Recently, Ambar Diaz started posting photos of some of this blog’s authors and regular contributors mounted on asil Arabian horses, as a way to put names on faces. Here is a photo that reader Predrag Joksimovic sent me of himself, mounted on Mahiba (Shams El Arabi x Mansoura), a very deserty little mare. Mahiba’s sire Shams El Arabi (Farouk x Bint El Arabi by El Araby) is of Egyptian bloodlines, her dam’s sire El Aswad (Ibn Galal x 10 Hosna) is also Egyptian, but her grand-dam Malaga (Madani x Berriane by Titan) was bred in Tunisia from predominantly Algerian bloodlines (and some old French through Mossoul). Malaga traces to several desert-bred imports featured on this blog, such as Bango, El Managhi, Ghazi, and others. She was a Jilfat Dhawi by strain, and so is Mahiba. She was exported to Germany in the 1960s. Egyptian and Algerian/Tunisian lines tend to blend very well with each other, further empasizing the added value of “combined source” breeding.
This beautiful mare with big, black, femine eyes is Kokhle, the daughter of two desert-bred horses imported from the Syrian desert to the USA in 1906. Her sire, Hamrah is a Saqlawi al-‘Abd, and her dam, Farha, is a Ma’naghiyah Sbayliyah. I know I sound like a broken record, but who said Ma’naghis did not look like classical Arabian horses? Unfortunately, Kokhle’s tail female no longer survives in asil Arabian horse breeding, but she does have a line in modern pedigrees through her son Kokhleson (by Ashmar), whose son Ralk (x Halloul) sired Ibn Ralf and Bint Ralf.
Here is a seminal article by Charles Craver advocating for need to breed “Combined Source” bloodlines..
The more I browse through the Al Khamsa Online Roster, the more I realize the importance of the desert-bred mare *Wadduda. She was a chestnut Saqlawiyat al-‘Abd, and was the war-mare of the Bedouin chieftain Hakim Ibn Mhayd of the Fad’aan tribe, before she was imported to the USA by Homer Davenport in 1906. There is even a series of children books about “Wadduda of the Desert”. *Wadduda has left a lot of asil offspring in the tail female, mostly through her descendent Sahanad (Abu Hanad x Sahabet by Tanatra), a mare that started a dynasty of her own. Sahanad has an active preservation group of her own, and there are around 150 horses tracing to her today! However, there are other lines of asil Arabians to *Wadduda, too. These run the risk of being overlooked in part because of the success of the Sahanad preservation effort, and in part because they do not belong to any of todays breeding groups/silos within US Arabian horse breeding. Jeanne Craver recently mentioned on this blog that an attempt was currently being made to find a preservation home for a 21 year old mare from one of these lines. The mare is Jadiba (Dib x Jabinta by Jadib). Jadiba’s sire…
As Daughter of the Wind slowly turns into an international virtual community of people involved or interested in preserving the real asil Arabian horse where it can be found, I thought I’d issue this message: By now, many of you who read that blog know which Arabian horses are of interest to this community. These include Arabian horses from lines native to the following countries: Syria, Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Iran, Turkey, Kuwait, Yemen, Bahrain, Lebanon, Jordan, Qatar, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria, Israel/Palestine, and to a lesser extent Mauritania, Sudan, Chad, Pakistan, and India. Of course, not all the Arabian horses from these countries are of interest, and I will be making that call for now, pending a broader discussion (one of the privileges of owning a blog is that you get to make the last call on what gets published and what doesn’t). In the West, the following breeding groups are of interest: Babolna (Hungary), old French (Pompadour, Mauvy), Weil (Germany), early American Foundation (Davenport, Babson, Brown, Dickinson, Huntington, Hearst, Crane..), Saudi imports to the USA (Harris, Roach, Cobb, Rogers..), old English (Courthouse, Crabbet), etc. I may have missed a few. If you think you own or know of a horse…
Teymur Abdelaziz of Germany sent me this photo of the 1993 grey mare Chira (Saymoon x Cylia by Madkour I), a great-great-grand daughter of Nafaa, the desert-bred Kuhaylah mare gifted by Ibn Saud to the king of Egypt in the 1940s. Chira is unique in the sense is that she is the last mare to trace to Nafaa through Nafaa’s daughter Bint Nafaa (by El Gadaa) and as such, the last mare to carry El Gadaa’s blood. Read more about Bint Nafaa and her sire El Gadaa here. I am glad to know Teymur is working on preserving this precious line, which is so close to some of the choicest desert bloodlines. Best of luck with that, Teymur.
