub. The photo is from the DAHC website, who now has a bunch of new photos under the 1970s category, many of them I saw of the first time.
Arnault Decroix from France sent me this photo of two yearling fillies, daughter of his excellent Syrian asil stallion Dahiss Hassaka (Al-Ameer Dahiss x Ogharet by Marzouq, out of Hanadi), a Kuhaylan al-Nawwaq from the marbat of Shaykh Abd al-Jalil al-Naqashbandi, a leader of the Sufi Naqashbandi mystics of the Euphrates valley. Dahiss Hassaka (photo below) was bred by Radwan Shabareq and later imported to France. I owned his grandsire Dahiss, as well as a sister of his dam, “Zahra” who was by Dinar out of Hanadi. A head shot of hers was published earlier, you will find it if you scroll down.
Jeanne Craver just sent me this other photo of the desert-bred mare 214 Scherife (Cherife), the Shammar-bred Kuhaylat al-Sharif, which was imported by Fadlallah al-Haddad to the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1903. She actually very much looks like the the Kuhaylat al-Sharif of Ibrahim Dawwas al-Saadi, who was registered in the first Syrian Studbook as a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz. It would be interesting to do a mtDNA analysis of the descendants of these two mares.
Another picture from the 1903 issue of “Sport Universel Illustre”, also sent by Adrien Deblaise, shows the Hungarian desert-bred import Cherife, from the same importation as Hagayle below. No further information. Perhaps RJ or Laszlo know more.
The family of Adrien Deblaise has one of the largest rare equine books collection in Europe, and certainly in France. From time to time, he sends me scans of precious photos, for which I am very grateful, like this photo of the splendid desert-bred war mare Hadialeh, a Kuhaylat al-Ajuz purchased from the Sba’ah ‘Anazah Bedouins by a Hungarian mission in 1903. I don’t have more information on this importation, but I am sure Adrien can say some more to that, and it may be of one of the missions with which Fadlallah El Hedad was associated. The mare sounds like she is from the Khdili marbat of Kuhaylan al-Ajuz, judging from her name. This is the same branch of Kuhaylan which both Carl Raswan and Lady Anne Blunt refer to as “Hedeli”. Click on the image to enlarge it.
Adrien Deblaise, a preservation breeder in western France, sent me these two photos of the splendid and very asil 1975 Jilfan Dhawi stallion Jahir (Iricho x Ciada, who was by Ghalbane x Malika, by Masbout x Themis by Bango x Akaba). The pedigree on allbreedpedigree.com is wrong, so I am not linking to it. His sire Iricho was imported from Tunisia to France, and has close lines to the desert. His grandsire, the Hamdani Simri Ghalbane, and his great-grandsire, the Saqlawi Jadran Masbout, and his great-great-grandsire, the Ma’naqi Sbaili Bango, all came from the Syrian desert, and were among the last imports to French Algeria. So much pure, authentic, well-ascertained blood flows in his vein, so close to the original desert source. Adrien tells me the first photo was taken at Louis Bauduin who was standing him at stud, while the second was a show contest, much earlier.
This photo was also taken in the same place as the one below it, and it shows the same chestnut Hamdaniyat Ibn Ghurab mare as the mare in the center of the photo below, four years later. Jean-Claude Rajot, who I believe took it, and Arnault Decroix, visited the marbat of Ibn Ghurab and several other marabet in 2009, in their quest for asil desert-bred horses to bring back to France, in the first importation of this type and scale since the 1920s. They brought back one mare, Rafikat al-Darb, a Shuwaymah, as well as several stallions: Mahboub Halab, a Shuwayman; Nimr Shabareq, a Ma’anaqi; Dahess Hassaka, a Kuhaylan al-Nawwaq; Milyar Halab, a Kuhaylan al-Krush; and Shahm, a Ubayyan who, in my opinion, was the best of the lot, and died a premature death a few months after his importation, without having had the chance to leave offspring. Look at where the ears of the Hamdaniyah mare in the photo are set, and how they point. They horses are like wild animals, in this sense. Most of the Hamdani of Ibn Ghurab are of a very rich chestnut color; both Radwan Shabareq’s al-A’awar, and Basil Jadaan’s Mobarak, were of this…
Either me or Hazaim al-Wair took this picture of three Hamdani Simri mares at the stud of ‘Abd al-‘Iyadah al-Dar’aan Ibn Ghurab of the Shammar in 2005. There were 15-20 mares all in all. The one in the center was my favorite of the lot, and the one on the right was the sister of the stallion al-A’awar, who was bred there. The house is that of his son Jamal, who took over the stud at his father’s death a couple years after our visit. They teared up when we read *Jedah’s hujjah to them. She was from their marbat, and was imported to the USA 99 years before our visit. Click on the photo to enlarge it.
