Al Khamsa has a new website, larger, slicker, with tons of information and at your fingertips. The education section is particularly rich, with articles, lists of foundation horses and a preservation section about endangered lines.
From now on, I will use the term “Pseudo-Arabian” to refer to horses that are registered as Arabians in a WAHO-approved studbook, but are in reality part-bred Arabians with varying amounts of non-Arabian blood running in their veins. They are part-breds in disguise. The Qatari horse Amer (by Wafi x Bushra on paper), the Saudi horse Tiwaiq (by Unknown 1 x Unkown 2 out of Unknown 3, photo below) and a majority of horses of French racing bloodlines such as Djourman (Manguier x Djouranta by Saint Laurent, photo below) fall under this category. They and their offspring are among the most expensive and sought after “Arabian” horses today. Their presence in WAHO-registered studbooks represents a scandal unlike any other in the world of equine breeding, in no small part because they belong to rich and powerful people who can get away with this behavior.
This photo is from the collection of the late Mary Gharagozlu, through Brigitte Killian. It pictures the Bahraini Kuhaylat al-Mulawlish mare Mlolesh Al-Yatima (Jellabi al-Asil x Mlolesh).
Fancy Flight (Tripoli x Ceres by Aramis) was a full sister to Monsoon. Asil Kuhaylah Hayfiyah bred by Craver Farms, and founder of a family of herself. Photo courtesy of Jeanne Craver.
This is a Kuhaylah Hayfiyah at the stud of the late Alaa Din Jabri (Mustafa’s uncle), east of Aleppo. I forgot what her name was, but you can easily find her in the first Volume of the Syrian studbook. Her sire was Mahrous, and her dam one of the two bay Kuhaylah Hayifiyah mares daughters of the Saqlawi Marzakani stallion Ghuzayyil (there were two of these back in 1992 when I took that picture, a younger one and an older one). This mare was very pretty and very strongly built at the same time. Certainly one of the best Mahrous daughters. Alaa Din Jabri bred this line for at least four decades, and before that time the line was with Wawi al-Kharfan of the Fad’aan Bedouins. It is said the line is somehow related to the horses of the last of the leader of the Fad’aan Bedouins to live in Syria: Miqhim Ibn Mhayd. In any case, the strain of Kuhaylan al-Hayfi belongs to the leading Mhayd clan of the Shumaylat section of the Fad’aan Bedouins, as I mentioned earlier on this site, here. This is where the Hayfiyah mare *Reshan came from. She was imported by Homer Davenport to…
This mare is a desert-bred Hamdaniyat al-‘Ifri, bred by a Bedouin named Mus’ir Hamad al-Sakran, who also bred her son *Ta’an. *Ta’an was imported to the USA in 1994. Her sire was the grey Kuhaylan al-Wati of Diab al-Sbeih of the Shammar Bedouins, a stallion who was used over a short period of time, but sired influential horses, such as Mahrous. Hamdani al-‘Ifri is a very respected strain in the Northern Arabian desert and the Jazirah area (Upper Mesopotomia in Syria and Iraq today). Upon being asked how his horses compared with Hamdani al-‘Ifri, ‘Abd al-‘Iyadah al-Dar’an Ibn Ghurab, owner of the old and otherwise very famous Hamdani Simri marbat of same name, is reported to have said that the Hamdani horses of the al-‘Ifri were even more authenticated than his, because al-‘Ifri had obtained them directly from Simri himself. The Hamdani horses of Ibn Ghurab also came from Simri, but via another Bedouin. The clan of al-‘Ifri are Bedouins from ‘Anazah (from the people of Ibn Haddal I think), who kept a marbat alive until the 1970s. I am not sure how the dam of *Ta’an relates to the horses of al-‘Ifri (i.e., what the chain of owners from…
This desert-bred mare is a representative of the rare and precious strain of Rishan. She traces to a most ancient and authenticated marbat of the Rishan strain, that of Ibn Hathmi of the ‘Abdah section of the Shammar Bedouin tribe. Her breeder Ayid al-Fnaish obtained the line from Ibn Hathmi a few decades ago. Mustafa al-Jabri is her current owner and I took this photo at his stud in 1995. She was registered in Volume 1 of the Syrian Studbook under the generic strain of Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz, reportedly because one of the members of the local registration committee was unaware of the existence of the Rishan strain. This oversight was fixed in the next Studbook iterations. She was born in 1986, and I believe her registration name is Bint al-Badiah. Her sire is al-A’war, the chestnut Hamdani (Simri) Ibn Ghurab stallion which the Shammar Bedouins were heavily using at the time, before he ended up with Radwan Shabareq of Aleppo in the 1990s. Her dam’s sire is the Saqlawi (Jadrani) Ibn ‘Amud of Muhammad al-Faris al-‘Ad al-Rahman of the ‘Assaf, the leading clan of the Tai Bedouins. Thanks to the tireless efforts of Basil Jadaan with WAHO, Volume 7 of…
I had been reading about the Tunisian government stud of Sidi Thabet in Robert Mauvy’s writings since my teenage years. I happened to be in Tunisia for work and did not want to miss the opportunity to go there and visit, so I took half a day off, bought a Kodak camera for 10 bucks and took the bus to Sidi Thabet in the rural outskirts of the capital Tunis. The stud manager was not there, only a couple grooms who showed me around. I took photos of all the stallions, except for the French ‘pseudo-Arabians’ who were very becoming increasingly popular in Tunisia and are all over the pedigrees now, and photos of the broodmares in the paddocks, but I did not take notes, and I am unable to identify any of the mares now. If the Tunisian readers could help with that, it would be great. The photo below is of one of these Tunisian mares. This dark chestnut old mare was so refined, so regal. Back then, she reminded of Moniet El Nefous and her daughters Mona and Mabrouka in the famous photo with Dr. Marsafi which Judith Forbis took at the EAO in Egypt in the 1960s.…
A rare photo of French master-breeder Robert Mauvy in his later days. Courtesy of Pierre-Henri Beillard, a disciple of Mauvy and the owner the splendid Mauvy-bred stallion Moulouki (Amri x Izarra by David). Mauvy’s little book “Le Cheval Arabe” is in my opinion, the most beautiful and passionate piece ever written in defense of the real Arabian horse of the desert. Neither Anne Blunt’s writing nor Carl Raswan’s compare to his in their intensity and inspirational power. Not even close.
