Look what I just found in the archives of the Egyptian weekly newspaper Al Ahram: a recent (2006) article citing a much older (1938) Al Ahram article reporting on the january 20, 1938 wedding of Egypt’s king Faruk to Safinaz Zulfiqar, who became Queen Farida. All the article is interesting, but what is most remarkable is this sentence: “Al-Ahram presented a register of the gifts that states had presented to “His Majesty the King of Egypt”. Ibn Saud, the king of the Hijaz, presented four horses “that are pure-bred from 400 native horses. They are “Kahilan, a colt, Al-Saqlawiya, Abiyan, a race horse, and Al-Jilabiya. The name of each is traced back to the names of the Arab houses that have preserved them since the ages of the first Arabs.” What happened to these horses? Do you think we can find their trace in the Inshass Original Herd Book?
Check out this website and tell me what you think: the Bedouin Heritage Project. In many ways, Daughters of the Wind and it is are ‘like-minded’ websites. I was just telling Jeanne Craver, who pointed me to it, that I expected a lot of such websites to crop out in the coming years, as a ‘Bedouin revival’ trend takes root in several Middle Eastern countries, as as global knowledge and interest around this topic converge online. I eventually expect this trend of longing for everything Bedouin to reach the asil Arabian horse in the USA, especially after the launch of the Gift of the Desert exhibition and the opening of the Arabian Horse Gallery in Lexington, KY this year. So here is a prediction for you: in five years’ time, Middle Eastern people, whether of Bedouin heritage or not, will be knocking at the doors of American backyard breeders of asil Arabians of desert background — BLUE STAR, Davenports, etc — and asking to buy some of their Hamdani, Haifi, Krush or ‘Ubayyan horses. If you are curious about this ‘Bedouin revival’ now taking place in the Middle East, read this 1999 (more than ten years old already!) article by…
If anyone who reads this website and lives in the USA knows where the 1987 stallion Tabbou (Saddat x Rose Al Badi by Shaikh Al Badi) and his 1985 sister PH So Uneeq (Imperial Faneeq x Rose Al Badi), both of the rare and coveted Shaykhan/’Ubayyan strain which hails from Lebanon, please email me privately: ealdahdah@hotmail.com. Their trace was lost some time ago, and I would like to track them back, and perhaps help them get back in production.
From reader Monique in the Netherlands comes this picture of the impressive dark bay Hamdani Simri stallion Monar (Kheibar x Aaghigh by Haddad). Click here for his pedigree, which is unusually long and detailed from an Arabian from the Middle East. Below is also a picture, also from allbreedpedigree.com, of his very typey great-grandsire Arras, an Ubayyan Sharrak, with Mary Gharagozlu up.
I am relaying this invitation to Rodger V. Davis’ Open House at his Desert Arabian Stud, which has been circulating over email.
Al Khamsa President Pam Studebaker, her daughter Jill Erisman, and a few other dedicated breeders have began an effort to identify, locate, and preserve the remaining horses of Richard Pritzlaff’s breeding in the USA, which includes the bloodlines from Rabanna (Rasik x Banna by Nasr), pictured below. I wish them good luck. RJ Cadranell wrote about Pritzlaff’s life and breeding program, in an article which you can read here.
Reader Regina from Germany sent me this picture of her 2001 mare AAS Ghazala (Ibn Taamrud x DB Jasidah by Desert Jalam). Regina’s mare is special for many reasons: first, she is one of the very few asil Arabian horses — less than 10, I think — of the Dahman Shahwan line to *Sawannah, a mare imported from Bahrain to the USA in 1954. Second, all her ancestors came from Saudi Arabia and Bahrain straight to the USA, as part of the last major batch of desert imports to the country. Third, she is only four generations away from her closest desert ancestor. Sometimes, I just can’t believe mares like AAS Ghazala still exist today. I am so glad they do, thanks to people like Regina who try to preserve these bloodlines. Ghazala’s beautiful and proud little colt is sired by AAS Theeb (AAS Al-Sakb x Bint Amiraa by Taamrud), a Hamdani Simri tracing to the marbat of the Saudi royal family. The colt was born on April 13th 2010, and is the latest addition to this small but precious family.
In 1874 and again in 1875, Captain Roger Upton traveled to the Syrian desert and purchased a number of Arabian horses from the Bedouin tribe of Sba’ah, which he imported to Great Britain. One of the mares he bought for a Mr. Sandeman, was the Ma’naghiyah Sbailiyah Haidee. Another was the mare Kesia (I), which he bough for a certain Mr. Henry Chaplin. Kesia (I) was a Kuhaylah Nawwaqiyah, sired by a Kuhaylan Nawwaq, bred by the Qumusah section of the Saba’ah Bedouin tribe, which owns the marbat. The head of the Qumusah, Shaykh Sulayman Ibn Mirshid put his seal on the mare’s hujjah, which makes this mare very precious. Kesia (I) came to Great Britain in foal to a desert-bred Saqlawi al-‘Abd stallion, and produced a filly Kesia (II). The dam and the filly are two of the few mares of the Nawwaq strain to have been imported to a Western country – another one is *Malouma. The tail female of Kesia II no longer exists in asil breeding anywhere. However, her great-grandson Segario (Nimr x Shabaka, out of Kesia II) is still represented in asil pedigrees in the USA, where his dam was imported from Great Britian by Colonel Spencer Borden. Today, the blood of Kesia survives in…
I got my copy of the Khamsat magazine in the mail two days ago. Articles by Jeanne Craver, Joe Ferriss and RJ Cadranell on rare asil lines of yesterday and today, plus a primer on genetics and color inheritance by Michael Bowling, and much more. I waited till everyone was asleep and locked myself down in the basement to read it..