I have read and re-read this article by Michael Bowling time and again.. and always learn something new. The article is about the early stages of Arabian horse breeding in Australia, and focuses on early Crabbet bloodlines. I am always struck by this photo of the magnificent Rafyk (by Azrek x Rose of Sharon by Hadban), a small stallion of 14 3/4 hands that looks like a 16 hands horse. Wow, what a horse! Why the heck were the Blunts parting with horses like this one?
This is another photo of the magnificient Dahman (a Dahman x a Rabda). He is to France what *Haleb, who was bred about the same time, is to the USA. Dahman, a Rabdan by strain, is by the far the best desert horse horse ever imported to France, in my opinion. He was a herd stallion with the Shammar Bedouins of Mesopotamia, when French Inspecteur Quinchez, noticed him and bought him in 1909. This picture was taken in 1914, and is courtesy of Adrien Deblaise. I wrote about Dahman earlier, here.
One more picture of old desert-bred stallions from Algeria, from Adrien Deblaise. This is Salamie. I don’t know his strain, nor his breeder. His name suggests an origin around the steppe area east of Hama, in Central Syria, where the town of Salamie lies, and which is a grazing ground for the Sba’ah, Mawali, Hadideen Bedouin tribes. The French imported well over a hundred stallions and mares to their studs in Algeria. Not all of these were equally good. Some were outstanding, like Ghazi. Some were average, like Salamie here. He does have a short back, deep girth, strong legs, a nice hindquarter, and a well placed neck. That said, his eyes are placed too high and his head is somewhat plain. The French, who were seeking stallions to produce cavalry horses (typically Arab-Barb crosses) to police their Algerian possessions, couldn’t care less about a good head, although they sometimes imported pretty typey individuals such as Aziz, featured earlier. Salamie left some progeny at the French government stud of Tiaret, in Algeria. Most notable is his daughter Kabla, out of the Aziz daughter El Kaira. Kabla is the dam of the stallion Bouq (by the desert-bred Hellal), really influential in early Tunisian…
Part 3 of Joe Ferriss’ article “Something Old, Something New” is out in the Arabian Essence online newsletter. Check it out. I was with Joe last month in Oregon and I can tell you nobody knows how to describe a horse like Joe. He sees things we average folks can’t see.
The series on desert-bred Arabian imports to North Africa continues thanks to breeder and blog reader A. Deblaise. This is Aziz, one of the earliest desert-breds imported to Algeria by the French. I know nothing about his strain or his original breeder. All I know is that he is present in the back of the pedigrees of some really good Tunisian and Algerian horses, like the pretty Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz mare Hadia (Kefil x Rafiaa by Bango) from Tunisia, pictured below. Hadia has three lines to Aziz, though his three daughters El Keira, Fakhera, and Gueddima.
Something tells me that there may a number of asil lines down in South America. A non-negligible number of Arabians of Crabbet, Babolna, and French bloodlines were exported to this part of the world, which to me is terra incognita. There were aslo some direct importations from the desert, such as that of Don Hernan Ayerza. All these horse must have left something. In the USA, the best known South American asil mare is the Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah mare *Aire (by Ali x Raira by the Crabbet-bred Rustnar) was bred in Brazil, from Ayerza bloodlines and was imported to to the USA in the 1934 by General Dickinson of Travelers Rest Farms. She still has asil descendents in the USA (and nice ones, too) and her tail female, although endangered, is still extant. Jill Erisman wrote a nice article summarizing the status of line within Al Khamsa, in the last Khamsat. Let me cut to the chase. If anyone knows someone, or knows someone who knows someone who can and wants to write and research asil Arabian in South America, then please let me know. He or she would be invited to contribute to this blog. Language is not a problem, I will find someone to…
Today French horse-breeder Adrien Deblaise made my day. He sent me a set of very rare, old pictures of desert-bred Arabians imported to France, Tunisia and Algeria in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Some time ago, I started a series of blog entries featuring photos of some these outstanding and so little known desert-breds (Dahman, El Sbaa, Nibeh, Burgas, Taleb, Niazi, El Managhi, etc), but I ran out of original photos to share. I am happy I now have a few more pictures to resume this series. Merci Adrien! This is Ghazi. Chestnut; desert-bred; born in 1901; recorded sire: “Arkoubi”, a Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz; recorded dam: “Zarifa”, a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz; raced successfully in Egypt; imported by the French government to Algeria (then a part of France) in 1909; head sire at the Tiaret stud for many years. Robert Mauvy, who knew him well, said of him: “Alezan dore, trois balzanes et liste, et dont presque toutes les juments nees a Tiaret descendent. Couvrant beaucoup de terrain avec de tres grandes lignes, il brillait par l’elegance de ces gestes et de ses allures … Ce fut, en outre, un excellent performer.” By 1954, on the eve of the bloody (more than a million dead) Algerian eight…