I recently scanned a number of photos of Syrian Arabian horses that I took in the early 1990s, and I will be sharing them with you over the next days and weeks. It makes sense to begin this series of photos with the 1981 ‘Ubayyan Suhayli stallion Mahrous, head sire at the Jabri stud in Aleppo, Syria in the 1980s and much of the 1990s. He is consequently one of the most influential stallion in Syrian pedigrees today. I took these photos in 1992. Mahrous was a masculine and prepotent stallion, who stamped his progeny. All his sons and daughters inherited his balanced, near-faultless conformation and his good disposition. His head was criticized by some for not being a classic Arabian head with a ‘dish’ — Mahrous had a straight profile and a — but you can see from these pictures that it had all the essential characteristics of the head of a true desert-bred Arabian stallion: huge soulful eyes, short pricked ears, huge arched cheekbones, a broad forehead between the eyes, and a clean, delicately arched throat (mithbah). I have already discussed Mahrous’ very well-established pedigree in an earlier entry, to which I refer you (click here).
I think I just made a good bargain: a portable Pandigital photo scanner for 90 USD. It scans a photo in seconds, and the resolution, while not perfect, is quite decent. When I was studying in Chicago in 2001, Joe Ferriss offered me a state-of-the-art scanner which I used to scan the photos of the desert-bred Arabians that you see on this blog. Then I broke that scanner in 2004, and I have been using the same photos again and again since. Today, I scanned 76 horse photos in just a few minutes, most of them I took in the late 1980s and early 1990s in Syria, some of them from my trip to Tunisia in 2005 and the rest of France. So get ready for dozens of photos of Syrian desert-bred Arabians, and let me know when you have had enough.
A beautiful head shot of the 1980 asil Kuhaylan Haifi stallion Audobon (Iliad x Audacity by Lysander out of Bint Dharebah by Monsoon), bred by Charles Craver and later owned by Carol Lyons and Marge Smith in Oregon.
I received the following message yesterday, as a comment to one of the entries on the Tahawi tribe horses. Dear Edouard, I write to you on behalf of Al-Tahawia website managed by my cousin Mohammed ‘Etman (Othman) El-Tahawi. We are glad that the photos and documents we posted on the site were valued by you and your visitors. We are also very pleased with the recent acceptance of the three Tahawi mares to the notable Al Khamsa Roster. By this decision the Tahawi mares are now fully acknowledged by all the Arabian horse organizations. In addition to the few documents from our website that you posted here, we still have a larger number of authentic documents that we will be glad to share with you. We are in contact with Mr. Bernd Radtke who visited us in the 80s and we are aware of his work about Arabian horses. We will be glad to communicate with you and see how we can help. I will be glad to receive from you on the e-mail registered here. Best Regards This message illustrates the generosity and authenticity (asalah) of the Bedouin in general and the Tahawia in particular. I feel humbled by it,…
The asil stallion Ghalion-6 is by Ghalion (Morafic x Lubna) out of 25 Amurath-Sahib (Amurath Sahib x 221 Kuhaylan Zaid by Kuhaylan Zaid out of 11 Siglavy Bagdady II). He traces to the mare 60-Adjuze, imported from the Arabian desert by Austro-Hungarian Empire official Fadlalla El Hedad. Adjuze was reportedly bred by the Sba’ah Bedouins, her sire being a Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz and her dam a “Schecha”, the transliteration of which is “Shaykhah”. “Shaykhah” is either a mare’s name or a strain’s name, depending on the context in which it occurs. In that case, it is likely to the strain of the mare, the full strain being Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz al-Shaykhah, a lesser-known strain primarily owned by the Sba’ah and Fad’aan Bedouins.
[November 1 2010, update from Edouard: The last two otherwise Al Khamsa eligible descendents of *Bint Rajwa have died. There is no point proposing *Bint Rajwa for inclusion in the Al Khamsa Roster] I want to submit a proposal to include the mare *Rajwa and the stallion Karawane in the Al Khamsa Roster before this coming November. I have already written about *Rajwa here. She was a grey desert-bred mare of the Saqlawi “Ejrifi” (not a recognizable marbat, probably a spelling mistake) mare imported by W.R. Hearst in 1947, along with her daughter *Bint Rajwa. Her son *El Abiad was also imported to the USA at a later time. Both by the Lebanese-bred asil stallion Karawane (Ghazwane x a Ma’naqiyah). *Bint Rajwa had a daughter in the USA, Gulastra Raajiah by Gulastra. That daughter in turn had a son, Sheik Hallany by Hallany Mistanny (Zarife x Roda by Mansour). There are two horses potentially alive who closely trace to *Bint Rajwa, although not in the tail female: a 1988 mare, TCR Hallany Idol (by Sheikh Hallany x TCR Kassandra 1979, who was by Kazmeen Ibn Shiko out TCR Saantanny, also by Sheikh Hallany, so two crosses to *Bint Rajwa there); and a…
Below is a translation of the Arabic language hujjah of the mare *Abeyah, imported by Homer Davenport from the Northern Arabian (i.e., Syrian) desert to the USA in 1906. It is adapted from the translation of this hujjah which I did in 2005 for the reference book Al Khamsa Arabians III. The Al Khamsa Arabians III translation remains the one readers ought to refer to, because it is a word for word translation of the original Arabic, but the one below reads better in English: “I, o Faris al-Jarba, witness that the bay mare which has a blaze on her face and two stockings on her hindlegs is a ‘Ubayyah Sharrakiyah from the marbat of Mit’ab al-Hadb, to be mated in the dark night, purer than milk; we only witness to what we know, and don’t withhold what is unknown. Faris al-Jarba bore witness to this [seal of Faris al-Jarba follows] I testify by God that the witness referred to, Faris Pasha from the tribe of Shammar, is a just man and that his testimony is acceptable. Ahmad al-Hafez [seal of Ahmad al-Hafez follows]” I will be discussing this hujjah in detail in the comments section below, so when you…
I am really looking forward to the forthcoming publication in English of the book of King Abdallah I of Jordan, edited by his great-granddaughter Princess Alia Bint al-Hussein. The book “Jawab al-Sa’el ‘an al-khayl al-asayil” is a short treatise mainly concerned with the physical characteristics of the Arabian horse, and was already published three times in Arabic, and all three editions are now out of print.
