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.
Bay Saqlawiyah Ubayriyah bred by the Yusuf al-Du’bu of the Tai Bedouins, obtained by Hasan and ‘Abd al-Muhsin al-Nassif of Tal Bisah, then gifted to Salim and Edouard Al-Dahdah, then given by them to Ahmad Ghalioun of Hims. Sire: the dark bay Ma’naqi Hadraji of Dhahir al-Ufaytan (asil); dam of a celebrated endurance winning mare, Wudyan; not registered in WAHO, and not 100% sure if asil. Should have been more diligent and taken the time to inquire further about her; but there were so many asil horses in Syria back in the early 1990s that trying to trace the origins of a non-registered mare was not always deemed worth the effort. Big mistake in this case. PS: I am at my father’s in Lebanon, scanning old pictures and posting some.
Black Kuhaylan Hayfi stallion at Mustafa Jabri in 1990. Sire: Mahrous; dam: a Kuhaylah Hayfiyah from the Shammar Bedouins. I don’t remember her name.
Beautiful long forelocks on this bay Kuhaylat al-Krush mare at Jackson Hensley’s in New Mexico. “Al-Khayl ma3qud bi-nawaasiha al-khair ila yawm al-qiyamah” (Goodness is tied to the forelocks of horses until Judgement Day), according to a saying of the Prophet Muhammad.
Read this entry in the stud book of Faysal ‘Abd Allah Sa’ud al-Tahawi, excerpted from the tribe’s website: “Then, in the year 1356 H, we bought the bay ‘Ubayyah Sharrakiyah from Ibn Samdan, when she was in foal, and she gave birth, while in our ownership, to a chestnut colt whose sire is the [Kuhaylan] Nawwaqi who was [standing at stud] with the Arabs of Sba’ah, and whose owner was Fanghash, on the first day of Rabi’ al-Awwal 1356 H [equivalent to the 12th of May, 1937]. And we solt that colt to Cairo.” And further down: “And on July 27, 1949, Faran Ibn Samdan came to us, and we each took our shares [in horses], and he gave up his shares in al-‘Ubayyah and received from us 172 pounds. This was the bay ‘Ubayyah which came from Salih al-Misrab at the hand of Husayn Abu Hilal in 1356 H.” Now please tell me, how many people in 1950, just over sixty years ago, had the luxury of receiving Ibn Samdan, the breeder of the best and most authenticated marbat of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak among the Sba’ah, in his own house, to pay him his share of the ‘Ubayyat Ibn Samdan,…
The more I am reading through the materials recently posted on the Tahawi website, the more I realize that the people within WAHO and the EAO who have denied registration to the asil Tahawi horses in the 1980s must have a lot on their conscience — nothing less than the destruction of one of the most authenticated group of horses in the Arabian breed.
In the XIXth and early XXth century, there was a famous and well-respected marbat of Dahman ‘Amer with Ibn Hemsi of the Gomussah clan of the Sba’ah Bedouins. The Blunts purchased two horses from that strain: Dahma, which they bought from “Oheynan Ibn Said” of the Gomussah (who had bought her from Ibn Hemsi), and Rataplan, which they bought from India. Ibn Hemsi’s was the only marbat of Dahman ‘Amer among the Sba’ah. The horse to which the Blunt mare Hagar was in foal when they bought her on Jan. 4, 1878, was also from the same horses, because Hagar was still owned by the Sba’ah when she was bred to him (she was taken in war from the Sba’ah by the Ruwalah in the winter 1877/78, says Lady Anne, and then purchased by a Mawali Bedouin from the Ruwalah). It is also very probable that *Wadduda’s sire, also a Dahman (no marbat mentioned), was or traced to the horses of Ibn Hemsi. The Syrian horsebreeder, Ali al-Barazi, reports in his book this old Bedouin saying about a Dahman ‘Amer stallion which stood at stud with Ibn Hemsi, who used to charge one gold pound to breed from him: ‘”al-dhahab ‘ind Ibn…