This is Nauwas, a chestnut mare born in 1967. Her sire is the Hamdani stallion Al-Khobar (Ibn Fadl x *Al Hamdaniah), and her dam is the desert-bred mare *Muhaira, a ‘Ubayyah from the horses of Prince Saud ibn ‘Abdallah ibn Jalawi Aal Saud. Her pedigree is interesting because the sire line is Egyptian, and all the mares are desert-bred imports to the USA from Central and Eastern Arabia. Fadl sired the stallion Ibn Fadl, out of the desert-bred mare *Turfa; Ibn Fadl in turned sired Al-Khobar (photo below), out of the desert-bred mare *Al-Hamdaniah (the “bloody shouldered mare”, who was featured in one of the first entries of this blog); the beautiful Al Khobar sired Nauwas, out of the desert-bred *Muhaira. You can’t get better bloodlines than these, so noble, and so close to the source. I love this photo of Nauwas. It blends two of the characteristics of the true Arabian mare: the sweet, soft look of a new mother; and the strength of a war mare. This is a mare I wish I had seen, and owned. PS: I just noticed, after publishing this post that Nauwas bears some resemblance in her body structure, her ears, and the…
Adrien Deblaise breeds Arabian horses of Tunisian, Moroccan and Algerian bloodlines in Western France. His father Philippe was a bookseller that specialized in equine literature. Philippe’s inventory contained one of the largest collections in France books on horses in general and Arabians in particular. Below are pictures of two of Adrien’s mares: B’Oureah Marine (by Ourki x Bismilah by Irmak), and Qhejala (by Fawzan x Jelala II by Abouhif). B’Oureah is shown here competing for a 60 mile endurance race (which she won). She is a Jilfat Dhawi by strain, tracing to the mare Wadha imported by the French government from the Fad’aan tribe in 1875. Qhejala traces to Cherifa, a Shuwaymat Sabbah imported by the French from the Sba’ah tribe in 1869. Note the resemblance between Qhejala (who is 75% Egyptian) and the Babson (a group of asil Arabians of Egyptian bloodlines) broodmatron Fada (Faddan x Aaroufa by Fay El Dine). Fada’s rare photo below is from the late Billy Sheets’ photo collection.
Don’t ask me how this ancient line made it into the 21st century. It’s a near miracle. Lady Anne Blunt imported the Hamdani Simri mare Sobha (Wazir x Selma) from Egypt in 1891, from a certain Mahmoud Bey who got her dam from the Abbas Pascha collection. Sobha’s line was one of the most represented lines at Crabbet Stud, after Rodania’s and Dajania’s. It produced a stallion at the first generation: Seyal (Mesaoud x Sobha), despite the latter’s grey color (the Blunts were not big on greys). Lady Anne also used Sobha’s other son Antar at her Sheykh Obeyd Stud in Egypt. Seyal’s sire line is still in existence today: Seyal -> Berk -> Ribal -> Ghadaf -> Jadib -> Ibn Gulida -> Omagh -> Dib -> Huntington Doyle, a chestnut 1990 stallion I saw at the Doyle Ranch in Oregon last August. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about here. Sobha had a daughter at Crabbet, Siwa (by Ahmar), who had Somra by Daoud, who had Safarjal by Berk. Safarjal was Lady Wentworth’s gift [purchased Thanks for the correction RJ] to Musgrave Clark of the Courthouse stud, which I wrote about in an earlier entry. Clark bred Safarjal to…
In an earlier post, I had written about an asil Kuhaylan Rodan line that seems to have miraculously survived in South Africa. This was the line of Rosina, tracing to Lady Anne Blunt’s Rodania through the latter’s daughter Rosemary. There is another asil line tracing to Rosemary that also survives in the USA. I stumbled upon it while browsing through the Al Khamsa Roster. This is the line of Rayim (Abu Zeyd x Roshana), a 1927 bay mare bred by W.R. Brown. Just follow this breath-taking genealogy of Crabbet mares from the “R” line: Rodania –> Rosemary, 1886, by Jeroboam –> Rabla, 1899, by Mesaoud –> Rokhama, 1906, by Astraled –> *Rokhsa, 1915, by Nasik –> Roshana, 1920, by *Berk –> Rayim, 1927, by Abu Zeyd. At this point the line is bred to old American bloodlines, as Rayim produces Amirat by Arafat (Ameer Ali x Serije, a Saqlawi al-Abd tracing to *Wadduda) in 1947. Amirat in turn produced Nuqat, by Nasir, a son of Rayim, hence doubling the Rosemary line. Nuqat is bred to Abu-Talib, another Kuhaylan Rodan son of Rayim, to produce the 1960 mare Salsalet (3 close crosses to Rayim). Salsalet is bred to the Egyptian stallion Saba…
A fascinating article on volcanic Arabic by Peter Harrigan, in the 2006 issue of Saudi Aramco World. I had the pleasure of meeting Peter at the 2009 Al Khamsa Convention in Oregon, where he gave a talk about the Czech explorer and writer Alois Musil. Peter is a director of Barzan Press, a publishing house “dedicated to promoting awareness of Arab history, literature, novels, heritage and school books.” Click here and scroll down for Peter’s bio. Check out Peter’s talk on Musil in the next Khamsat.