I know I am beginning to sound like a broken record, but the alarming situation of some of the rare asil lines here in the USA has become a cause of real concern to me, so much so that most of the entries of the past few weeks have been dedicating to writing about these lines. Here is rare picture of a representative of one of these rare lines, courtesy of Jeanne Craver: the 1966 stallion ASF David (by Daaldan x Dihkenna by Gharis). Back in the 1950s, the blood to his grandsire Gharis (Abu Zeyd x Guemura) was really popular in the USA, and his great grand-dam Tebuk was one of the foundation mares of American Arabian horse-breeding at large. David himself is one of the survivors of the Arabian Stud Farms tragedy, where scores of asil horses were left to starve on the farm, and this picture was taken one year after he was rescued from there, at 24. Today, only seven mares in the USA and Canada, known to be alive and of breeding age, trace to ASF David, and as far as I know, are the single remaining tenuous link to Gharis. Two are Krush by strain,…
[This article, first published on April 16th, 2010, was just updated and expanded, and is being reposted now] The inquiry on the “Davenport Arabian” hujaj begins with *Urfah, who is present in the pedigree of our “case study” mare Jauhar El-Khala 75 times. My own Wisteria has a 151 crosses to *Urfah, and her newborn daughter Wadhah traces to *Urfah a stunning 219 times (!) Click here for what the reference book Al Khamsa Arabians III has to say about *Urfah. Most of the information is essentially extracted from the hujjah itself, a translation of which is below (translation mine, adapted from the version I did for Al Khamsa Arabians III in 2005, which was a word-to-word translation): “I, Dhidan, testify by God that she came from [the clan of ] ‘Abdah from the tribe of Shammar; they [i.e, the clan of ‘Abdah] testified to my father Jar Allah al-‘Awaji, the father of Dhidan al-‘Awaji; they testified to my father that she is the Saqlawiah from the horses of al-‘Abd; I testify by God on the testimony of my father that she is Saqlawiah from the horses of al-‘Abd; I swear by God, I o Dhidan al-‘Awaji that she is Saqlawiah al-‘Abd; she is to…
Recently, I have been re-reading a lot of the old articles RJ wrote for Arabian Visions magazine, to refresh my memory as I start working on an Al Khamsa project on rare lines (more on this later). One of my favorite RJ articles is “The Blunts and Crabbet Stud: An Abbreviated History and Description of the Breeding Program“, from the time Crabbet Stud was founded in 1878 to Lady Anne Blunt death in 1917, including the dam lines that were represented at Crabbet across 40 years of breeding: In 1917, “the desert mares still represented at Crabbet at the end of Lady Anne’s life were Basilisk, Jerboa, Dajania, Queen of Sheba, Meshura, Rodania, and Ferida. However, the Jerboa line had died out in tail-female.” So, six of the Blunt’s desert damlines were still represented in 1917. Also, “of the Ali Pasha mares, the 1917 catalog details that […] the blood of the families of Sobha, Bint Helwa, Bint Nura, Makbula and her daughter Kasida, ran strong in the herd, with all but the latter having provided sires to the stud.” Four damlines from the Ali Pasha Sharif mares were still there in 1917, for a total of ten damlines. It would be…
In tribute to one of the best stallions in America, the stallion Joe Ferriss says ‘comes out of a 19th century engraving’ … and the sire of my little Wadha (and grandsire of her dam Wisteria). Javera Thadrian, a 1982 asil Kuhaylan Haifi stallion. Photo taken by either Charles Craver or Anita Westfall (photographer supreme).
This young fellow is the latest member of one of my favorite asil Arabian lines from around the world, that of 25 Amurath Sahib, from Hungary. He is by Laszlo Kiraly’s stallion, Dahhmany Bagdady (Wahhabit x Tisrina B) out of Laszlo’s Sarife B (El Thay Mameluk x 205 Farag II).
I just saw this nice photo of Michael Bowlings’ black mare Almohada, a Hamdaniyah Simriyah of ‘Davenport’ bloodlines. I don’t know where the black gene in ‘Davenport’ horses comes from, but I will make I ask Michael next time I talk . Ambar Diaz tells me this mare has a really nice 2009 colt.
As Jeanne Craver sends me and more pictures from Wisteria’s new daughter Wadha, I thought I’d create a new page especially dedicated to her, instead of keeping to bug readers with new pics every other day. Here’s the link, which you can check for updates from time to time.