A few days ago, Michael Bowling sent me the following photos of the 1964 Tunisian stallion Omran (Esmet Ali x Simrieh by Oukrif), from the rare tail female that goes back to the desert-bred mare Mzeirib, imported to Tunisia by the French in 1891. Omran was exported to one of Germany’s zoos, says Michael. The black and white photo was taken while the stallion was still in Tunisia, and the color one in Germany by Dr. Zimmerman of the Koln zoo, who gave both photos and others to Michael.
This beautiful 1905 desert-bred stallion was imported from Northern Arabia to the USA by Homer Davenport in 1906. He is a son of the mare *Urfa, a Saqlawiyat al-‘Abd from the horses of Didhan al-‘Awaji of the Wuld Sulayman Bedouins’ ruling clan. His sire is the “Great Hamdani” Simri stallion, apparently a major sire among the Bedouin at them time, which also sired the Davenport imports *Haffia, and *Hamrah, the latter being *Euphrates more famous older full brother. None of todays’ asil Arabian horses that trace entirely to Davenport’s original imported Arabians carries the blood of *Euphrates. Indeed, a single asil horse carries *Euphrates’ blood today: an unregistered 1991 mare named Sarita bint Raj, by Rajmoniet RSI out of the Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah mare Nejd Sahra Nisan (*Faleh x Daalnisan by Daaldan), bred and still owned by Helen McClosky in California. Interestingly Sarita bint Raj also carries the single last line to the asil Hamdani Simri stallion *Al-Mashoor, of the famous marbat of Damascus’ Baroudi Pashas. She also carries one of the very last lines to the famous *Mirage, another desert-bred Saqlawi Jadran. This mare dies, and two Al Khamsa Foundation Horses go down the drain, with a third hanging by a thread.
Check this feature out on the Bedouin Heritage Project website.
Nimr Shabareq (photo below, by Zaarour al-Barary out of Yamhad by al-A’war) is one of the desert bred stallions that were recently imported to France. He is now standing at stud with Louis Bauduin, who took this picture and gave it to Arnault Decroix, who sent it to me (Merci, Arnault). This is not your usual Arabian horse. This is a horse from hell. This is fire made horse. Both Jean-Claude Rajot and Arnault Decroix told me about their first encounter with this horse in 2008, when he was just a weanling at the stud of his breeder Radwan Shabareq: three grooms were needed to handle him as he was being shown to the stunned visitors. This is probably why Radwan called him Nimr — tiger. He hails from one of the most prestigious desert bloodlines: the Ma’naqi Sbayli marbat of Shawwakh al-Bu-Rasan, Shaykh of the Wuldah tribes of the Euphrates valley. Shawwakh had obtained the line from his neighbor and friend ‘Atiyah Abu Sayfayn, a Fad’aan Bedouin who owns the strain now. ‘Atiyah’s great-grandfather had stolen the original mare from the Sba’ah (click here to read how), the fountain-spring of the Ma’naqi Sbayli strain. The clan of al-Bu-Rasan is…
When I was in France this summer, I got some hair samples from the desert-bred Shuwayman stallion Mahboub Halab, owned by Jean-Claude Rajot. He is from an old Shammar lineage, and traces to the war mare of Faris al-Jarba. The al-Jarba own the marbat until now. MtDNA from this line will be compared with that of the Tahawi mare Fulla, also a Shuwaymat Sabbah, and with the Shuwayman horses from Bahrain which Jenny Lees owns in the UK. A couple days ago, I received hair samples from the stallion Mokhtar, another desert Shammar stallion of the Krush al-Baida strain, owned by Chantal Chekroun of France. Chantal also sent me some nice photos of old Mokhtar, which I will post here soon. MtDNA from this line will be compared with a number of other lines recognized as Krush, such as that of Dafina in the UK, and El Kahila in Egypt, but also *Werdi in the USA. Finally, Omar Anbarji of Aleppo promised to send hair samples from his stallion Kassar, a Kuhaylan al-Wati also from a famous Shammar marbat, and that will be used for comparison with the Kuhaylan Jellabi line of Makbula (back to Jellabiet Feysul of Abbas Pasha),…
I finally found the reason for my aversion for Babson horse pedigrees (not the horses themselves): it’s got to do with the names. These all look the same to me, and I still have trouble recognizing one horse from another on a pedigree. Try figuring this out: there is a Serrou, a Serr El Rou, an El Serrou, and they are three different horses. There is a a Maarou, a Maar-Ree, a Maar-Rab and they are three different horses. There is a Serrasab, a Serasaab, a Serasabba and they are three different horses. It’s been almost eighty years since the 1932 Babson importation from Egypt, and we’re still stuck with foal names with every single possible combination of the names of some or all the original imports (*Fadl, *Maaroufa, *Bint Serra, *Bint Bint Sabbah, *Bint Saada, and *Bint Bint Durra) and some of their direct offspring. I would not be surprised if one day a horse by the name of Daal-Serr-Fad-Maar-Abbah popped out of a pedigree. Why the torture?
He will remain for ever one of my three favorite Arabian stallions. Nancy Becker is in the photo.