The archives of Gertrude Bell, sometimes referred to as the “Uncrowned Queen of Iraq” ( how I hate that title!), are at Newcastle University in the UK. If you do not know who Gertrude Bell is, or simply wish to know more about her, then click here. The archives include this first photo of a Shammar camel rider, with horses in the background, near the ancient Arab ruins of al-Hadr (ancient Hatra), in Iraq; and this second photo of Fahd Ibn Haddal, leader of the ‘Amarat Bedouins, and Gertrude’s “friend”.
I just noticed something while clicking through Al Khamsa’s online Roster. Of course, it may be a no-brainer to many of you: the stallion *Hamrah, a Saqlawi al-Abd imported by Homer Davenport to the USA in 1906, is the maternal grand-sire of at least five of the most influential Early American Foundation Arabian horses in the USA: Tripoli (dam Poka by *Hamrah); Dhareb and Antez (dam Moliah by *Hamrah); Hanad (dam Sankirah by *Hamrah) and Akil (dam Sedjur by *Hamrah). Wow. What a horse.
He was by Prince Hal x Sirrulya. Photo from Jeanne Craver
This beauty is a young stallion of Egyptian bloodlines who was shown at the 2009 Al Khamsa Convention in Oregon. I don’t know his pedigree (I think Haziz Halim is his maternal grandsire) and I don’t necessarily want to know it. My daughter Samarcande loved him very much and made friends with him. Sometimes, even a pedigree freak like myself likes to take a pause and just look at the horse. Photo Karsten Scherling.
Some time last year, this blog featured the precious asil Kuhaylan al-Mimrah line to the mare Baraka (Ibn Manial x Gamalat) which has been flourishing in South Africa. The series of postings on Baraka and her descendents attracted a lot of attention from South Africa and Namibia, and is by far the most popular thread on this blog. Now is the time to feature another asil line that has survived in South Africa, and which carries crosses to desert-bred lines that are extinct almost everywhere else around the globe. That’s the line of the mare Rosina (Saoud x Ruth II by Bendigo), a 1950 Kuhaylat al-Rodan exported by H. V. Musgrave Clark to South Africa in 1953. The line is a tail female to Rodania, an 1869 desert-bred Kuhaylat Rodan imported by Lady Anne Blunt in 1881, and one of the most influential mares in Arabian (and asil) horse breeding. What’s so special about this line, will you ask? Kuhaylan al-Rodan asil horses are all over the place. Well, first of all, the absolute majority of Rodania tail female horses are within what is known as “Straight Egyptian” breeding, a sub-set of asil breeding which has branched out into a category – and…
Since I am back talking about Ma’naghi Sbayli stallions (see yesterday’s short post on RB Bellagio), I thought I’d bring up a picture of the stallion Dakhala Sabiq (Prince Hal x Sirrulya by Julyan), a 1975 stallion bred by Jeanne Hussong, when she was just about to become Jeanne Craver. A coouple of years ago, I was seriously considering to buy a daughter of Sabiq’s sister Soiree (Sir x Sirrulya): Dakhala Sahra is a lovely 1985 chestnut mare by Plantagentet out of Soiree, and is owned by Crista Couch. Perhaps I should have made a move. Dakhla Sabiq and RB Bellagio who was featured below, are closely related, since their respective dams Sirrulya and Sirrunade are sisters, both out of Jane Ott’s broodmatron Sirrulla (Sirecho x Drissula). Unfortunately, Sabiq never had the opportunity to be used as a stallion I have always had a soft spot for Ma’anaghi Sbayli stallions. It dates back to the time I read a story by Ali al-Barazi, an old-time Syrian horse breeder, about one of the last ghazus (Bedouin raids), in the early 1940s. That was just before the French, who were ruling over Syria at the time, put an end to all raiding activity and imposed peace…
One of my favorite stallions on the US East Coast is RB Bellagio (Arabi Fad Onyx x Sirrunade by Faaryan), an asil Ma’naghii Sbayli tracing to the desert-bred mare Haidee, bred by the Sba’ah tribe and imported to the UK in 1874. His maternal grand-dam is Miss Jane Ott’s famous Sirrulla (Sirecho x Drissula by Sultan). The back of his pedigree is really interesting which one of the very few crosses to the stallion Sultan (Ibn Nafa x Exochorda, and hence Sirecho’s half brother), another cross to Antez, and plenty of linebreeding and inbreeding to Haidee. RB Bellagio is owned by Terri Somers of New Jersey, who also owns a number of Ma’naghi mares that trace to Haidee, but also to the Blunt’s Ferida, another desert bred from the Shammar tribe. Terri has a nice website that has all sorts of information about RB Bellagio and his harm of Ma’naghiyat. By the way, don’t you think there is a similarity with the picture of the desert-bred stallion *Mirage, below?