Check out Joe’s latest article in Arabian Essence. I love the comparison of some mares of the Egyptian Om Dalal family with the *Abeyah line, just as much as I love re-re-reading the late Carol Lyons “homogeneous background of Al Khamsa Arabians” article.
The reference to Alzabra Stud in connection with the Egyptian stallion Sharkasi got me interested in learning more about these small local Egyptian farms which, from time to time, appear in historical documents on Arabian horse breeding in Egypt as the suppliers of breeding stock to the Royal Agricultural Society’s studfarms and/or Inshass, the private stud of Kings Farouk and Fouad. One of these farms is that of Kafr Ibrash, which is where the mare Bint Kareema (Lady Anne Blunt’s Rasheed x Kareema) and others came from. All I succeeded doing for now is locating Kafr Ibrash (also spelled Kafr Abrash or Abraash) on the map of Egypt. It is in Egyptian delta fertile agricultural region, in the Sharkiyah province, where the Tahawi Arab tribe is settled (see Google Map below, where Kafr Ibrash is market as point B on the map, you may need to zoom out to see it). View Larger Map Next step is to ask some friends from Egypt to go there and see what they can learn about this place, and its owners. I suspect they were closely associated with the Egyptian Royal family in some way or another. Note in particular the close proximity of the…
Teymur from Germany sent me this photo of Sharkasi with his owner TGB Trouncer, before the Royal Agricultural Society of Egypt (RAS) acquired him in 1955. I had never seen a picture of Sharkasi before and confess being pleasantly surprised at his good looks. The way his neck is set and his straight shoulder also make me wonder how he ever became the good racehorse he was supposed to be. The Alzabra stud, where his sire and paternal grandsire were supposed to come from, according to a WAHO investigation report, was probably one of these rural stallion depots maintained by the RAS across Egypt, where surplus RAS stallions were stationed for use by the local population. You can infer that from this sentence of the WAHO report: “His sire was one of the Alzabra Stud distributed to villages to cover the mares of farmers. His dam was also by an Alzabra stallion and out of a Bedouin mare.” If Alzabra was a private stud, why would it ‘distribute’ its stallions ‘cover the mares of farmers’? Its description actually fits the role fulfilled by government-owned stallion depots. Stallions would typically spend part of the year in the depot/stud, and the rest…
I normally don’t use this blog to relay unsubstantiated rumors, but this one is so funny I could not resist sharing it with you: a well-known horsebreeder from Egypt is claiming that the poorly documented (a euphemism) Egyptian stallion Sharkasi is actually from the ‘Ajman Bedouin tribe of Central Arabia. The ‘Ajman, no less… Of course, this breeder has Sharkasi bloodlines. Now I understand that there is an ongoing push from various parts of the community of Arabian breeders in Egypt to ‘sponsor’ further research on the few Egyptian bloodlines outside of the mainstream Egyptian breeding (e.g., the three Tahawi mares, El Gadaa, Ibn Ghalabawi, Sharkasi, etc), and that is always welcome, but I never thought someone would make so brazen a claim as to link an unknown stallion from Upper Egypt to one of the most respected horse-breeding tribes of Arabia. I mean, even WAHO stopped short of making up such a prestigious ascendency when it accepted Sharkasi. You can read the WAHO report on Sharkasi here; it essentially says that “Sharkasi was bred by a man in Upper Egypt. His sire was one of the Alzabra Stud distributed to villages to cover the mares of farmers. His dam was…
Take the time to (re)read this article by RJ Cadranell, one of the best ever written on the sale of Egypt’s Ali Pasha Sharif collection of asil Arabian horses, drawing on two souces: Lady Anne Blunt (her Journals, her Sheykh Obeyd Studbook, and some of her private, unpublished notes) and Carl Raswan (his Index). By the way, I don’t think I’ve ever shared with you my personal assessment of Raswan’s standing versus Lady Anne Blunt’s, as sources of scholarly information on Arabians. I don’t think many of you will like this assessment, but here it is anyway: I have found Lady Anne Blunt to be generally correct unless the contrary is proved; and Raswan to be generally incorrect unless the contrary is proved. Raswan’s defenders usually use such statements as “he was not a native speaker of English”, “his thinking was so complex and elaborate that few could understand it” or even “he was constantly making corrections to what he wrote” to absolve him. All this may be true, but scholarly research on Arabians is not rocket science, yet in my opinion, Raswan’s monumental body of work (his Index) is cryptic, garbled, ambiguous, incoherent, confusing and often downright contradictory. It…
Does anyone happen to know whether the two lines to El Dahma, through Bint Obeya (e.g., that of Bukra) and Nadra (e.g., that of Halima) share the same mtDNA haplotype?