The handsome 1988 Kuhaylan Hayfi stallion Dubloon CF (Lysander x Decibel), the last Lysander son alive, is in California with Betty Ball. Carol Mingst photo, 2005.
The mare in this photo was long thought to be *Werdi, the Kuhaylat al-Krush Davenport imported from Syria in 1906, but turned out to be the US-bred Sheba (Mannaky Jr. x *Pride). A first-class mare, whoever her dam *Pride was: long, long prickled ears, a fine skin, large expressive eyes, long neck, good shoulder. She compares favorably with the best Crabbet horses. Thanks to Michael for sending me the scan a couple days ago.
I recently retrieved that photo of the black Kuhaylan al-Krush stallion Mokhtar (Awaad x Doumah) which I had taken on my first visit to Basil Jadaan’s in 1989 or 1990. You can easily recognize Basil’s old farm from the red tile rooftops in the back. Mokhtar was then a two or three year old stallion, which Basil had recently obtained from his breeder, a Shammar Bedouin. He was literally born under the tent, and is from the best of the Shammar. Basil knew what he was doing. Mokhtar eventually made his way to France, where he still thriving with Chantal Chekroun at the age of 24. He is a frequent feature on this blog, and any European breeder within reach should try to breed from him while he is still alive. We will only know the value of these horses when they are gone.
The photo was taken at Hingham Stock Farm, but it’s not *Werdi. Is it *Haffia?
Ameenah was the foundation mare for all the Kuhaylan al-Mimrah horses currently in Syria. They all trace to her in the tail female. She was bred by the Tai Bedouins, from a marbat that had belonged to the Shammar, and which traced all the back to the Muwayni’ clan of the Sba’ah Bedouins, who own the strain of Kuhaylan al-Mimrah. If a Kuhaylat al-Mimrah cannot be traced back to the clan of Ibn Muwayni’, then she is not a Kuhaylat al-Mimrah. That’s because the original man known al-Mimrah belonged to the Muwayni’ clan. The Muwayni’ clan, one of the noblest of the ‘Anazah confederation, were such famous breeders of Arabian horses that they were known as ‘ahl al-khayl’, the “people of the horses”. Nahar Ibn Muwayni’ is one of the Bedouin witnesses in the ‘Abbas Pasha Manuscript. Ameenah was sired by the “first horse of Juhayyim”, a Kuhaylan Hayfi who was used by Juhayyim al-Mitkhan of the Tai as his breeding stallion (he later stood a Kuhaylan al-Krush at stud, and this was the “second horse of Juhayyim”); her dam was sired by the “second horse of ‘Ebbo”, a Saqlawi Jadran of the strain belonging to Dari al-Mahmoud of the Shammar,…
The Egyptian stallion Fa-Rab (*Fadl x Aana by Fay El Dine), a Dahman bred at the Babson Farm, from Billy Sheet’s photo collection. Not sure who took the photo.
This is another photo from the late Billy Sheet’s collection. It shows the Dahman Shahwan stallion Saafaddan (Faddan x Saaba by Fay El Dine) who was bred at the Babson Farm.
I am posting a month-old photo of the young desert-bred stallion Nimr Shabareq at four years old so that readers can see how the horse has evolved over time. The second photo was taken when he was three, and the third one, when he was two. Hopefully, him, his owner and I will live a long life so I can keep posting photos of him every year to show you how he matures. Click on each photo to enlarge it.
This old photo of the 1937 black Saqlawi Jadran stallion Hallany Mistanny (Zarife x Roda) is from Billy Sheet’s photo archives. I am not sure it’s been published before. Hallany Mistanny sired his first asil foal in his twenties, and along with his Travelers Rest (General Dickinson’s stud) mate Sirecho (Nasr x Exochorda) was a cornerstone of the preservation renaissance which Jane Ott led in the 1950s.