Carol Mingst took this beautiful photo of Zachary CF (Zacharia x Recherche by Prince Hal), an asil Kuhaylan Hayfi at Diane Lyons’ open barn in Dallas, Oregon last week. I had seen Zachary back in 2003, but don’t recall that he was nearly as beautiful as in this picture. It makes me want to own him. Thanks to Carol for sharing this photo.
Amidst last week’s flurry of events, I almost forgot to report that Daughter of the Wind was awarded the 2009 Publication Award at the Al Khamsa Convention in Redmond OR, for “garnering international support in favor of the asil Arabian horse”. That international support is coming from you, dear reader, and it is you that this award recognizes. I cannot tell you how much this award means to me, and I wish to extend a heartfelt thank you to all the folks who nominated me for this award. I started this blog in early 2008 because I wanted to keep all my musings about horses in one place. Eighteen months and three hundred and fifty thousand clicks later, I am still amazed at how fast it grew, and at the quality and variety of the readership. (My web stats even show a growing 5% propportion of Chinese readers, who are just lurking for now, so I guess it’s time for a multi-script interface that also includes Arabic). Photo below by Karsten Scherling (by now, I have learnt to type Karsten’s name with my eyes shut..)
Rosemary Doyle and Joe Ferriss at the Doyle open barn on August 28th, in Oregon. We’re so lucky to have them around. Photo courtesy of Karsten Scherling.
To celebrate the inclusion of the Babolna asil horses in the Al-Khamsa Roster, here is a photo of a stallion from these bloodlines, owned by Stephanie Weirich of Germany. This is the chestnut stallion Farag II-3 (by Farag II x 204 Ghalioun, by Ghalioun x 3-Siglavy Bagdady VI). He is also a tail female descendant of 25-Amurath Sahib, and is actually 50% Babolna (non-Egyptian) blood. His strain is Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz. Photo courtesy of Tzviah Idan.
Karsten Scherling, who takes really good (and free!) pictures took this one of Carver DE (Maloof Najid x Greggan’s Lark LHF by the gorgeous Greggan), one of the main Saqlawi Jadran stallions at the Doyles’, during their open barn last week in Oregon. My friend Lyman Doyle is leading him. For many more beautiful photos of the Doyle’s 60 years of breeding celebration, check out Karsten’s website.
Hurrah! The Babolna Roster proposal unanimously (41 – 0) passed the second round of voting during the Al Khamsa assembly in Redmond, Oregon. This means, among other things, that the living descendants of the mare 25-Amurath Sahib and the stallion Siglavy Bagdady VI are now accepted by Al Khamsa, following a thorough research process. Below is a photo of the Babolna head stallion Farag II (Farag x 25-Amurath Sahib), courtesy of Tzviah Idan. To me, this marks the second step towards constituting an international Roster of asil Arabians horses, based on the Al Khamsa Roster. The first step was taken when Al Khamsa accepted the line of Soldateska (1911), the one remaining asil line from the Weil-Marbach stud in Germany, a few years ago.
Javera Chelsea (by Thane x HB Diandra by Mariner) belongs to Doris Park of Iowa, and she is certainly lucky to have her. This full sister of the grey Javera Thadrian is now at Craver Farms for a full brother-sister mating. Just try to find the slightest defect in this mare’s conformation. I haven’t been able to so far. Photos by Charles Craver.