This is a raelly unique photo, by Carl Raswan, from the Craver photo collection. It shows the mare Szeikha, a chestnut Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz purchased in the Arabian desert in 1931 by Bogdan Zientarski and Carl Raswan on the behalf of Prince Roman Sanguszko for the Gumniska Stud. She was bred i n 1923 by “Sheikh Farhan bin Haji Barak al Rahman” of the Muntefiq. She was lost during World War II and never found again. She may or may not have been of the strain of Kuhaylat al-Ajuz al-Shaykhah, Kuhaylat al-Shaykhah for short, or Szeikha (Shaykhah) may just be her name. She is the quintessential war mare, and I am a strong advocate of breeding back to this type of Arabian mares – the upright neck aside.
The chestnut stallion Kassar (Mahrous x Dawha by K. al-Wati) was bred by Mustafa al-Jabri and purchased by Omar Anbarji of Aleppo, who sent me the picture below. Kassar’s dam Dawha hails from the ma’ruf (well-known — by the Bedouin community, that is) and mazbut (reliable, authenticated, trusted) marbat of Kuhaylan al-Wati of the sons of Hakim al-Hsayni al-Ghishm of the Shammar, now settled in North-Eastern Syria. Hakim, his sons Mohammed, Ali and Fawaz and his grandsons such as Husayn followed a policy of only breeding their Kuhaylat al-Wati mares to their Kuhaylan al-Wati stallions. They own several branches of the same horses. Kassar in particular is heavily linebred to the Kuhaylan al-Wati strain. Kassars sire Mahrous is a son of a dark grey Kuhaylan al-Wati stallion, also from Hakim’s, and so is his paternal grandsire. Kassar’s paternal grandsire and Kassar’s dam are said to be very closely related. Theirs is a relatively old marbat with the Shammar; The grey stallion “Koheilan”, imported to England in the early 1910s (I think, but maybe it was the 1920s, in any case the horse is pictured in the first pages of Al Khamsa Arabians I, 1983), where he left no progeny, was of that strain. The Kuhaylan…
Jeanne Craver scanned the photo of Monsoon (Tripoli x Ceres by Aramis) which some readers have mentioned and which I was so eager to see. She wrote: “I have it as a slide and as a page proof from an Arabian Horse World ad we did years ago. I used the ad page, so there creases in the paper. This actually makes his head look more dished than it was. It was really fairly straight in profile, but very dry and classy. Anita Westfall took the photo, another one of her jewels! She also made the halter.” I don’t know how to put it otherwise, and this is perhaps inappropriate, but he looks … ‘sexy’.
— The grey Kuhaylah Hayfiyah Wisteria CF (Triermain x HB Wadduda by Mariner) was bred back to her sire Triermain CF (Javera Thadrian x Demetria by Lysander) last week at Craver Farms. — The chestnut Javera Chelsea (Thane x HB Diandra by Mariner), also a Hayfiyah, on lease from Doris Park of Iowa, will also be bred to Triermain on the next heat cycle. — So will the chestnut Ma’naqiyah Sbayliyah Dakhala Sahra (Plantagenet x Soiree by Sir), with Kathy Busch of Missouri, via AI.
I think this stallion, Monsoon (Tripoli x Ceres) is stunning. I am sorry about the poor quality of the picture. He was born at Craver Farms in 1967 and it is a shame he died young [well not so young, says Joe Ferriss, my memory is failing me] and therefore left little progeny.
The outstanding stallion Esmet Ali (photo below) is at the center of a controversy that has been quietly brewing for several decades now in Tunisia and beyond. Since Esmet Ali is in the pedigree of almost every single Arabian horse in Tunisia today, the matter is of some importance. I do not know what position to adopt with respect to this controversy, and I will actually refrain from adopting one until more information emerges from within the country, which I am sure will be the case at some point. The original Esmet Ali was born in 1955 at the famed and well-respected Sidi Bou Hadid stud of french Navy Admiral Anatole Cordonnier, one of the savviest and most knowledgeable breeders of Arabian horses of his time (little known in the USA, unfortunately). That Esmet Ali was by Cordonnier’s stallion Hazil and out of one of Cordonnier’s best mares, Arabelle (Beyrouth x Ambria by Nasr d.b). In 1956, Tunisia became independent from France, and some troubled times followed for a brief period, during which the stud of Sidi Bou Said was looted, and many animals ran away, and others were lost or stolen. The yearling Esmet Ali was one of these. He was taken…
I am really intrigued by the Arabian horses of Turkey, for two reasons. First, as a student of Middle Eastern history, I am deeply aware that the area composed of the modern states of Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Israel and the Palestinian Territories, and alternativelly known as Bilad al-Sham, Greater Syria, or the Levant (depending on who you talk to), was governed out of two cities during most of the last thousand years: Cairo and Istanbul. Both the Ayubid (1171- 1250) and the Mameluk Sultanates (1250-1516) ruled over this area from the city of Cairo, while the Ottoman Empire’s domination of the same area out of Istanbul lasted from 1516 until 1918. The Ottoman Viceroy of Egypt Mohammad Ali Pasha and his son Ibrahim Pasha also ruled the area from Cairo for a brief period (1832-1840), when they openly challenged the Ottomans’ authority. More recently, Syria and Egypt were also briefly united in one country from 1958 to 1961. If Cairo and Istanbul were the centers of power and prestige, then desert-bred Arabian horses, which are themselves major objects of power and prestige, must have flocked to Cairo and Istanbul in large numbers over this entire period. They were either obtained as gifts, purchases for cavalry remounts or war trophies. While most everybody knows about the fabled Arabian…
Finally, a photo of the 24 year old desert-bred Bahraini stallion *Mlolshaan Hager Solomon at his owner Bill Biel in Michigan. Jenny Krieg went up there and took this picture, from which Jeanne Craver removed the tack. Jenny has leased a mare of Saudi Arabian lines from Rodger Vance Davis to breed to him, and Rodger also sent in another mare too. If all goes well, there will be two foals from him next year, and I am keeping all my fingers and toes crossed. His blood is rare and precious because he is one of the few stallions out of Bahrain in the West. He is also rare because of his strain: Kuhaylan al-Mulawlish is only present in Bahrain today.