El Dahma is the foundation mare of the most prized tail female line of Arabian horses worldwide. Yet she remains shrouded in mystery. She was a mare from the Stud of Ali Pasha Sharif of Egypt, born around 1880, no color given, and was known only by her strain name as “The Dahma”. The little we know about this elusive yet extremely influential matriarch is summarized here. The information in this link comes from three sources: first, the book known as the “RAS History” (page 33), which is the official name of Volume I of the Egyptian Agricultural Organization (EAO) studbook, published in 1948; second, an early herd book of Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfiq of Egypt, which mentions that this mare, “the Dahma”, was a gift from Ali Pasha Sharif to the Khedive (the viceroy of Egypt, then Khedive Tewfiq the father of Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfiq and of the next Khedive Abbas Hilmi II). third, Carl Raswan’s Index. However, given that Raswan’s was not a primary source, and that he did not mention his primary sources, I will take the liberty of discarding it for the purposes of this discussion. El Dahma seems to have produced at least four horses at both Khedive Tewfiq and his son Khedive Abbas Hilmi…
The series on Barely Surviving Al Khamsa lines continues (and it’s not likely to stop anytime soon given the number of asil lines in dire straits now in the USA). This eighth entry on Barely Surviving Lines comes after earlier entries on the critically endangered tail female asil lines to Safarjal in Austria (Hamdani Simri, to Selma from Abbas Pasha’s stud); to Serije (Saqlawi al-Abd, to *Wadduda, desert-bred, imported by Davenport to the USA); to Dihkenna (Kuhaylan Hayfi, to *Reshan, desert-bred, imported by Davenport to the USA); to Koweyt and Kerasun (Hamdani Simri, to *Samirah, from Ibn Saud); to Rosina in South Africa (Kuhaylan Rodan, to Rosemary and her dam Rodania, desert-bred, imported by Anne Blunt to the UK); and to Rayim in the USA (also to Rosemary). Today’s entry focuses on the Kuhaylan Krush line that goes back to the mare *Werdi, imported by Homer Davenport to the USA in 1906. There are two tail female lines to *Werdi in America today. The first is through *Werdi’s grand-daughter Babe Azab (Letan x Tamarinsk by *Hamrah), it’s continuing in Davenport-only breeding, and it’s essentially doing well (picture below). The second of the lines to *Werdi is hanging by a thread. It is the line through Babe Azab’s sister Kapiti (Harara x…
Charles Craver took the first two this afternoon, and Nancy Becker, who owns Wadha’s full brother Tantris CF took the third.
Jeanne Craver just sent these along. They are the first official pictures of my filly, by Javera Thadrian out of Wisteria CF. She will be named Wadhah (pronounce it WAD-ha), in keeping with the “W” tradition, after which her dam, her older full sister Walladah CF, and her grand-dam HB Wadduda were named, and after Wadhah bint Falah al-Subaylah, a Bedouin princess of the Bani Sakhr tribe, whose romance with Nimr bin ‘Adwan of the rival ‘Adwan tribe was the subject of many beautiful poems by the latter. These poems, some of which you can read in English here (click on the arrows to read the entire article), are still recited today. The popular story of Wadhah and Nimr was also the subject of the first Arab colour TV series in 1975, which was produced in Jordan and aired in several other Arab countries. Wadhah’s sister was named after an Arab princess from Andalusia, Walladah bint al-Mustakfi. I confess liking these princess names, in no small part because of the temper of the Wisteria fillies, which Jeanne Craver refers to as “princess temper”. They’re distant and not easily approachable.
RJ Cadranell and Jeanne Craver are the custodians of the hujaj (original Arabic certification documents) of the horses imported by Homer Davenport from the Arabian desert to the USA in 1906. They kindly gave me the permission to use these hujaj on this blog for educational purposes, and I would like to thank them for doing so. The hujaj are a treasure trove of information which can be readily exploited. As these original desert-bred imports are the ancestors of today’s “Davenport Arabians”, I will first seclect one of today’s Davenport horses at random- say Jauhar El-Khala, whose lovely pictures are below – and look at the hujaj of her desert-bred ancestors, and second link these hujaj to those asil horses living in Syria today, wherever possible. If you take Jauhar El-Khala’s pedigree as displayed on the Davenport Arabian Horse Conservancy website, you’ll see that she traces exclusively to the following 11 desert-bred imports, all obtained by Homer Davenport in his 1906 trip to the northern Arabian desert: *HAMRAH, *URFAH, *WADDUDA, *DEYR, *MUSON, *JEDAH, *RESHAN, *HAFFIA, *ABBEIAN, *ABEYAH, and *WERDI. In other words these 11 horses, crossed with each other, constitute all the original imported ancestors of the mare Jauhar El-Khala. It is actually possible to reduce the number of…
This mare, Jauhar El-Khala, is arguably one of the pretties asil Kuhaylah Hayfiyah mares of Davenport bloodlines in the USA. Click on this link and then use the arrows to scroll for more pictures. She is very reminiscent of the prettiest Syrian desert-breds. Photos by C. Emmert, I think. Don’t you think she is just stunning?
Yesterday night, my Wisteria CF delivered a tall grey filly by Javera Thadrian at 11.30 pm, at Craver Farms. “Narrow blaze, nothing on her legs. Reddish coat, grey “goggles” around her eyes”, says Jeanne. Both mother and filly are reportedly doing well. I so wish I was there now. Instead, I am in a Washington corporate office drafting memos (and writing about the filly, from a distance). Oh well.