Recently, Mohammad Mohammad Uthman al-Tahawi, who maintains the very rich Tahawi tribe website, uploaded an important document, which is like a Abbas Pasha Manuscript in miniature. It is the herd book of his great grandfather, and leader of the Tahawi clan, Shaykh ‘Abdallah Saoud al-Tahawi. Mohammad found it among the horse related documents of his grandfather Uthman, and was told that the book was started by Shaykh ‘Abdallah, and kept up by the latter’s son Shaykh Faysal. When the sons of Shaykh ‘Abdallah divided their father’s horses between them upon his death, they passed book to each other to keep it updated. Mohammad copied it by hand in 1980, and has now uploaded it online. Rather than tell you about it, I will translate some of its parts, with Mohammad’s permission: In the name of God, the Most Merciful and Compassionate, blessings upon God [follows a string of religious invocations…] This is a record of the history of the origin of the horses of the Kuhaylat origin, the Tamriyah branch, established by the glorified Shaykh of the Arabs Sa’ud [son of] Yunis al-Shafi’i of the Arabs of [the tribe of ] al-Hanadi may God rest his soul and welcome him…
I found this family tree of the Shammar Bedouin clans from the section of the tribe known as Zawba’ (Zoba). It can be found online on an Arabic genealogy website. Most Shammar genealogies were put together by Western travelers, often basing themselves on more or less reliable Bedouin informants. This one was compiled by a Syrian ‘traveler’ in the years between 1963 and 1971 across three countries Iraq, Syria and Kuwait ( to where many Shammar Bedouins from Syria emigrated in the 1960s). It is special in that it references its sources, the tribal elders who were used as sources when compiling the information. The document says it will be published [was it already?] in an upcoming book about the Shammar Bedouins in three volumes. I have been trying to compile such a list for many years, and was facing three challenges — other than the logistical challenge of locating and reaching the sources, which were getting increasingly scarce as time was passing by: 1) first, the difficulty of reconciling tribal genealogies, as they was always a point were the elders’ versions differed, like in all oral histories; one would claim his clan is related to another clan; the elder from…
I need help identifying several horses in photos I took in my June 2002 visit to Carol and Diane Lyons. They are all beautiful horses, but I failed to remember the names as I was taking the photos. I have several more. The stallion in the first photo looks like he has some Monsoon not to far in the pedigree, judging from his hindquarter. Maybe SA Apogee? The mare in the middle I have no clue. The last one is Dulcet? or Lustre? Carol was very proud of her.
Jenny Krieg, referring to a discussion on straightegyptians.com in 2007, tells me that it seemed that the late Lady Anne Lytton apparently told Carol Mulder, who told someone else (who was writing on se.com under the username “BasilisBelka”) that the famously ugly photo of Mrs. Dillon’s imported Arabian stallion El Emir (below) was not of him, nor of an other Arabian horse but rather that of an English Lord’s carriage horse. Can this be confirmed?
The other day I was looking at foundation horses (i.e., original Arabian horses imported to the USA and the UK from the Arabian desert) in the pedigree of my new mare Jadiba, trying to gauge how “comfortable” I felt about the information currently available to us in terms of their ‘asalah’ or authenticity. “Comfort” is an particularly subjective notion, by my own admission, partly because I am setting the bar, and I tend to set it very high, and partly because of the relativity of the very notion of ‘asalah’. Of course, my level of ‘comfort’ is a function of the amount and quality of information available on these horses, and here a relative classification is possible by growing level of ‘comfort’. I for instance feel very ‘comfortable’ about most of the information on most of the Davenport horses in Jadiba’s pedigree, because many of them have surviving hujaj, or original authentication documents, especially *Wadduda, *Urfah, *Hamrah, *Muson, and *Jedah. I also feel similarly comfortable about many of the Blunt horses in her pedigree, especially those who were bought directly from Bedouins like Rodania, Hadban, Pharaoh, Azrek, and Queen of Sheba. The ones like Kars, Basilisk, and Dajania who were bought…
This is the first time I see a photo of Nusi (Gulastra x Nusara by Abu Zeyd), a 1928 Kuhaylan Da’jani stallion bred by W.R. Brown in Berlin, New Hamsphire, USA.