When I was a kid, there were not many horse books I could read. I had no access to the hardcovers in my father’s library, like Lady Wentworth’s “Authentic Arabian Horse” or W.R. Brown’s “Horse of the Desert”. I was too afraid to tear a page anyway, and they were not easy to handle. I could read the softcovers though. One of these, and my favorite, was Robert Mauvy’s small book “Le Cheval Arabe”. I knew it by heart, almost line by line. In it was a chapter called “Hamada”, where the author describes how the dam of his new filly (a 1975 chestnut daughter of Irmak which he named Hamada, out of Shawania, who was by Amri) refused to let her nurse, and how she had to be bottled-fed, and how she later turned out. I somehow became attached to this filly without knowing her, and her story stuck in my head. In 1994, my father and I went to France for a benign medical treatment, and we looked up Mauvy’s surviving horses in the Studbook. Some of them were owned by Louis Bauduin, who lives a couple hours south of Paris, so we went to pay him a…
There is a heated discussion going on (in French, though) in another thread about Arabian type(s) in general. A photo of the desert-bred Ma’naqi Sbayli stallion Nimr Shabareq (bred in Syria, now in France) started the debate. To grossly summarize, one side thinks the horse is basically off type (in other words, just an ugly looking Arabian), and the other thinks it’s representative of one of many types of Arabians to be found in the Syrian/Arabian desert, yet a type Western eyes are no longer used to. The first photo shows the horse as a growthy two-year-old in racing condition. I am now posting a more recent photo of the same horse, taken last year, when he was three years old.
I took this photo but can’t remember who the mare was; perhaps a Kuhaylat al-Wati.
Chris Bauduin on Murad Hadiya (Ourki x Hamada by Irmak), a Shuwaymat Sabbah tracing to the desert-bred mare Cherifa, bred by the Sba’ah and imported to Algeria around 1875. My father took this picture in France in 1994, while Louis Bauduin, his daughter, Jean-Claude Rajot and myself standing in the background. This mare is based on Robert Mauvy’s breeding and had tremendous presence, which this photo barely captures.
Wadha (Javera Thadrian x Wisteria CF by Triermain CF) is now 18 months old and is looking more and more like her sire. I am very happy with how she’s turning out. Jeanne Craver told me she is starting to look like Pirouette CF (Javera Thadrian x Piquante by Plantagenet), which in my opinion as well as that of a number of Davenport breeders, is the best looking of the Kuhaylan Hayfi mares alive today.
Shela (El Batal x Siva by Silver Rain) was one of my father’s favorite mares. She was bred by Mr and Mrs. Bancroft in the UK in 1981, exported to Jordan in 1983, where Princess Alia Al-Hussein helped my father acquire her from the stud of Said Khair in 1991, along with another mare, Ziba. Shela traced to the Crabbet Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah mare Bint Helwa, through Ghazala, Gulnare and Gayza, and her pedigree consisted mainly of Crabbet, Egyptian and Polish elements, with a pint of Marbach blood. She measured a full 15.3 hands, was very powerfully built, and had a way of staring at you that would make you think twice before you looked back at her. She came from Jordan with her son, Fanar (another looker) by Hilal el Eid (Misk x Haboub) and produced a filly, which died at an early age, before dying herself while in foal, as a result of being mishandled by a lousy vet.
Ziba (Dancing Magic x Shazla by Shazda out of Darthula out of Saladin II) was one of my father’s favorites. A 1980 mare from the ‘marbat’ of Lord and Lady Moyne, and tracing to the desert bred Kuhaylat al-Krush Dafina, a gift from Ibn Saoud to Judith Wentworth, Ziba had no less than ten lines to Skowronek, and this, along with her Krush tail female to Dafina, is exactly the reason why my father bought her from Said Khair’s stud in Jordan and imported her to Lebanon, together with her son Sharif by a show horse of European lines. At the time, my father was a big fan of the Crabbet breeding program (and he still is in some ways), both under Lady Anne and then under her daughter Judith, and we did not know anything about Skowronek’s pedigree. We believed that Skowronek was the best thing that ever happened to Crabbet Stud, and Judith Wentworth certainly did a good job leading her readers to this conclusion. When we learned more about Skowronek, we sold Ziba to some local politician and she eventually found her way to Syria. Her non-asil status aside, Ziba had glorious tail carriage and movement, and was a…
As I am going through the horse photos in my restored hard drive, I thought I’d share with you photos of some of the horses we have owned over time, some asil, others not. As it were, there were 25 years of continuous Aldahdah breeding in Lebanon, but there never was an Aldahdah breeding program. Mares came and went, and the turnover was high, every few years, save for a core of personal favorites. There never was a third generation of Aldahdah foals, except for the Sa’dan Tuqan lines owned in partnership with the Hindi family. I begin with this headshot of Zahra (not her registered name), a Kuhaylat al-Nawwaq from the stud of Kamal Abd al-Khaliq in Aleppo, Syria, by the Ma’naqi Zudghum stallion Dinar son of the Hamdani Simri stallion al-A’war, out of the mare Hanadi who was by Krush Juhayyim. We bought this mare from Kamal when she was 10 days old and then sold her when I moved to the USA. She traced back to the old marbat of the Naqashbandi sufis of Deyr-el-Zor, who have had this line for some 120 years now. The line originally came from the Sba’ah Bedouins. Zahra produced two foals, a colt…
The 1990 Hamdani Simri stallion Regatta CF (MV Reflection x Frill by Adrian) is one of my favorite Davenport stallions alive today. Regatta is, together with Marge Smith’s Pal-Ara Sensation (MV Reflection x Nectar CF by Salutation) and Fred Mimmack’s Militaire CF (Salutation x Vivacity by Tripoli) one of the very asil tail male stallions to the great Antez, through Kamil Ibn Salan (Salan x Schada by Sanad) and his son Salutation (x Maefah). This photo of Regatta in his prime bears a strong resemblance to photos of both Tripoli and Tripoli’s son Monsoon (x Ceres). The photo appeared in a recent Khamsat magazine article which Philip Bienvenu wrote about Kamil Ibn Salan’s descendants. Thanks to Jeanne Craver for sending it to me. I would love to breed a mare to him.