In Al Khamsa parlance, a “Combined Source” Al Khamsa Arabian, is one that has more than one Al Khamsa ancestral element in its pedigree. Ancestral elements are the basic building blocks of Al Khamsa. You can learn about them more by clicking here. Take the Early American Foundation Stallion Caravan (Ribal x Fasal) for instance. Caravan is a Combined Source, and respresents one of the most popular early combinations (Crabbet and Davenport) as his sire Ribal is a Crabbet stallion that blends the EGYPT I and the BLUNT ancestral elements, and his dam Fasal adds the DAVENPORT ancestral element. Combined Source horses such as Caravan, Alla Amarward (Stambul x Makina) , Ghazi (Rodan x Guemura), El Sabok (El Jafil x Narkeesa) Bint Sedjur (Ribal x Sedjur) and many, many others, helped popularize Arabian breeding in the USA in the 1930s, 40s, and 50s, way before Straight Egyptian Arabians became popular. All the big farms and breeders of these early days, Kellogg, Maynesboro, Selby, Travelers Rest, Hearst, and even Babson (with the introduction of Turfa and others) were based on some measure of Combined Source breeding. Combined Source breeding was all motherhood and apple pie. Now, Combined Source is looked down…
Marge Smith asked this very poignant question in one of the comments to an entry below. If anyone has answers to this specific question, please feel free to share them in the form of comments to this entry. I have my own set of answers, which I will thrown into the mix.
In sharp contrast to the appalling number of non-Straight Egyptian asil foals born in the USA over the last few years, here are the number of registered Straight Egyptian (as defined by the Pyramid Society) foals registered in the years from 2001 to 2008: Two observations: first, the relatively hight number of Straight Egpytian foals born each year: 834 on average (a low of 717 in 2008, to be attributed to the economic crisis, and a high of 980 in 2001, in the prosperous American pre-9/11). Second, the flat trend: there is little variance between the yearly figures. No increase, but no sharpe decrease either. In other words, this segment of Arabian horse breeding has withered the storm relatively well. Now compare that trend with that of the non-Straight Egpytian Al Khamsa foals born in the USA over the same period of time, in the graph below: In blue, Straight Egpytian Al Khamsa foals born from 2001-2008; in red, non-Straight Egyptian Al Khamsa foals born from 2003-2008. The red line is dangerously close to the horizontal line that marks zero foals born, and hence, the extinction of the breed…
I was talking to Anita Enander yesterday, and she alerted me to an alarming statistical trend in the numbers of live births of non-Straight Egyptian, Al Khamsa Arabians in the USA, over the past few years. Just glance at the graph below: It plots the number of non-Egyptian, Al Khamsa foals born in each of the years 2003 (126 live registered foals); 2004 (140); 2005 (104); 2006 (92); 2007 (70) and 2008 (60). You can see that the number of births has dropped by half in 5 years. If this alarming trend does not abate (and I feel pessimistic about this), then in ten years’ time, by 2020, there will only 15 births of asil, Al Khamsa foals that are not Straight Egyptians. In other words, non-Egpytian asil breeding is on the brink of extinction. This trend gets even more alarming if you consider that the vast majority of these foals belong to three relatively organized, well-established and recognized breeding groups within Al Khamsa, involving more than a dozen breeders each: the Davenport group (roughly, asil horses from Syria tracing back to imports by Homer Davenport to the USA in 1906); the BLUE STAR group (roughly, asil horses from Saudi Arabia brought back by US…
The other day, I was reflecting back on what is already ten years of interest and involvment in asil breeding in the USA. Ellen May and Jeanne Craver had asked me to provide some answers to questions they had drafted about the experiences and memories of second generation Al Khamsa supporters (i.e., people whose parents had been involved in breeding Al Khamsa horses, in my case desert-bred horses from a similar background). And these answers, which you can read in the next Khamsat magazine, got me thinking further: “of all the horses and bloodlines I was fortunate to become acquainted with in the last ten years, how come I ended up with a Kuhaylah Hayfiyah mare of Davenport bloodlines”? Part of the answer is fate. I did some of my studies at the University of Chicago, four hours away from Craver Farms, where there were still some 100 plus Davenport mares and stallions back in 2000. Tzviah Idan put me in touch with Charles and Jeanne Craver, and an ensuing friendship developed that endures until today. Fate again in 2007, when Anita Enander called me and said: “You need to own an Arabian mare, and I think I know which…
Two more pictures from Sohaila and Ahwaz from Basil Jadaan.
If you now type “daughtersofthewind.org” and “daughtersofthewind.com” (with an “s” in daughters) you will be redirected to this site, because I just bought these two domain names. Two years ago, the plan was to buy these two domain names, and the idea was to call this blog “Daughters of the Wind”, or “banat al-rih”, which is how Arabs used to refer to their Arabian mares in literature, poetry and folklore. The two sites were not available then but they are now.