Another asil horse bred and owned Lee Oellerich in Canada was the 1977 asil stallion Naizahq (Mirath x Dahma al-Shaqra by Ruta-Am), also a Dahman Shahwan of the Bahraini line that traces back to *Sawannah. Lee tells me: “He is a winnner of numerous match races, against all comers, including English Thoroughbreds (TB). He ran 4 F. (1/2 M.) in 47.2 and beat a TB in a morning work, carrying close to 20 pounds more than the TB. He sprinted a F. (1/8 M.) in 11 seconds. He could also run a distance and beat TB’s over 1-1/2 and 2 mile match races. Many Arabians ate his dust, mostly in 1/2M. and 1M. Races. Typically they would, get a 5 to 10 length moving start, and he would break from a starting gate. He also won over his sire Mirath, by a head, in a 5 F. Race. His daughter Hulaifah produced the mare Saudah and the two stallions Hulaif and Haziz. All sired by Bahri. Although they never raced, they show a “good turn of foot”, reminiscent of their grandsire Naizahq.”
A grand mare of very close desert bloodlines from Saudi Arabian and Bahrain, of the Dahman Shahwan strain now extinct in Bahrain. Hadiyeh (Dahman Al Bahrain x Qasidah by Mirath) is an asil 1994 mare bred and owned by Lee Oellerich in Canada. Photos from Lee.
This nice picture of the mare Fairfax KH (Atticus x Fair Naomi UF), bred and owned by RJ Cadranell in Washington state is from the DAHC website.
Yesterday, Jeanne Craver sent me this picture of my other mare Wisteria CF, and her 2010 daughter Wadha by Javera Thadrian (his last offspring). Wisteria is in foal to her sire Triermain for a September 2011 foal. Judith Franklin, who was visiting, took the picture.
Yesterday, I went up to Pennsylvania to see the mare I recently bought. This time Jadiba looked much better than the first time I saw her (thanks in part to the great care Sue Moss, the lady in the photos, is giving her), and I was pleased with her overall. I thought she had some nice features I had overlooked last time: a deep jowl, a fine muzzle, a tail set high, and well let out, a strong girth, a round croup and a well sloped shoulder. Her back is shorter — although still long in my opinion — and her ears longer than I had initially thought, too. I still think her eyes are set a little too high, and I also noticed that her forehead was narrow: her face is rectangular instead of triangular when seen from the front. Anyway, I will let you judge from these photos I took. There is a definite Crabbet air to her (obviously, since she is about 90% Crabbet/Doyle) and the influences of Rijm (Mahruss x Rose of Sharon), who is Ribal’s maternal grandsire, and Gulastra (Astraled x Gulnare) were some of the easy ones to spot. She also has some nice…
The 1988 black Kuhaylah Haifiyah mare Fa Bahim Pharra (Bahim Hisan x ASF Diane, by Dhahran x Dihkenna) is the youngest Al Khamsa tail female descendant of the mare Dihkenna, a mare of especially valuables bloodlines. She is last recorded as being owned by Alma Cizek in 1988, with no progeny. Anyone knows how Mrs. Cizek can be reached?
ASF Gersom (Dhahran x Esperanzo Asal Fanifara, by Fanifeh) was a 1974 bay stallion who headed the Arabian Stud Farms (ASF) stallions battery in its later years. He sired 27 registered Arabians, mostly out of mares tracing to *Turfa, *Muhaira, and *Al Hamdaniah. Himself was a Kuhaylan al-‘AJuz tracing to *Turfa. Billy Sheets, who owned ASF with his father, once told me that the stallion who sired all these horses, and who was the senior stallion at ASF, was not ASF Gersom, but rather his full brother ASF Jedeciah, a similarly marked bay, born in 1977.
Mokhtar, the old asil Kuhaylan al-Krush stallion, bred by the Shammar Bedouins in Syria and now in France, continues to sire nice foals at 24 years of age. Here is a photo of the little filly Mutarak Nesba (Mokhtar x Murad Diffa) bred by Guillaume Lambert and Margot Leroux-Berger, in France. By the way, it turned out that Mokhtar’s semen does not ship well, and that means he will have to be used live. It is still time to catch him before he leaves us, because if I had to vouch for the asil status of one horse in the world, it would be him. He is a time capsule straight from the 18th century.