Ezzina (Chaabane x Wilaya by Ragheb), proudly owned by Walid Maazaoui, is one of the last asil mares in Tunisia. Ten years ago, Tunisia was still one of the last reservoirs of asil blood in the “East”, but that is quickly changing, and today there are only a few dozen asil mares and stallions left. The country has traditionally bred Arabians for the racetrack, and it continues to have a very dynamic racing scene. When I was there last, in 2006, I took some pictures of the unbelievable stallion Akermi (Dynamite III x Ichara by Koraish) at the government stud of Sidi Thabet. 46 starts, 40 wins, 5 seconds, 1 third, can you believe it? Several of Akermi’s stablemates were “Arabian” stallions imported from France, all of dubious racing bloodlines. They’re just about as much “Arabian” as I am Chinese. The groom who was walking me through the stables told me that there was a lot of enthusiasm among Tunisian breeders about these French horses, and that most breeders were using them. There is a growing market for these French-Tunisian crosses in the Gulf countries too, and prices are on the rise. Today, nobody, save a few purists and oldtimes, cares about preserving the Tunisian asil Arabian anymore. Walid…
The ‘Ubayyan Suhayli stallion Mahrous was, until his death in the late 1990s, the herd sire at Mustafa al-Jabri’s stud in Aleppo, Syria. Today his sire line is, along with that of the Damascus stallion Ayid, the most prolific in modern Syrian Arabian horse breeding. If you check Mahrous’ entry in the Syrian Arabian Horse Studbook, you will find relatively little information about him, in comparison with other major stallions of his generation (e.g, Mobarak, Mashuj, Raad, Marzuq, Mokhtar, all born between 1982 and 1987). I was able to learn more about Mahrus’ background by asking a number of persons, including Mustafa, Radwan Shabariq and the late Abd al-Qadir al-Hammami, as well as others who knew the horse well. Hazaim al-Wair has also conducted a masterful inquiry among the Shammar Bedouins clans of al-Sbeih and al-Ghishm about Mahrous’ sire. Mahrous was born in 1981, in the steppe area between the rivers Tigris and Euphrates, in Northeastern Syria. He was bred by a Bedouin of the Faddaghah clan of the Shammar tribe, a man named Wuhayyid al-Hamad al-Duhayyim. Wuhayyid then sold Mahrous to horse merchant, who sold him to another, before Mustafa bought him as a young stallion in 1983/84. The photo of Mahrous,…
This horse should have been mine, years ago. Actually, he was about to be mine, and he somehow slipped between my fingers by going to greener pastures. I first encountered him on a hot summer afternoon in 1996, while on a visit to the Aleppo Equestrian Center, with friends Radwan Shabareq, Kamal Abdul-Khaliq, and my father, Salim al-Dahdah. We had come to see a famous Arabian mare, owned by a man of the leading clan of the Shammar, the Jarba clan, with the intention of buying her. She was a celebrated mare in the desert, and I have featured her several times on this blog. The Aleppo Equestrian Center is located inside a gated compound; a paved road takes you from the main entrance to the stables and the administration offices uphill. Paddocks and jumping competition arenas are in the middle of the compound. As the four of us were walking up the paved road to the stables, the afternoon sunrays pounding on our heads, I was faced with this un-real image of a light grey Arabian stallion, tethered to the paddock fences, with a majestuous yet very gentle attitude, one that welcomes and inspires awe at the same time. I thought to myself: “I didn’t know they had…
Lovas Nemzet, the Hungarian equine magazine of Laszlo Kiraly, is launching an international horse photo competition (click here for more information) for photos highlighting the bonds between man and horse and links between horse and nature. The deadline for submitted amateur and professional photos has been extended to October 10th, for Daughters of the Wind readers.
Finally, I was able to see a photo of the 1975 asil Kuhaylan Hayfi stallion Iliad (Ibn Alamein x Oriole by Sir), bred by Charles Craver of “Davenport” bloodlines. Iliad is the sire of two stallions I really like, Audobon (out of Audacity), and Salil Ibn Iliad (out of LD Rubic. His extremely correct conformation reminds me of some of the asil stallions of Tunisian and Algerian bloodlines that stood at the government studs of France in the 1960s, Iricho in particular. Photo from the Davenport Arabian Horse Conservancy website.
Joe Ferriss sent me this announcement about a herd dispersal in Arkansas. There are 8 asil Arabians involved, all of BLUE STAR bloodlines. Five of these are ‘Straight Desert’, meaning that they entirely to horses imported from Saudi Arabia in the 1950s and 1960s. All need homes and quickly. Normally, Joe does not like to get involved in placing horses, and neither do I, but given the rarity of bloodlines we thought it important to let people knows. Click on this links to open a PDF document with the list of the horses, their pedigrees and the contact information of the owners. No picture of the horses are available here, but both the senior stallion and the senior mare are out of Desert Kalila, also dam of the mare DB Kalila pictured below. The line is a distinguished ‘Ubayyan line, from the horses of Prince Saud ibn ‘Adballah ibn Jalawi, governor of Eastern Saudi Arabia, in the 1930s and 1940s. Back there, it is highly valued.