It is that time of the year, and asil foals are starting to crop up everywhere. I just received these two photos of newborns at Basil Jadaan’s stud in Damascus, Syria (thanks Basil and Joe). They are representative of the latest generation of Syrian asils: pretty, expressive, and true to type. Their grandparents and great-grandparents were desert-bred and were acquired by Basil at a time when less than a handful of breeders cared enough to save these horses from extinction through registration, marketing and intelligent breeding. The story of the registration of the Syrian desert-breds is a fascinating odyssey that deserves to be told, and I trust it will be. I was a little more than twelive years old when I first saw these desert-breds at Basil’s in 1990. Twenty years have passed since, and their offspring keep getting better and better. Note the large, expressive eyes, and the black skins around the eye, and the delicate muzzle. The first one is Sohaila, by Shadeed out of Manolia, and the second is Ahwaz by Shadeed out of Ameerat al-Fadi. I don’t know the strains.
Joe Ferriss has a short article on the Egpytian mare Nefisa (Balance x Helwa by Hamran II) in the newsletter Arabian Essence.
Check out the program of this interesting conference to be held in Sicily, Italy in two weeks time. The choice of the venue is ominous, since Sicily is along with Andalusia, one of the regions of Europe where Arabo-Islamic culture blended with Western culture over several centuries. Note also the panel of speakers and the sponsorship by WAHO, which brings me to my next observation: that WAHO is slowly but surely moving towards more and more emphasis on linking the Arabian horses to its roots, its heritage and historical context. A good thing, for sure.
I recently saw in the online brochure of a well known stud that breeds “Straight Egyptians” that the Saqlawi Jadran descendents of Roga El Beda (i.e., the tail female line represented by Moniet El Nefous and El Bataa in modern pedigrees, among others) was made to trace back to the desert-bred mare Ghazieh through Bint Horra (allegedly the dam of Roga El Beda, according to this brochure). This is plain wrong, and was based on erroneous information from the Raswan Index, which has been relayed in Al Khamsa Arabians I and II, and later corrected in Al Khamsa Arabians III. Decade old Mitchondrial DNA research (Bowling, 1999, unpublished) indicates that the haplotype market for the Roga El Beda tail female is different from that of the Ghazieh tail female. I don’t know what you think, but I have found some of these errors much harder to dispel in the case of Straight Egyptians than for the rest of the asil Arabians, despite rock solid evidence to the contrary (e.g., the myth of the Kuhaylan Jallabi tail female as surviving in Straight Egyptians).
I just received this beautiful headshot of the bay stallion Al-Bark (Beebars x Etidal by Burhan x Obeirah) from Joe Achcar in Syria. This stallion is a Shuwayman Sabbah by strain, but from a different marbat that that of the Jarbah leaders of the Shammar Bedouin tribe. The marbat of Shuwayman Sabbah to which Al-Bark traces is known as “Shuwaymat al-Rahbi” from the name of their breeder Mohammad al-Rahbi, who also happens to be from Shammar. The Shuwayman horses of Mohammad al-Rahbi trace their origin to the leader of the large Bu-Mutaywit Bedouin tribe of Northern Iraq, which has bred them for several generations. They are a well respected marbat, according to Shammar elders, such as ‘Abd al-‘Iyadah al-Da’ran Ibn Ghurab, who used to breed from one of their stallions. They were also known as good racehorses.. Al Barq in particular traces to a really good old stallion who was active in the area of settlement of many Shammar tribes in the early nineteen eighties: the dark bay Ma’anaghi Hadraji of Dahir al-‘Ufaytan, perhaps of the best desert-bred stallions of the late twentieth centuries, in my opinion.
Just reposting this old article, to stimulate a new discussion around it. It is slightly revised, to reflect the evolution of thought on this issue. —————- The idea of an international registry for Asil Arabian horses has been gaining momentum over the last few years, not only within Western asil breeeders’ circles, but among Arab breeders as well. Such a registry is long overdue and would be the purists’ answer to WAHO, in my opinion. Several Western organizations have come close to establishing such a registry. The largest effort so far is that of the Asil Club in Germany, which in addition to bloodlines represented in Western breeding [Egyptian bloodlines, various bloodlines from the USA, the remaining asil lines from Crabbet in the UK, Weil-Marbach in Germany and Babolna in Hungary] also includes the horses of the Royal Arabian Studs of Bahrain and those of the Saudi Arabian government stud of Dirab. In the 1970s, the Asil Club also considered adding the Tunisian horses to its list, and is currently considering adding the Syrian horses (more on this move later, and what I think of it). Then there is Al Khamsa. While their roster is not the most inclusive (indeed,…
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I love this old photo of the stallion *Houran, a Kuhaylan Tamri, imported by Homer Davenport to the USA in 1906. The horse is standing so proudly, his neck beutifully arched, and his gaze fixing a far-reaching point on the horizon. Tood bad *Houran only left one daugher in asil USA breeding (the Ma’naghiyah Sbayliyah mare Bint Nimnaarah). *Houran was sired by a Hadban Enzahi stallion of the ‘Anazah tribes, some branches of which were home to many Hadban Enzahi marabit, such as Hadban Mushaytib, the most respected. By the way, have you seen the updated site of the Davenport Conservancy? It has a series of seminal articles by Charles Craver, which I am never tired of re-reading.