I finally got to meet Carol Monkhouse at the Al Khamsa Convention in Oregon. Carol was visiting from the UK, with her husband Terry Lee. She has a couple mares, Maloof Habiba (Maloof Habibi x Maloof Sahara by Subani) and Maloof Hadiya (Parnell x Devlin), and their offspring, which she keeps at the Doyle ranch, in Alfalfa, Oregon. I had corresponded with Carol some fifteen years ago, after a mutual friend, Tzviah Idan, had introduced us to each other, at at time all three of us happened to be looking at remaining old Blunt lines (i.e., no Skowronek, who is so ubiquitous as to have his own Wikipedia page) around the world. I was delighted to finally meet her in person. We had identified the 1978 asil stallion Arabesque Azieze (Hansan x Orilla by Oran) in New Zealand (last asil Wadnan al-Khursan stallion in the West, also last asil line to Oran); some asil descendants of the 1950 mare Rozina (Saoud x Ruth II by Bendigo) in South Africa, by the asil Kuhaylan al-Mimrah stallion Gordonville Ziyadan (more on this precious line later, it is still there); the two asil Courthouse Hamdani Simri full sisters Sappho and Sceptre (Bleinheim X Selima by Bahram, more on those twi later as…
Sixty years ago, in 1949, a young Terry Doyle and his father, Dr. Joseph Lyman Doyle (“Doc”), hauled the asil mare Gulida (by Gulastra x Valida by Ghawi), a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah tracing to the marbat of Ibn Sudan, to their farm in Sigourney, Iowa. They bred her once to the asil stallion Nusi (Gulastra x Nusara), a Kuhaylan Da’jani; they also bred her several times to the asil stallion Ghadaf (Ribal x Gulnare), also a Saqlawi Jadrani from the same marbat. Sixty years later, I had the privilege of seeing and taking video of some 50 horses at Terry and Rosemary’s Doyle Arabians ranch, in Alfalfa, Oregon. Most of them are unique in that they trace exclusively to the three horses Gulida, Nusi, and Ghadaf, and that such a closed group has endured for so long. They are also unique in that the younger ones among them carry more than 25 crosses to the stallion Gulastra (Astraled x Gulnare), who had tremendous impact on the early foundation American breeding of Arabian horses, and who was the subject of a recent CMK symposium, in Redmond, Oregon. But what is really unique about the Doyle’s horses is that they are the last horses of exclusively…
Just got back from Oregon yesterday, and I am already swamped with work (yuck!). Of course, once there, and around horses and horse people, tweeting about the Al Khamsa Convention didn’t even cross my mind, and I’ll just have to come to terms with that. I will be writing about the Convention, the CMK Symposium, the barn tours, the rides in the Great Outdoors of the High Desert country, and all the wonderful people I saw there over the next few days (weeks?). I am having withdrawal symptoms.. Meanwhile, here is a pic of the 2009 Al Khamsa Board of Directors, taken by Karsten Scherling (hi, Karsten!). Find the outlier. From left to right: Jenny Krieg, Mary Gills (Sec), Lisa Rettke, Ellen May (Veep), Pam Studebaker (Prez), me, Rosemary Doyle, Monica Respet, and Marilyn McHallam.
Tomorrow I will be hitting the Oregon trail with the family to attend the 2009 Al Khamsa Convention, my first since 2005, as well as the CMK Symposium. This time I will be taking my video camera with me, so you should expect a couple video uploads when I return (September 1). While I doubt I will have the time to write as frenquently as I would have liked, you can follow convention updates and other news on my (admittedly under-utilized) Twitter account. There is also a Twitter widget at the bottom of this website (scroll down).