This old mare was at Mustapha al-Jabri’s farm near Aleppo, Syria in the mid-1990s, when I took this picture, and was brought there to be covered by one of his stallions. She was one of these unregistered tribal horses, and came from the Aqaydat tribe, from the area of al-Mayadin on the Euphrates. Her strain was Samhan Qumay’. This is the only mare I have ever seen from this strain in my entire life, and I don’t think I will see another one. The strain was owned by the Sba’ah Bedouins among others. The Aqaydat of the Middle Euphrates area, who in the late 1800s and the early and mid 1900s were semi-nomadic sheep herders, and as such were much less mobile than the camel-breeding ‘Anazah Bedouins, would lease the elderly and the sick mares of the ‘Anazah, especially the Sba’ah, before these moved south towards Najd on their annual preregrinations. As a result of the most esteemed ‘Anazah strains found their way to ‘Aqaydat, including Ma’naqi Sbayli, ‘Ubayyan Sharrak, Hamdani Simri, and others. This mare was never registered eventually. There was conflicting information about a male ancestor (“Nawwaq ‘Abu ‘Erneh) four generations back in her pedigree, so she was left…
An American couple bought the 1993 Kuhaylan Hayfi stallion Regalia CF (Regency CF x Taradiddle by Ibn Alamein) from Craver Farms some years ago and took him to the south of France, where he is currently. Not sure whether he still there now.
I want to breed horses that have white showing in their eyes, like human eyes. This is how the eyes of the old desert mares of my childhood and teen age looked like, and this is what gives these horses their quasi human souls. I realized this when I zoomed at the photo of Gulida below, and then I realized that Jadiba, Sahra and Wisteria all had white showing their eyes.
Terry Doyle kindly shared with me this unique photo of Dr. Joseph Doyle’s foundation mare and 100% Old Crabbet broodmare Gulida (Gulastra x Valida), along with Richard Pritzlaff’s Rabanna (Rasik x Banna) which was taken by Carl Raswan at their farm in Iowa in the 1950s. Rabanna was there for a breeding to Ghadaf (Ribal x Gulnare). This is probably one of the most precious photos featured on this blog. I cropped the photo to zoom in on the two mares. The larger photo has a view of the pasture and of some of Gulida’s offspring.
Last week, some tech wizard was able to salvage all the data from the computer I broke in Yemen in April 2010 and I have now retrieved a lot of the horse photos and documents I thought I had lost. Am very excited at this.
About a year ago, I put together an incomplete list of asil Arabian horses that I saw as crucial to maintain as broad as possible a gene pool here in the USA, and hence needed to be preserved urgently. Here a still incomplete but updated list with the status of the horses concerned, in no particular order: 1. *Mlolshaan Hager Solomon, grey 1986 Mlolshaan stallion imported from Bahrain, and only “desert-bred” horse in the USA at this time: still alive, has one new filly with Jenny Krieg; new breedings planned this year; 2. Sarita Bint Raj, Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah, tail female to Basilisk through Slipper (not through Rabanna), last chance to keep the blood of the desert-bred stallions *Euphrates and *Al-Mashoor within the asil gene pool, and carrying one of the last asil lines to *Mirage: not registered still alive, Jenny Krieg (that preservation machine!) and Rosemary and Terry Doyle are all helping to save her; will likely be registered and bred next year, so good news on this front! 3. Halley, 1985 Hamdaniyah Simriyah, one of the 4 last tail females to *Samirah alive, and incredibly close to the Albert Harris desert imports of the 1920s, and also a Sharp…
…were just here visiting this morning.. We had a good time talking and looking at photos of their horses, and I saw some wonderful black and white mares of the Doyle foundation mare Gulida (Gulastra x Valida) with Rabanna (Rasik x Banna) when she was at Dr. Doyle’s farm for a breeding to Ghadaf (Ribal x Gulnare).