This entry is a follow up on an earlier entry on the Egyptian stallion Ibn Ghalabawi, sire of the 1971 mare Azeema out of Naglaa 1963 (Azeema’s photo is below, thanks Timur Hasanoglu for sharing it with me), which was exported to Germany. While implicitly included in the Pyramid Society’s definition of a Straight Egyptian Arabian, Ibn Ghalabawi is explicitely left out of the Asil Club’s otherwise wholesale embrace of the Egyptian Agricultural Organization’s Studbook. He shares that distinction with two other stallions, Sharkasi, and Registan (Skowronek x Riz). In 1978, WAHO accepted Ibn Ghalabawi’s daughter Azeema as purebred, based on the testimony of Sayed Marei of Al Badeia Arabians. That testimony identifies Ibn Ghalabawi as by Ghalabawi out of the mare “Bint Nabras”, by Nabras out of “Bint Soniour”. Soniour is only identified as a “desert-bred horse”. Assuming that pedigree information is correct, further research is needed on the following four horses before the credentials of Ibn Ghalabawi can be bolstered: the three stallions “Ghalabawi”, “Nabras”, “Soniour” and the great-granddam in the tail female, about which nothing is known. “Ghalabawi” is said to be by Balance x Bint Magboura by Ibn Rabdan, and to be bred by the RAS. I…
Notice the large, round, watery eyes, the dished profile, the prominent jibbah, the delicately shaped, flexible nostrils, the deep jowls, and the perfectly set, arched neck. I firmly believe that sea horses should be allowed to compete in future Arabian horse halter shows.
I am proud to introduce Dr. Matthias Oster as an occasional contributor to this blog. Matthias is breeder and student of “Straight Egyptians in Germany” and a veterinarian. His wife is a daughter of the late Gunter W. Seidlitz (the breeder of Messaoud by Madkour and Maymoonah), and they now own the stallion Safeen (Ibn Safinaz x Abitibi Madeenah). His website, Arabian Heritage Source, is a resource for those breeders who like to think of Egyptian Arabians as part of the broader heritage of the asil horse of the Bedouins. Below is Masr El Dahman (Madkour x Maymoonah), bred by Matthias’ family.
Yesterday night, as I was sitting to draft notes for my presentation at National Breeder’s Conference tomorrow in Atlanta, I had some thoughts on the evolution of asil Arabian breeding, which I thought I’d share with you, for feedback: The greatest risk – and there are many – facing the asil Arabian horse today is the “decoupling” of the “Straight Egpytian” Arabian from the rest of the asil Arabian community. The “Straight Egyptian” brand/label is so strong, so prevalent, so well-marketed that your average Arabian horse breeder — including an ever increasing number of Middle Eastern breeders, completely disconnected from their ancestors’ breeding legacies and traditions — now believes that the only asil Arabian horses left in the world are the “Straight Egyptians”. The implications of this disconnect are several, and they play themselves out on many levels: at the financial level, where the gap between the prices of some “Straight Egyptian” horses and those of other asil horses is ever widening; at the genetic level, where the gene pool of the “Straight Egyptian” horse is ever narrowing; finally, and perhaps most significantly, at the cultural level, where the “Straight Egyptian” horse is being experienced, branded and understood as more “Egyptian” and less “Arabian” (less “Arabian” as in less from…
The Dahman stallion Barakat is the paternal grandsire of three “Straight Egyptian” mares: Folla, Futna and Bint Barakat. The Tahawi family website, maintained by Mohammed son of Mohammed son of Othman son of Abdallah son of Seoud al-Tahawi, has these few lines on Barakat: As to the dam of the stallion Barakat, she is the mare of Mnazi’ ‘Amer al-Tahawi, and she is Dahmat Shahwan“. Somewhere else on this website, there is the mention that “the Dahman horses of Mnazi’ ‘Amer al-Tahawi are from the horses of Ibn Maajil of Syria.” Now here’s what the Arabic edition of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript, edited by the late Saudi royal historian Hamad al-Jasir, has to say on these Dahman horses of Ibn Maajil, in the section about a specific descendent of the Hamdaniyah Simriyah mare known as Al-Khadeem: “The mare, and she is a green [a shade of grey] daughter of the yellow [another shade of grey] Rabdan the horse of al-Dahham, had these foals while in a possession [a list of two foals follows, of which is the second is] a filly whose sire is Duhayman [‘little Dahman’], the stallion of Ibn Rashid, from the horses of Ibn Maajil.” You can find this except on pages 408…
Friday, I will be flying to Atlanta to deliver the opening presentation, jointly with Joe Ferriss, at the Pyramid’s Society’s National Breeders Conference 2010. Check out the announcement and the program here.I just wonder when people will stop referring to me as “younger”, including at work. I have been at my current job as an economist at the World Bank for ten years now, give or take, and, in business meetings, whenever a foreign government official asks for a cup of coffee, all looks still converge towards me.
Abbas Hilmi Pasha I (1813-1854) is probably the one modern Egyptian ruler Arabian horse breeders know best, for the magnificent collection of desert-bred Arabian horses he is said to have kept. His son’s only claim to fame was to have dispersed this collection in 1861. In every single Arabian horse related publication, I have seen the name of Abbas Pasha’s son transcribed as “El Hami” Pasha, which sort of means ‘the Protector’, but which is not a first name. I always wondered about this, since Arabic first names seldom start with the definite article El/Al, and thought it was a mistake of some sort. Yesterday, I fell upon an Egyptian chancery document where Abbas Pasha’s son’s name is clearly written “Ilhami”, which literally means ‘My Inspiration’, and was a rather common first name within the Egyptian upper class at the time. Names with a possessive form and a romantic connotation were not uncommon within Egypt’s ruling family at the time. Another example is Ilhami’s own father’s second name: Abbas Pasha’s middle name was Hilmi, and it means “My Dream”. It was also the middle name of Abbas Hilmi II. By the way, if you’re into the history of Egypt around this time,…
Kuhaylan Khallawi (often misspelt Halawi) is a strain of Arabian horses little-known in the West. It is mentioned in Lady Anne Blunt’s list of strains derived from the Kuhaylan family, and in Carl Raswan’s list. The only other place it is mentioned is in Roger Upton’s writings, where his desert-bred import Yataghan (sire of the Ma’naqiyah mare *Naomi, which still has an asil tail female in the USA) was recorded as having been sired by a well-regarded Kuhaylan Khallawi stallion belonging to the Shammar. That’s it. In Egypt, the 1943 mare Futna, bred by the Tahawi Arabs, and bought by Ahmad Hamza as a broodmare for his Hamdan Stables, was from that same strain. Her dam is recorded as a Kuhaylah “Halawiyah”, just another way to write Khalawiyah, depending on how you choose to pronounce the Arabic letter [?]. Futna still has a thin tail female alive in the USA and Egypt, so the Kuhaylan Khallawi strain still goes on. According to their family website, wihch has a very rich section on horses, the Tahawi clan leaders brought all their horses from the area of Hims and Hama in Central Western Syria in the period extending between the 1880s and 1930s. …
Yesterday, the Al Khamsa Board of Directors unanimously approved the proposal submitted by Joe Ferriss to include the three mares Folla, Fotna, and Bint Barakat in the Al Khamsa Roster. The three mares were bred by the Tahawi tribes and sold to Ahmad Hamza of Hamdan Stables. On Saturday, the general assembly of Al Khamsa will be taking a vote on these three mares, in the next step towards their final inclusion in the Al Khamsa Roster.