You ought to read the absolutely lovely story of how a British breeder Jenny Lees of Peark Island Stud, got aquainted with Arabian horses while living in Bahrain. Jenny writes that her Hamdaany Kuwaiti was said to bred by the Anazah and had come to Bahrain through Kuwait, hence his name. Back in the 1960s, around the time when the Sheykhdom of Kuwait became independent (in 1961), it began imlementing a policy of inviting Bedouin tribes from the Syrian desert, which was then suffering from a severe drought, to settle in Kuwait and become Kuwaiti citizens. These were mostly Anazah tribes. This movement was part of a larger pattern of reverse migration of Bedouin tribes that had moved to the north some two hundred years earlier, back to the south. Most ‘Anazah Bedouins, mostly Hssinah, Sba’ah, Ruwalah, and Amarat, and some Fad’an, headed back south, trading the increasingly burdensome policies of the Syrian and Iraqi socialist regimes for the relative wealth of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. They brought many, many horses back with them. Most of these ‘Anazah tribes settled in Saudi Arabia’s “Northern Border” province, around ‘Ar’ar and Hafr al-Batin, in the Eastern Province, and in the al-Jahra…
Now that’s my Zahrah (Dinar x Hanadi by Krush Juhayyim), a Kuhaylat al-Nawwaq from the marbat of Shaykh Abdul Jalil al-Naqabashbandi, a sufi leader from the area of Der al-Zor, in the Middle Euphrates region of Syria. My father and I picked Zahra from Kamal Abdul Khaliq’s herd when she was 10 days old, in 1994 I think, and we eventually sold her when I came to the USA in 2000. She is pictured here with her filly foal by Saad al-Thani, a Kuhaylan al-Khdili, and another favorite of mine, who is also a son of al-Aawar (and so Dinar’s half brother). The little, un-named filly was thus double al-Aawar. She died a few days after the picture was taken. I will talk about the origins of all these horses in more detail later. For now, I just wanted to feature four generations of Al-Aawar breeding (Al-Aawar, his son Dinar, Dinar’s daughter Zahra, and Zahra’s filly foal who was double al-Aawar).
Ma’anaqi Zudghum is one of the most respected marabet of Sbayli, owned by a Bedouin of the Sba’ah tribe called Zudghum. Dinar’s sire, the Hamdani Simri al-Aawar, was pictured in an earlier entry. This photo was taken by my father at Mustafa al-Jabri’s stud in Aleppo, where Dinar, then a growthy two and a half years old colt, was on loan from his owner Zafir Abdul Khaliq. Back then (early 1990s, judging by the shirt I am wearing in the picture), Dinar was thought to have a ‘prettier’ head than your average Arabian horse from Syria, so breeders rushed to breed him to their mares even though he was still too young. It may have stifled his growth process. Again desert-bred horses in general and al-Aawar’s sons and daughters in particular take a longer time to mature, and in a hindsight, I think this one would have matured into a much better proportioned horse had he not been used so heavily at such a young age.
This venerable, glorious horse, one of my all-time favorite stallions, will be featured in detail in an upcoming post, which I am taking my time to write. Meanwhile, enjoy the picture, which I took at twilight at Radwan Shabareq’s stud in Aleppo, Syria, sometime in the mid 1990s. Al Aawar was in his 20s.
The mountain region of ‘Asir, in south western Saudi Arabia is one of the areas of the Middle East that fascinates me the most. Historically it was part of Yemen until 1934, I think. I have recently bought Thierry Mauger’s beautiful book, “Undiscovered Asir”, and recently Pure Man sent me this video of the moutain ‘Asir tribe of Al-Rayyith. The ‘Asir tribes were not horse breeding tribes.
Check these two articles (Part 1 and Part 2) out. I hope to see Joe in Redmond, OR, next week. He’s traveling by bus with some indians as we speak.
The mare *Subaiha and her daughter *Taffel were bred in Saudi Arabia, by Prince Saud ibn Abdallah ibn Jiluwi, a close relative of Saudi Arabia’s founder King Abd al-Aziz, and governor of the eastern, oil-rich Hasa (al-Ahsa’) province starting from 1938. His father Abdallah was governor of Hasan from 1913 to 1938. They were imported by John Rogers to California in 1950. No asil progeny left. I don’t know their strain. Most of Ibn Jiluwi’s horses were either from the ‘Ubayyan strain or the Hamdani strain, though.
The desert-bred Kuhaylah Hayfiyah mare *Reshan, imported by Homer Davenport to the USA in 1906 has two surviving asil tail females, and we are lucky to have them both. The first is through her grand-daughter Antarah (Antez x Hasiker, by Hamrah x *Reshan), and that line bred on thanks to the efforts of Charles and Jeanne Craver. Several horses regularly featured on this blog, such as Sir, Brimstone, Prince Hal, Pirouette and my own Wisteria are all from this line. These horses and others, known as the “Kuhaylan Haifi Davenports”, now form a cohesive group, exclusively tracing to the horses imported by Homer Davenport from the Syrian desert, and from the horses sent by the Ottoman Hamidie Society from Syria to the Chicago World Fair of 1893. This group has about 100-150 live mares of breeding age in the USA [confirmation, correction anyone], so it’s fairly safe. The other tail female to *Reshan, through another grand-daughter, Medina (Fartak x Hasiker, by Hamrah x *Reshan) is barely surviving today. The line mainly survives through Dihkenna (Gharis x Komet by *Sunshine), a bay mare foaled in 1946. This mare’s pedigree is a perfect illustration of what later came to called “Early American Foundation” Arabian horses, or as the late Billy Sheets…
This video by C. Mingst shows several of the stallions at Craver Farms: Regency (Hamdani), Triermain (K. Haifi), Zacharia (Haifi), Regatta (Hamdani), Brassband (Haifi), Badawi (Hamdani), and a group of mares, some of which are identified. Javera Thadrian is not there. If anyone has a video of this horse that they’d like to share, can they please send it to me and I will publish it here with due credits.