The 26 year old chestnut Ma’naqiyah Sbayliyah mare Dakhala Sahra (Plantagenet x Soiree by Sir) just joined the group of old broodmares whose lines I am trying to preserve. She was bred by Jeanne Craver in 1985, and then went to Charles’ cousin Crista Couch, and then to Kathryn Busch, who sold her to me. I was about 10 or 12 the first time I came upon a horse of that line. That was before the internet, and before DVDs too. I was going through the Asil Club’s publication Asil Araber II, when, buried in a sea of Egyptian pedigrees, I found the photo of Erika Schiele’s stallion El Beshir (Faaris x Sirrulla by Sirecho), bred by Mrs Ott. The photo was in black and white and it showed a dapple grey horse, and I was taken by the horse as much as by its unusual strain (recorded as Ma’naqi Hadraji, but it’s actually Sbayli) and pedigree. There was also that famous photo of the Kuhaylan Hayfi stallion Lysander at Craver Farms, and I wondered about that unusual (ie, non SE) pedigree too.. She is by Plantagenet, and according to Charles, “more like Plantagenet than Plantagenet himself”. Her dam was…
Nice photo by Christine Emmert in 2007 of the 2000 bay Kuhaylat Krush mare Cataree (Mandarin CF x Minaret CF by Heir Apparent). The photo appeared this week on the Davenport Arabian Horse Conservancy website.
I am happy to introduce Yasser Ghanim Barakat of the larger Tahawi clan in Egypt as a guest blogger on Daughters of the Wind. Yasser, his cousin Mohammad Mohammad Othman al-Tahawi and Yehia Abd al-Sattar Eliwa al-Tahawi have been working with Bernd Radtke, Joe Ferriss and myself as well as a number of others to further the cause of the remaining asil horses of the Tahawi (some 20 plus mares and a stallion), as Yasser put it so well in his post on the StraightEgyptians.com: “The great and historical decision taken by Al Khamsa to recognize all the remaining Tahawy horses renews hope in preserving these asil and rare bloodlines of desert Arabians (see: https://daughterofthewind.org/tahawi-tribel…is-is-historic/ ) Tahawy Arabians were dominating the race in Egypt in the period between the 1880s and 1960s. They were an important source for most of Egypt’s famous breeders such as Lady Anne Blunt, the Egyptian Royal family and the members of the Jockey club. The Tahawy horses descend from some of the finest desert bred horses acquired by the Tahawies from the best strains of the notable Sheikhs of Eneza and Shammar tribes. Original certificates stamped by Eneza and Shammar Shaikhs were issued for the Tahawy horses…
It’s no secret that the asil lines in the West are increasingly tightly bred, so much that many equine scientists believe this is a major concern for the sustainability of the breed in the medium and long terms. More than ninety five percent (and maybe more!) of asil horses in the West (the USA, Europe, Australia, etc) are Straight Egyptian or Egyptian related. All Straight Egyptian and Egyptian related horses carry a non-trivial measure of Blunt blood from the Crabbet and Sheykh Obeyd Studs. The influence of the Blunt’s breeding program is arguably the most pervasive of any Arabian horse breeding program so far. All “New Egyptian” horses carry Blunt blood through Rustem (Astraled x Ridaa), Kazmeen (Sottam x Kasima) who is Nazeer’s grandsire, Hamran (Berk x Hamasa), Bint Rissala (Ibn Yashmak x Rissala), Bint Riyala (Nadir x Riyala) and others. “Old Egyptian” (i.e., “Babson”) horses carry it through Bint Serra I (Sottam x Serra). “Babson-Browns” carry it through Gulastra (Astraled x Gulnare), and so do “Doyle” horses, which are the only 100% Blunt horses in existence. In short, Blunt blood is all over the place. There is a tiny group of asil Arabian horses in North America that does…
Yesterday, as I received the papers of the 26 year old Dakhala Sahra from Kathryn Busch, I said to myself: “Heck, this is the sixth horse I’ve owned in this country” (Wisteria, her filly and her colt =3; Jadiba =4; Monologue jointly with Darlene =5; Sahra =6; plus Chelsea who is a lease from Doris); then came this second thought, immediately after the first one: “I don’t own these horses, they own me”. I think about them day and night. Third thought, just now: “There must be something wrong with me, really”.