This is an excerpt from Christa Salamandra’s book “A New Old Damascus: Authenticity and Distinction in Urban Syria”, which I am about to finish reading. It has nothing to do with horses nor with Bedouins, but I thought you’d find her characterization of ‘asala’, authenticity, (from which ‘asil’, “he who is authentic”) interesting: “In Syria, as elsewhere in the Middle East, modernist notions of authenticity operate alongside and sometimes merge with indegenous understandings. The concept of authenticity, asala, has long been an important component of notions of the self and society in Arabic-speaking regions. Derived from the Arabic root, A-S-L, asala, “authenticity”, is related to asl, which translates as “origin”, “source”, “root”, and “descent”. Asl refers to a person’s social, genealogical, or geographic origins, or to the place from which his or her roots extend.” Then follows a discussion of the Western roots of this notion of asala and asil, which the authors traces to Romanticism in Europe, and the longing for everything pristine and unspoilt, and that’s when things becomes extrememly interesting, if applied to Arabian horses. It might (just might, because this is a complex issue, which needs more research) mean that Bedouins did not primarily refer to their horses as “asil”, at least not when interacting with each other.…
I will be in Kuwait for the week, for work, and paradoxically this might mean you will be reading more of me, just because there is little to do there after 9.00 pm, except work very hard (in case my boss is lurking)
This pretty and deserty 17 year old Hamdaniyah mare of Davenport breeding, Artemisia CF (MV Reflection x Artema by Tripoli) “recently completed 70 miles at the El Paso-Las Cruces endurance ride in Texas in fine form and loved every minute of it, and made the list for Top Twenty Limited Distance Endurance Mileage Horses of all time in what is her 12th year in endurance riding” according to her proud owner Linda Sherrill who maintains the Happy Trails Blog. Photo Linda Sherrill.
A few days ago a friend asked me if I knew whether anything about the Egyptian stallion Ibn Ghalabawi and I said I didn’t. Then I consulted his pedigree on allbreedpedigree.com. Granted, this is by no means a reliable source (anybody can enter, remove or edit whatever the want), but in this case I suspect the information in there was extracted from information Sayed Marei (of Al Badeia Arabians) has provided and which was used to make a case for the acceptance of Ibn Ghalabawi’s daughter Azeema by WAHO, in 1978 I think. I did not have access to any other information anyway, except for a two liner in the last pages of Colin Pearson’s (and Kees Mol) excellent “The Arabian Horses Families of Egypt”, but there was no pedigree information in there either. Later I thought more about it, and it remembered that Ibn Ghalabawi’s recorded great grandsire Soniour (to be pronounced Senor like in the Spanish for “Sir”) was mentioned in Ali al-Barazi’s old book in Arabic as as a famous desert-horse having raced in Egypt in the 1920s or 1930s. He is mentioned alongside other famous old racehorses such as Renard Bleu and Nabras, who was later…
Gertrude Bell took this view of the rooftops of the Arabian city of Hail in march 1914. Her collection of pictures at the University of Newcastle is a treasure trove.
Now look at these Assyrian wall panels, from a palace in Nineveh, in Northern Iraq today. Note the short back, rounded croup and arched neck. And the slightly dished profile and inflated nostrils of the one on the left. We should go back to breeding horses like these.
I still taken by the realism and accuracy of the Assyrian representations of horses of distinct Arabian type on the walls of their palaces. Here is one more. Note that I am not saying “desert-bred Arabian horses” but rather “horses of distinct Arabian type”, because there is no way to tell whether these horses came from Bedouins.
Here’s an interesting and well-referenced analysis on the social transformations of Bedouin society in Jordan spanning 150 years from the middle of the XIXth society until today, from Rami Zurayk’a blog Land and People. Rami teaches at the Faculty of Agriculture of the American University of Beirut (my alma mater).
The photo in the entry below got me looking for more Assyrian wall panels representing horses of distinctly Arabian type, like the one below. Compare with this shot of the Crabbet stallion Abu Zeyd (Mesaoud x Rose Diamond).