Mahboob Halab, the asil Shuayman Sabbah stallion from Syria, now in France with Jean-Claude Rajot, has more foals on the ground, which gives me the opportunity to showcase the progeny of the Syrian desert-breds here. Here’s his daughter Shueymah Challawieh, out of one of Jean-Claudes’ mares, also a Shuwaymah by strain, but tracing to the imported Cherifa, bred by the Sba’ah Bedouins and imported to Algeria in 1869.
Amirhossein Ghasemi sent these pictures of the stallion Babrak Bamian (Lohrasb x Fariba), a Wadnan Khursan stallion from Iran, of the marbat of Hajji Shahab.
Both Mohammad al-Tahawi and Yasir Ghanim have sent me a new link to the website on the Tahawi Bedouins where they have uploaded many, many more documents about the original Tahawi horses, including the herd-book of their leader Shaykh Abdallah Saoud al-Tahawi, which contains hundreds of entries documenting purchases of horses from the desert, dates of breedings, foal productions, sale records, etc. It is a treasure trove of information like no other, and it establishes the asil credentials of the Tahawi horses beyond any doubt. I will even go further to point of saying that many Tahawi horses are by now more authenticated than the majority of desert-breds from the RAS (e.g., Halabia, Nafaa al-Saghira, Badaouia, Eid, etc), and Inshass (e.g., El Samraa, El Shahbaa, Badria, Beshier El Achkar, Bint Karima). It’s a paradise of primary sources for those who love the original Bedouin horses. This is of course related to the great work Bernd Radtke is doing with his upcoming book, about which those of you went to the EE (Extreme and Exotic) already heard. I will be slowly working on the translation of these documents over the next several weeks. I think I need to find a replacement at…
Following yesterday’s last blog, Jeanne Craver sent me these rare pictures of the 1949 Saqlawi al-‘Abd (back to *Urfah) mare Shasinada (Hanad x Shasi by Asil) and her 1942 dam Shasi (Asil x Sherah by *Hamrah), courtesy of Nyla Eshelman. Both mother and daughter are of the old Bedouin type that was prevalent in the USA in the 1930s and 1940s but has all but disappeared in modern Arabian breeding. Note the resemblance between Shasinada and the 1993 Davenport mare WDA Hyapatia Lee (Bon Jour CF X Sarsaparilla by Dharanad) that was recently posted on the Davenport Arabian Horse Conservancy website (and below).
Shasinada (Hanad x Shadi by Asil out of Sherah by *Hamrah) was a Hanad daughter (read RJ Cadranell’s article about the legacy of Hanad here) and an asil Saqlawiyat al-‘Abd, whose pedigree primarily (99%) consists of horses imported from the desert by Homer Davenport in 1906, with a touch of Major Upton’s bloodlines. She was very closely related to the Craver stallion Tripoli (Hanad x Poka by *Hamrah). Today, there are probably two mares left tracing to this mare, left alive, and they don’t seem to have registered progeny. ML Ayriana is one (TreffHaven Ruabbas x ML Roushana by Treff-Haven Hotai out of Shamma El Ajzaa by *Sanaad out of Shasinada), and ML Shariaa (TreffHaven Ruabbas x ML Malika by Treff-Haven Hotai out of Shamma El Ajzaa by *Sanaad out of Shasinada) is the other. They were born in 1992 and 1989 respectively. I am going to track them down.
A short video of the excellent Tribute CF (Telemachus CF x Oreana CF by Plantagenet), now a gelding but still impressive, and two of the best Plantagenet daughters, the grey full sisters Domina and the chestnut Anjou (both out of Bint Dharebah), at Pamela Klein’s in Virginia in 2007. All three Kuhaylan Hayfi by strain. When I saw him from a distance a few weeks ago at Pamela’s, Tribute reminded me of the famed photos of the stallion Kamel (Hadban Enzahi, by Nazeer x Kamla) by Ursula Guttman (above), and Erika Schiele (below). Blow out the video while looking at the pictures and you’ll see what I mean. Tribute’s neck is not long, but Kamel’s was much shorter still.
Click here for pictures of a “cute” horse from Saudi Arabia, aptly called Sabeh, “Panther”.