I don’t normally do ads, but this is just to let you know that there is a good asil Kuhaylan Hayfi stallion from the Craver Farms breeding program available in Illinois. Audacious CF is a 1998 grey stallion (Telemachus x Audacity by Lysander) from the Bint Dharebah (Monsoon x Dharebah) sub-family. I don’t know the owners, but the link to the ad is here. He has no progeny and judging from his outstanding pedigree, he would be a good stallion for any Davenport breeding program.
Jenny Krieg’s Ubayyat al-Bahrain (*Mlolshaan Hager Solomon x DB Kalila by AAS El Hezzez) has an impressive croup and shoulder, reminiscent of the progeny of another desert bred, the Syrian stallion Mahboob Halab, now in France.
RJ Cadranell just circulated this picture of the Kuhaylan Hayfi stallion Capulet (Lysander x Silvia by Sir) from the Arabian Horse World magazine.
The below standing rule has been unanimously adopted by the Al Khamsa Board, and concerns recognizing the remaining, surviving, original, tribal, authentic, asil horses of the Tahawi clan of Egypt as “horses of interest to Al Khamsa”. They are not registered by the Egyptian Agricultural Organization (EAO) and therefore not accepted by WAHO (long and sad story). They include some 20-25 mares of four different strains and one stallion. Whereas Al Khamsa, Inc. has an interest in and a history of saving bloodlines of horses of bedouin tribal background outside of North America, and Whereas expanded communication offered by the internet allows for availability of documentation beyond what could have been imagined when Al Khamsa, Inc. was founded, and Whereas the standing of Al Khamsa, Inc. allows it to exert peer pressure on international organizations, and Whereas the status of some of these bloodlines outside of North America is at a critical point, but an amendment to Article I of the Al Khamsa bylaws requires greater than a two-year lead time, be it resolved that: 1) Al Khamsa will recognize the last few remaining asil horses of the Tahawi tribe in Egypt as being “Al Khamsa Horses of Interest” on a preliminary…
The Kuhaylat al-Hayf mare Enchante CF (Zacharia x Velveteen by Sir) was bred at Craver Farms, and then sold to Shirley Jacobsen who then gave her to Pamela Klein.. She is now at Craver Farms, where this photo was taken last week by Nancy Becker. I saw this mare three times, and she never looked as good as in this picture.. Darlene Summers has the only foal of hers, a daughter by Triermain called Elegance, and everyone in the Davenport breeders community agrees that this grand and precious mare should have more foals.
This is Hart Asheera (Rafeer x Nisrs Asha by Ansata El Nisr), a 1986 Saqlawiyat al-‘Abd bred by Sheila Hart, and owned by Megan Detweiler, who is the lady in the picture. Click on the picture to enlarge it. This lovely mare is a cousin of my Jadiba, as both their great-grand-dams come from Fred Glass’s old breeding program which was centered around the mare Serije (Letan x Sedjur by *Hamrah). There is a relatively large group of Saqlawiyat al-‘Abd horses who trace to *Wadduda through Sahanad (Abu Hanad x Sahabet by Tanatra x Jadur by Jadaan x Sedjur by *Hamrah) via Jadur, but Hart Asheera and Jadiba are the only two left tracing to the other branch through Jadur’s sister Serije. Asheera is Megan’s favorite riding mare, and I wish she could leave her with a last foal, a filly this time (she had two colts who were gelded).
Photo from the Tahawi family website, maintained by Mohammed Mohammed Uthman Abdallah Saoud al-Tahawy.
The Hearst mare *Lebnaniah (Sergent Major x Ma’naqiyah) was the other addition to the Al Khamsa Roster this year. There are two horses, one stallion, and one mare tracing to her who are potentially alive, and we need to find them. Here is the text of my Roster proposal in 2009.
Jeanne Craver sent me these fresh pictures of my little Wadd (Triermain CF x Wisteria CF by Triermain CF), which Nancy Becker photographed last week. I like the broad, muscled chest. The white around the eyes seems characteristic of Wisteria’s progeny (see Tantris CF as a foal, here, scroll down to the end).