I realize I haven’t written for two weeks and I apologize. These are busy days at work and in general, with little time left to other endeavors. I received my Khamsat magazine in the mail last week, and I have been reading it in the metro on my way to work. In it is an article by Peter Harrigan, adapted from his talk at the Al Khamsa 2009 convention in Redmond, Oregon, where Peter introduced his audience with the travels and works of Czech explorer and academic Alois Musil. The Khamsat writeup from Peter’s talk has this excerpt from Musil’s masterpiece “Manners and Customs of the Ruwalah Bedouins” (which by the way is widely recognized as the single best work of the ethnography of Bedouin tribes): “The Bedouins assert that no horses were created by Allah in Arabia. According to their tradition, they brought their first horses from the land of the settlers whom they raided”. There is increasing archaeological, epigraphic and zoological evidence that points to a domestication of the horse by settled population in an area straddling today’s nations of Syria, Turkey, and Iraq, in the plains by the foothills of the Taurus and Zagros chains of mountains.…
Since this blog is not just about horses but also but the people who breed them, I am thinking of starting a new series on some of the twentieth century most influential yet most controversial horsemen of the Middle East. It will likely include the following horsebreeders who were also noted political and social figures in their times — horsebreeding and horseracing being a privilege of this region’s elite: Henri Bey Pharaon (of El Nasser fame, among others); Ahmad Ibish (of *Exochorda fame, among others), H.H. al-Sharif Nasser bin Jamil (of *El Dhabi fame) and Dr. Iskandar Kassis. I will omit a fourth influential figure, H.H. Prince Mansour ibn Abdul Aziz Al Saud for now. A fair and comprehensive treatment of these important characters will need some thorough research, on top of what I already know about them, so this is more like a medium term project. Stay tuned.
I just emerged from more than three days of power outage due a record setting snow storm that buried the Washington area under 30 inches of snow. I lost my telephone and internet connection last Friday night and did not get it back until this morning. I apologize to those of who wrote and were expecting a response during these few days, and particularly to the ladies at the Association du Cheval Arabe Bedouin (ACAB) in France. I have promised them a short article for their upcoming catalogue, which is going to press soon. So I am getting back to work on it now.
Even since I found Caroyln’s McIntyre’s blog “Girl Solo in Arabia”, I have been reading it avidly to the point of neglecting everything else. Just take a deep breath, click and start reading. You’ll emerge from it three hours later, with red eyes, but the journey it takes you on is worth every minute of your time.
I just noticed I wrote my 500th blog entry a few days ago, and with it came the realization that the amount of material available on ‘Daughter of the Wind’ may soon become unmanageable to some of the readers less familiar with the various – and not always user-friendly – ways of navigating it. So here are few tips, keeping in mind that there are three columns to this blog, with the articles appearing on the left column: 1) if you are looking for information on the horses of a particular country (Tunisia, Saudi Arabia, Lebanon, France, Germany, etc) or just for a broad topic (Bedouins, Tribes, Strains, Racing, etc. ) then click under “Themes”, in the central column. You will find under each broad theme category all the blog entries that directly related to it. 2) if you are looking for more specific information (a particular strain e.g., Hamdani, Hayfi ; a particular breeding group e.g. Davenport or Crabbet; or particular famous breeder or family of breeders e.g. Saud, Mauvy, Blunt, then click under “Labels”, in the right column. You will need to scroll down to the middle of the column. 3) If you know what you are looking for and it’s very specific,…
This very old mare is a Kuhaylah Trayfiyyah from the Middle Euphrates valley in Syria, near the small town of al-Mayadin. This area general is home to the tribe of al-Aqaydat (Ageydat), a wealthy and powerful semi-nomadic tribe of cultivators and small herders whose Shaykhs obtained a number of really good desert-bred mares in the first part of the twentieth century, sometimes through ghazu (raids) and sometimes through purchase and gifts. They bred these mares well, and protected them by using only asil stallions, and hence came to own reputalbe marabet. Today some of the prettiest and typiest Syrian horses came from these Ageyday marabet. One of the most well known Aqaydat marabet is that of Kuhaylat al-Trayfiyyah, which is an old strain the history of which I don’t know well. All I know is that it might – just might – derive its name from Matarifah clan of the ‘Anazah tribe. The strain is mentioned in the Abbas Pasha Manuscript, in connection with events that took place in Eastern Arabia, either in Bahrain, Qatar or the al-Ihsaa region of Saudi Arabia. The Kuhaylah Trayfiyyah is the photo was not registered in the WAHO Syrian Studbook and I don’t know the reason. Perhaps…
Joe Ferriss has a nice article on Egyptian Arabian stallions of the Hadban strain in the online newsletter Arabian Essence. Speaking of Hadban stallions of Egyptian bloodlines, I was lucky to have known the grey stallion Kaheel (by Ashour who was by Anter out of Ayda x Yosr by Ibn Fakhri out of Bint Yosreia), who was bred by the Egyptian Agricultural Organization in Cairo, and died in my home country of Lebanon, leaving no progeny, some time in the late 1990s. I made plans to purchase Kaheel after I saw him for the first time. When I went to see him again at some equestrian center north of Beirut, he had just died from a colic. Kaheel was a unique individual in many ways: a Anter grandson in the tail male, both sire and dam from the Hadban strain (he actually qualifies as Sheykh Obeyd and Heirloom) and otherwise the direct grandson of three lesser known but very special Nazeer offspring, all three of which belong to good racing lines: 1: Ayda, by Nazeer x Lateefa, and hence a full sister of Serenity Ibn Nazeer / Lateef 2: Bint Yosreia, by Nazeer x Yosreia, and a full sister of Tersk’s Aswan / Rafaat, among…