Jadah Samirah (photo below), owned by Stephanie Theinert who sent me these two pictures, is a special, precious mare in many respects. This 1993 grey mare is one of the very last survivors of the Sheet’s Arabian Stud Farms (ASF) breeding program, which in the 1990s was one of the largest asil preservation programs in the USA, with a focus on rare lines. She is by the wonderful ASF Hercules (ASF David x ASF Kera by Julyan), out of ASF Ubeidiya (ASF Ezra x ASF Euodia by ASF David). She carries some of the last lines ever to a number of original desert-bred Arabian imports to the UK and the USA, like Lord Russel’s *Mameluke (GSB), Captain Gaisford’s *Nedjran, Major Upton’s Kesia (GSB), and Homer Davenport’s *El Bulad and *Farha. She also carries some of the last lines so great American bred horses of the past, which are no longer to be found in other asil Arabian lines, like: Gharis, Medina, Komet, Mershid, Niht and Larkspur. Jadah Samirah is truly a time capsule of Amercican Arabian breeding of the first part of the XXth century. Jadah Samirah is also one of the four last representatives of the *Samirah line. *Samirah…
Those of us preservationists who have a mare or two, and can’t afford to breed them every year, always find it harder to choose stallions when the time comes to breed their mare. They have to live with the consequences of their decisions, and this alone tends to make them more risk averse. Of course, the new world of opportunities opened by artificial insemination techniques makes such decisions all the more difficult to make. I am finding myself in this situation now that it is time to breed Jadiba. Even more, I am asking myself a lot of questions, like: — should I just pick the best horse for my mare, the horse who will correct her defects, and emphasize her qualities, and hope for offspring that are “better” (prettier?) than both parents? — or should I pick the horse a Bedouin would have picked, using Bedouin standards of selection (if these could indeed be generalized), because I want to breed the kind of horse Bedouins — as custodians of the breed — wanted? I always thought I should do the latter, which is an intellectual view. Now I am not sure anymore. All I know that I need to…
Vice-Regent CF (Regency CF x Violetta CF by Salutation), a Hamdani Simri tracing to Galfia, bred by Craver Farms, and owned by Randy Abler, is yet another candidate for breeding Jadiba in a couple weeks. He is one of the very few Davenport stallions registered for shipping semen. Photos courtesy of Jeanne Craver. More photos of him here, on Randall’s website.
I saw this quote on the blog of Ralph Suarez, and it’s from Lady Anne Blunt: “An inborn love of the horse is instinctive, quite unreasoning, and one cannot recall any beginning of what seems to have always been there, together with a craving for perfection in the object of interest.”
Now look at his progeny. This one one is a colt (and he oozes true desert type and conformation), Shuwayman Fahad, out of a mare by a Syrian sire (the Krush Mokhtar), and from an good French dam line, also from the Shuwayman strain (Cherifa tail female).
Catherine Wocjik of France just sent me these recent photos of the 2005 young asil Shuwayman Sabbah stallion Mahboub Halab, bred in Syria by Radwan Shabareq, and now in France with Jean-Claude Rajot, who is the man on his back. By the way, this stallion will be the subject of my upcoming talk at the next Al Khamsa Convention in Pennsylvania: “A closer look at a modern Syrian Arabian horse pedigree: the case of Mahboob Halab”. Photos of his first foal crop coming soon..
Check this good article on the CMK website. It was compiled by W.R. Brown and published in the Arabian Stub Book [volume 2] in 1918.