I also saw many nice horses at the Al Khamsa Convention. One of my favorites was the 24 year old mare Ebonys Doyle LHF (Ebony Nefous RSI x Larkin DE by Greggan), bred by Vincent Melzac, from two of his favorite horses, and now owned by Lesley Detweiler. She traces twice to the grand Rabanna (Rasik x Banna by Nasr), and her dam is a Doyle mare of 100% old Crabbet breeding. In my opinion, and regardless of the petty politics of what is “Straight Egyptian” and what isn’t, the more Rabanna blood in a horse, the better the horse. Also, Carl Raswan and Richard Pritzlaff did not save Rabanna in the 1950s, so that we waste her blood away in 2010. We cannot pay continuous lip service to their legacy, and do nothing about it in practice. Not sure how many horses with Rabanna blood remain today (someone needs to do a headcount), but something really needs to do something about that. And by the way, I don’t believe that the head of an Arabian horse needs to be more “extreme” than that. Anything beyond that becomes distortion.
Monday mornings are rough. This one was all the rougher because the weekend that preceded it was so good. Yesterday afternoon, I came back from the Al Khamsa Convention in Pennsylvania, where I saw old friends and made new ones. Many important things took place at this Convention, including the unanimous acceptance by Al Khamsa’s Board and General Assembly of the three Tahawi mares (Folla, Futna, and Bint Barakat) and their otherwise Al Khamsa eligible descendants as Al Khamsa Arabians Horses. All three mares trace their origins to horses imported by the Tahawi clan of Egypt from the Northern Arabian desert (to which the Tahawis had many connections, all documented) and more specifically from the ‘Anazah tribes of Sba’ah (mainly), Fad’aan, Hssinha, Wuld ‘Ali, Sawalimah and Ruwalah.
Darlene Summers and I are the proud new co-owners of the 2001 bay stallion Monologue CF (Riposte CF x Soliloquy CF by Regency CF), a Hamdani Simri tracing to *Galfia from the Bani Sakhr Bedouins. Monologue came as a generous gift from Pamela Klein (who maintains one of the largest and best herds of Davenport Arabians in the US today) to Darlene, who then kindly agreed to share him with me. He is now standing at stud at Craver Farms in Winchester, IL, and is available to Al Khamsa mares. Darlene and I plan to freeze his semen to make it available to future generations of asil breeders.
Here is a rare photo of the Moroccan bred 1972 stallion Breek (Burhan x Pascaline by Agres), imported to France by Jean Deleau. Morocco has a relatively small number of Arabians, and the original nucleus comes from four countries: Egypt, France, Algeria and Tunisia. Breek is no exception: his sire is the Egyptian Burhan (Morafic x Mouna by Sid Abouhom), gift of Pres. Nasser to the King of Morocco; his maternal grandsire Agres (Sumeyr x Altise by Abel) came from Pompadour in France; his great-grandsire Ras (Kriss II x Ambria by Nasr) came from Tunisia, his great-great-grandsire Aiglon (Othello III x Kasbah II) was a race horse from France , and his great-great-granddam Naaoura was the offspring of the desert bred Kuhaylan al-Nawwaq stallion Muslimie, who had come from Syria to Morocco through Algeria, and of a Shuwaymah mare, Nafa, who was bed by the French in Algeria.
Last year, Jenny Krieg and Rodger Vance Davis teamed up to take two of Rodger’s mares to be bred to the old Bahraini stallion *Mlolshaan Hager Solomon, in Michigan. This stallion, who came from Bahrain as a gift to his present owner Bill Biel, is currently the only stallion in the USA who was born in Arabia Deserta. Until then he had produced one asil mare, and Jenny decided to do something about the 24 year old stallion got any older. Rodger’s Dahmat Shahwan mare foaled a big handsome colt with the foot turned the wrong way who had to be destroyed. But his Ubayyah mare, who is tail female to *Mahraa of Ibn Jalawi of Saudi Arabia, foaled a very special filly for Jenny last month, named Ubayyat al-Bahrain, below. I wished we had more fillies displaying as much character and true Arab features as this one. Jenny even tells me there are plans to bring two other Saudi mares from Rodger’s to Solomon this year. Fingers crossed for that, and for more Solomon foals. Photo by Jamie Lamborn.
Fall foals have arrived, and this one was born last month at Janelle Wilde’s in Washington state Jackson Hensley’s in New Mexico, and is by Monologue (Riposte x Soliloquy by Regency) out of HH Noura Krush (Bayou CF x Topaz by Sportin Life). I am a big fan of Monologue.