This photo of the stallion Rock (Ragie x El Charsaa by Gezeier) with proud owner Shaykh Sulayman ibn Abd al-Hamid ibn ‘Ulaywa al-Tahawi was taken from the Tahawi family website. I am so grateful to Bernd Radtke for among other things, his sharing with me the pedigree of Rock’s daughter Bombolle (Rock x Maskerade), which has allowed to reconstitute Rock’s pedigree. Rock’s strain is Kuhaylan al-Kharass, and his tail female traces to the Kuhalyan al-Kharas marbat of the Sba’ah Bedouins. Kuhaylan al-Kharas is a flagship strain of the Sba’ah, and is the strain of the Blunt import Proximo, among other well known Arabians of Lebanon and Syria. Rock’s pedigree is heavily linebred to the two strains of Dahman ‘Amer (from the marbat of Jarallah Ibn Tuwayrish) and ‘Ubayyan Sharrak (from the marbat of Abu Jreyss).
This photo was sent by a horse merchant in Syria to one of the Tahawi clan leaders in Egypt, bto probe his interest in purchasing the horse. Here is what figures on the back of the photo: “Photo of the Saqlawi Jadrani horse, his sire is ‘Ubayyan of the horses of Ibn Samdan and his dam a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah of the horses of the Sba’ah” A couple noteworthy observations: 1. The marbat of Ibn Thamdan (mispelt Samdan on the back of the photo) is one of the most respected and authenticated marabet of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak among the Sba’ah tribe. It survived in asil form in Lebanon until the late 1950s. 2. Notice the resemblance of the horse in the photo with the Blunt mare Basilisk, who was from the same strain and the same tribe.
This hujjah comes from the Tahawi tribe website and is very interesting, because of the place of origin of the horse: unlike most of the Tahawi hujaj I saw, this one comes from the Upper Mesopotamia area (al-Jazirah) while the others came from Western Syria. I hope the horse referenced in this hujjah document left some modern descendants, because his origin is precious. Here’s my translation of the document: “We testify by God and his Prophet, in truth and righteousness, that the grey horse, brother of the bay horse, which [the grey] has a small star on his face, and which is five years of age, and which was purchased by Abdel Aziz Bek and Husayn al-Hilal from Adham al-Humayyid that he is Saqlawi Jadran, and that his dam is a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah, and his sire a Saqlawi Jadran, from the horses of Dari Ibn Mahmud, the Shaykh of the tribe of Shammar al-Zawba’; and the horse is ‘shubuw’ [to be mated] and can be mated, and is protected [from the side of both] his sire and his dam, and that there is no impurity in his origin; and for this reason we have prepared this testimony, and God is the…
This stallion, from the area of Hims and Hama in Syria, was offered for the sale to one the Tahawi leaders in Egypt; the back of the photo reads as follows: “His dam is the Nawwaqiyah and his sire a Nawwaq from the horses of ‘Arsan al-Nawwaq of the Arabs of [illegible, stain on the reverse of the photo, probably the tribe which is Sba’ah], golden chestnut, 5 years old
Excerpts from the Tahawi clan/family website, translation mine: When in the 1850s, the Tahawi began to settle in the province of al-Sharkiyah, in the areas of Bilbeis, Abu Hammad, Geziret Saoud, Kfar Saqr, al-Ismailia, and Abu Sultan, they owned horses which they used for transportation and nomadizing; then they settled down and acquired agricultural land, and gave up their pastoral and war-like lifestyle; their Sheykhs then went on to constitute their own horse studs (marabet); around this time, the Syrian region of Hims and Hama was the homeland of the Arab horse, and was known as al-Sham, since it was home to some of the Bedouin tribes like ‘Anazah, Shammar, al-Fad’aan, and al-Sba’ah, which specialized in the breeding of Arab horse and the tracing of its bloodlines; The Tahawi Arabs owned some land and maintained social ties with their relatives living in this area, as well as some close friends, so they started bringing brood-mares and stallions to Egypt. Some of them would travel there [to the area of Hims and Hama in Syria] and buy horses, then return [to Egypt] and wait for their horses to arrive; others would buy horses through an agent. Each horse came with a pedigree document, which included a description…
The Tahawi family website in Arabic is a gold mine of original information on the asil horses of Egypt’s Tahawi tribe. Here’s what I found today on this website concerning the horse Barakat, who is the paternal grandsire of the three foundation mares Folla, Futna, and Bint Barakat [my own annotations in between square brackets]: “The stallion Barakat is the son of the old Dahman, the stallion of ‘Abdallah Saoud al-Tahawi which was bought from the ‘Anazah Arabs in 1322H (1898 AD), and the origin of this Dahman stallion is from the Dahmat ‘Amer mare of Jar Allah ibn Tuwayrish, and his sire is a Saqlawi Jadran [Note from Edouard: This is the same horse whose hujjah was reproduced and translated in an entry below]. As to the dam of the stallion Barakat, she is the mare of Mnazi’ ‘Amer al-Tahawi, and she is Dahmat Shahwan“. Further above on the website there is the mention that “the Dahman horses of Mnazi’ ‘Amer al-Tahawi are from the horses of Ibn Maajil of Syria.” The information on Barakat’s dam is extremely interesting. Not only because it allows us to go one generation back in the pedigrees of the three Hamdan stables foundation mares: Folla, Futna, and Bint Barakat.…
I am back in the USA after a monthlong break with the family, during which I managed to keep my promise to take a brake from writing. New themes and ideas are bouncing all over my head. Thanks to all the readeers who kept checking on this blog and reading earlier entries, and a big thank you to Ambar who held the fort during my absence.