Photos from Ghasemi in Iran. Here is Dowran I’s pedigree:
Tabab, 1921 stallion, was by *Deyr out of the bay Domow, who was out of the chestnut *Wadduda. Who Domow’s sire really was is not easy to figure out. Her registered sire is the Crabbet stallon *Abu Zeyd (Mesaoud x Rose Diamond), a chestnut but the colors don’t match because two chestnuts can’t produce a bay, and it looks instead like she may have been by *Astraled (Mesaoud x Queen of Sheba), who was bay. [Update: See Michael Bowling’s and RJ Cadranell’s article in Jeanne Craver’s comment on this thread]
The head of this mare illustrates several features to be found in old style (‘atiq), Bedouin-type Arabian horses in their homeland. I have seen these features in Bedouin-bred Arabian mares time and again. Some of them are commonly found in modern Arabian horses, like good distance between the ear and the eye, others less so: — a large deep jowl: while “large” is easily understood, one can get an idea of the “depth” of a jowl by following the curved line of the jowl inwards (ie, towards the muzzle) as deeply into the head as possible. — a lower lip extending slightly beyond the upper lip, like camels’. — the back of the lower lip (towards the jowls) is arched inwards (concave), and the more prominently featured and the deeper that arch is, the better, from a Bedouin-type perspective. — watery eyes: many horses (especially in the Straight Egyptian group) today have big, uniformly black eyes, “full”, which look like the eyes of small birds. It looks as if jet black ink is ready to spill out of the eye, if poked. Bedouin-type eyes are different. Sure, they are blakc, but they look more like humans’ eyes, sometimes even to…
The lovely Kuhaylan Hayfi stallion Porte CF (Portico x Recherche by Prince Hal) is now with Ambar Diaz in California, and is looking very good. Porte CF was owned by Pamela Klein, who gave him to Ambar. He’s pictured here with Michael Bowling.
Clarion (Regency x Chinoiserie by Dharanad), a 1991 Hamdani Simri is another candidate for Jadiba.
He is with Debbie Jessen in Illinois, and a good horse, with a good pedigree. A 2003 Regency son, out of a Plantagenet daughter, out of a Sir Marchen grand-daughter, adding a line to the handsome Ibn Hanad (last headshot in black and white). The first photo shows Chancery as a five years old, and the second and third as a growthy four year old. Asil Arabians of Davenport bloodlines are slow growers, and do no fully mature before 7 or 8 years old. Note the very short back, the deep girth, and the free shoulder movement. In the last photo with Charles Craver, note the width between the eyes, the broad forehead, the protruding eye sockets, the length of the distance between the eye and the base of the ear, the small muzzle, the wide and delicate nostrils, and the prominent facial bones. Note the resemblance with the Ibn Hanad cropped headshot, too. He is one of the three or four horses in my shortlist for breeding Jadiba to.
I really liked the yellow one in the middle, he should have won, but the judges thought the green one looked more ‘extreme’ and ‘exotic’… but it certainly was a tough call. Maybe next year, with green eye-makeup instead of the red..
This is a photo of Jadiba’s dam, Jabinta (Jadib x Bint Malakah by Subani), also courtesy of Jeanne Craver. As you can see, she has none of her daughter’s conformational defects: longer neck (or is it picture?), shorter back, longer ears. I like this mare better than I do her daughter.
An old photo of Jadiba taken by her previous owner Annette Pattishall, from Joe Ferriss’ Khamsat article, courtesy of Jeanne Craver.
You may be wondering what’s with the recent flareup of blog entries on *Wadduda and some of the Doyle horses… Well, there’s a reason. As of this morning, I am the proud owner (I still can’t believe it actually) of Jadiba (Dib x Jabinta, by Jadib) a 23 year old chestnut Saqlawiyat al-‘Abd tracing in tail female to *Wadduda. A dream come true. I haven’t been excited like this in years, and it’s all the more remarkable given the troubling turn things are taking all over the Middle East these days (Salih of Yemen is out, by the way, so that’s one more tyrant down). As a youngster, Jadiba was among the horses on Joyce Gregorian Hamsphire’s Upland Farm, then went missing for several years, before re-surfacing in the ownership of Annette Pattishall in Pennsylvania, who had not been breeding her. That’s where she was “rediscovered” a couple years ago by Monica Respet. Monica played a major role in facilitating the purchase of Jadiba and I will be eternally grateful to her for making it happen, and for her friendship. I am also grateful to Joe Ferriss, whose Khamsat article about Jadiba’s granddam Bint Malakah and other critically endangered lines…
El Alamein (Dhareb out of Antarah by Antez), a 1943 Kuhaylan Haifi, and one of four full siblings, who were at the heart of the rebirth of Davenport breeding. Shown here in old age, and blind from an infection (hence the swollen eye). Charles Craver handling.