I am thrilled! At 1.00 am this morning, Wisteria foaled a handsome colt, by her own sire Triermain. Jeanne Craver, who brought him to the world, with Charles, wrote: At 11 she was starting to think about it; at 1 she had a nose and one leg out and was lying on her back up against the wall. The hardest part was rolling her down off the wall, and then the other front foot was bent back at the pastern, and once I straightened that out, out he came with Wisteria doing most of the work. At one hour, he is up and walking on his own, he has had a bottle of mom’s best, and the mare has almost finished cleaning, I took a few iPhone photos in the dark. He is a handsome boy, withers at about my waist, legs straight, close coupling, nice neck…. everything looking good! Oh, and he’s grey. Surprise! In keeping with the W pattern of his dam, his granddam HB Wadduda, and his two sisters Walladah and Wadhah, he shall be named Wadd, the name of the ancient (before Islam) Arab god of love, whose sanctuary was located in the oasis town of Dumat al-Jandal…
Some time ago, I wrote about how the 1964 mare Carila (Caravan x Akila by Akil), the last asil mare from the female line of the Davenport mare *Abeyah was lost in the 1990s despite a last minute preservation effort.. Recently, while going through Datasource, I was thrilled to find out that an asil line to *Abeyah has actually survived, through modern show ring lines and outside any preservation program. This is the line of the 1963 mare RO Jameelah (Faaris x Ramleh, by Ghazi x Fersaba, by Ferdin x Saba), who has a line to Nureddin II through his son Ferdin, which means she is not Al Khamsa, because Al Khamsa does not accept Nureddin II. Now the case of Nureddin II (Rijm x Narguileh by Mesaoud) is a long and complex one, and a painful one at that. In my opinion, he is who the studbooks say he is, that is, the 1911 son of his two parents, the Crabbet horses Rijm and Narguileh. I have seen all the documentation available, and I don’t buy the arguments of either Carl Raswan or his disciple Jane Ott, about him being the son of an English Thoroughbred. This theory has been refuted many times by all serious researchers.…
I recently found out that Trad al-Milhim al-Mizyad (below), the leader of the Hsinah Bedouins of the Syrian desert, was a frequent visitor of my maternal grandfather’s house, in Hims, Syria. My grandfather, Salim Yazigi (1902-1989), was a Syrian police (“gendarmerie”) officer who retired with the rank of general, and his relationship with Trad al-Milhim, whose Hsinah Bedouins had their summer quarters in the close vicinity of Hims, must be attributed to frequent dealings with the authorities of Hims to address various tribal matters. The Hsinah are a branch of the ‘Anazah and had a very highly reputed marbat of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak, from what the late Azmi Bey al-‘Uthman al-Miri’bi, an Arabian horse authority in Lebanon, told me, back in the 1990s.
In a few days, Al Khamsa will be in a position to announce a very good news concerning the last remaining asil horses of Tahawi bloodlines. In the meantime, I am sharing with you this 30 year old photo, which Yehia al-Tahawi, a member of Cairo’s Jockey Club and otherwise a breeder of Straight Egyptian Arabians of modern Tahawi lines (Fulla, Futna, and Bint Barakat), sent me of his father Sheykh Abd al-Sattar ‘Eliwa al-Tahawi with his asil Kuhaylah Tamriyah Ammoura (‘Darling’ in Arabic). Ammoura traces to a desert bred K. Tamriyah mare imported to Egypt by Sheykh Quwayti’ Smayda al-Tahawi from the ‘Anazah Bedouins in the Syrian desert. Her sire is a Hamdani Simri horse called “Ibn Damas” bred by Mohammed Fergani El-Tahawy, and tracing back to a Hamdaniyah Simriyah mare imported from the Sba’ah Bedouins. Yasir Ghanim who supplied all this information from his cousin Yehia also tells me Ammoura has an asil granddaughter that is still alive today. This news is a great ray of hope for the Arabian horse in general and for the Kuhaylan Tamri strain in particular, of which this mare would be the single remaining representative, as far as I know.
Last week, Jadiba (Dib x Jabinta by Jadib), the Saqlawiyat al-‘Abd mare I recently purchased (photo below), was checked in foal to the bay Hamdani stallion Vice-Regent CF (Regency X Violetta by Salutation), photo also below by Randy Abler. I am keeping my fingers crossed for a normal pregnancy. If all goes well, inshallah, there will be a foal around the 4th of July next year, with crosses to the grand Hanad through his four sons Tripoli, Sanad, Ibn Hanad and Ameer Ali. I am so grateful to Monica Respet and Linda Uhrich for helping me secure Jadiba, and to Randy Abler and Gail Wells for facilitating the breed to Vice-Regent.