Another major piece of history I fell upon while reading through the Seoud al-Tahawi family website is this hujjah of “Dahman Abdallah Seoud”, the sire of the stallions Barakat and Soniour, and the great-grandsire of the three Tahawi mares of Hamdan Stables in Egypt: Fulla, Futna, and Bint Barakat. Here is my rough translation, with a more refined translation to follow, as well a transliteration of the Arabic in latin script so that readers of Arabic can double-check the translation: We testify by God and by his Prophet that the metallic grey horse which is five years of age, and which was bought by Sheykh Abdallah Abu Seoud al-Tahawi al-Hindawi is Dahman ‘Amer; his dam is the Dahmah ‘Amer from the horses of Jarallah Ibn Tuwayrish of the Arabs of Gomussah, and his sire is the Saqlawi Jadran from the horses of Ibn Zubaynah of the Sba’ah; and that the aforementioned horse, the Dahman, is well authenticated [mathbut], and well known [mashhur], to be mated [hadudah] with all the asil mares, there is not the shade of a doubt about him [ma fihi laww qat’iyah abadan], and he is protected [muhaffadh] at Muhammad Na’san Agha ibn Ahmad Agha al-Barazi, and for…
I think I just made a remarkable discovery from the website of the Tahawi clan in Egypt (eltahawysaoud.com): a scanned copy of the original hujjah (Arabic authentication document) of three horses acquired by the Tahawi Bedouins of Egypt from the Sba’ah tribe. Below is the scanned copy of the hujjah in Arabic, and my own translation of it — a rough and dirty translation for now: In the Name of God the Most Merciful and Compassionate To his Excelleny the Honorable Sheykh Faysal Bey al-Abdallah al-Saud [al-Tahawi] I testify by God and his Prophet that the two grey horses, the first of which is aged two and a half years, and which is with Husayn Hilal, are [both] Duhm [plural of Dahman] al-‘Amiri, of the horses of Jarallah Ibn al-Tuwayrish from the Arabs of Sba’ah from the tribal section of Saheem, and the sire of one of them is Kuhaylan al-Kharas, and the sire of the other one is Kuhaylan al-Tamri of the horses of the Sba’ah; and I testify by God and by Muhammad the Prophet of God that they are protected [muhaffadhat] and free of impurities; And concerning the bay ‘Ubayyah mare, which has a foal by a her…
I am currently working with a prominent Syrian breeder to get a desert-bred stallion or two from reputable bloodlines to the USA. I don’t mean to sound mysterious or coy but I cannot tell you more about it at this stage, since it’s still cooking..
Tzviah Idan just sent me this except from a book she found on Google Books: “Customs and Traditions of Palestine Illustrating the manners of the Ancient Hebrews” by Ermerte Pierotti, who’s presented as “former architect engineer, civil and military to his excellency Surraya Pasha of Jerusalem”. The book was published in London in 1864. Surraya Pasha was the Ottoman Wali (Governor) of Jerusalem. The except is a testimony about Bedouin horses in 19th century Palestine.
The 1988 grey Hamdani al-‘Ifri stallion *Ta’an (Awaad x al-Efrieh by a Kuhaylan al-Wati) was born in the Jazirah area of North-Eastern Syria. His breeder, Mis’ir al-Hamad is a member of one of the small Arab nomadic tribes that settled in this area in the XXth century. I first saw *Ta’an in 1990 as a yearling, at Mustafa al-Jabri’s stud outside of Aleppo. I took pictures which I will scan and share with you. I then saw him again in 1991 and 1992. In 1993, Mustafa gifted *Ta’an to Gerald and Debra Dirks who took him to the USA, then to Jordan in 1996. At that time, the Arab Horse Association studbook did not recognize the Syrian Studbook, so *Ta’an never got registered, even though Al Khamsa, Inc accepted him on the basis of his being a Bedouin-bred horse from Syria. The two pictures below were taken at the Dirks’ farm, and are courtesy of Marie Arthur. *Ta’an’s sire was Awaad, a grey Kuhaylan al-Krush bred by ‘Iyadah Talab al-Khalaf, of the Shammar Bedouins, from the prestigious Krush al-Baida marbat of Mayzar al-Abd al-Muhsin al-Jarba of the Shammar. Awaad sired many good mares and stallions in Syria, among them the…
Back in 2001, I had put forward the hypothesis that a Saqlawi Sh’aifi stallion bred by a Bedouin of the Sb’aah tribe, and sold to Egypt by Ahmad Ibish was the same horse as Aiglon, the sire of the Egyptian mare *Exochorda (Leila II). I also wrote to Miss Ott about it. I had used information contained in the hujjah of the stallion known in Lebanon as Krush Halba (b. 1921) and in Turkey as Kuru, who was a son of this Saqlawi Sh’aifi, to formulate this hypothesis. This hujjah can be found here (scroll down to approx. the middle of the page). I was wrong. My hypothesis was based on the common ownership of these two horses by Ahmad Ibish, but the dates don’t match, so the two horses cannot possibly be one and the same. Kuru was born in the Syrian desert in 1921, so that Saqlawi Sh’aifi must have bred his dam in 1920, in the desert too, as the analysis of the hujjah suggest. Meanwhile, in 1920/21, the stallion Aiglon was in Egypt, where he sired the mare Exchorda who was born in 1922. I am sorry it took me so long to correct this, but I confess I had completely forgotten about…