I have decided to start a new series called “barely surviving lines”. In doing so, I was inspired by both the latest issue of the Khamsat magazine, which focuses on rare asil lines in the USA, and by Anne McGaughey’s excellent website “Rare Al-Khamsa Strains“. These “barely surviving lines” are still in existence, or likely to be in existence, but we don’t know for sure. They are included on the basis of the existence of an horses 25 years (in 2009) or younger that trace to these lines. Featured “barely surviving lines” are mainly through the tail female (because of my bias of tracking down horses according to their strains, which are transmitted through the tail females), but I also include tail males, and some lines from the middle of the pedigrees. For those of you who may wonder about the worthiness of preserving these lines, I refer you to the discussion in the latest Khamsat. Opinions on the value of preserving these lines vary. On one end of the spectrum, some people will say that every endangered line is worth preserving, because of its intrinsic uniqueness, but also because it contribues to maintaining a broader gene pool. On the other end, others will maintain that lines…
As the 2009 Al Khamsa Convention in Oregon approaches (and this time, I plan to be there), here’s a video by Carol Mingst of the 1994 Oregon CMK Symposium, showing asil stallions of Davenport breeeding Mandarin CF (Regency x Lotus), Sportin Life and SA Apogee, among others. A good chunk of the video features Mandarin showing off. Can anyone tell me who the unidentified light grey horse is? He is striking.
This is a great tool for breeders of asil horses in the USA.
If any one is interested in the (very) early history of nomadic Arab tribes, then they ought to read Israel Eph’al’s book: “The Ancient Arabs: Nomads on the Borders of the Fertile Crescent: 9th-5th centuries BC. Google Books has a integral copy online. The books discusses the deeds of the little0known “Queen of the Arabs” Zabiba, Shamsi, Yatie, and others who fought the Assyrian empire more or less successfully. Think about naming your filly foal after them.
Before I move to discussing the two stallions just imported from Syria to France, and following the posting of Shahm’s photos a couple days ago, I want to share with you a couple pictures of the second stallion, Mahboob Halab, a 4 year old Shuwayman Sabbah from the marbat of the Jarbah leading family of the Shammar tribe. Both photos are courtesy of Jean-Claude Rajot, who owns Mahboob. The above one was just taken in France, and the one below in Syria, about 6 months ago, before the horse’s importation. Desert bred horses heavy on the blood of al-Aawar, the Hamdani ibn Ghurab stallion, are very slow to mature, according to Radwan Shabareq, al-Aawar’s last owner. They typically reach full maturity at 8 years old.
Last week, I wrote about the quest of Robert Mauy’s friends, Jean-Claude Rajot and Louis Bauduin of France, to regenerate the bloodlines of their Arabian horses with the importation of stallions from the Arabian desert, or North Africa. Jean-Claude and Louis’ quest first took them to Tunisian and Algeria in the late 1980s. They saw many horses at the government studs of Tiaret (Algeria) and Sidi Thabet (Tunisia, where Louis took the photo of the mare below), as well as with private breeders. They also took many photos. However, the horses they liked were either too old or not for sale. In the 1990s and 200s, as Syria was slowly opening up to the western world, Jean-Claude and Louis undertook several trips to the Syrian desert, the first of which took place with Jens Sannek and Bernd Loewenherz. A great book by Sannek and Loewenherz resulted from this memorable trip. in 2008, Jean-Claude and Louis visited several marabet (Bedouin studs) of the Shammar Bedouins, including Ibn Jlaidan’s (Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz, a Najd marbat), Ibn Ghurab’s (Hamdani Simri), Ibn ‘Ufaytan (Ma’naghi Hadraji), and al-Ghishm (Kuhaylan al-Wati); with an eye towards learning about the desert horse in its natural milieu, and perhaps buying a young stallion or…
Anita Westfall has asked me to post this photo of Sir (Tripoli x Dharebah) at age 4, which was taken by Miss Ott at Craver Farms in 1962. Charles is in the photo. She wanted to use the photo to illustrate a comment in a comment she recently posted, which I quote below: “My very favorite photo of the perfect foreleg is one taken of Sir as a youngster. Perhaps Jeanne has a copy handy?? Long forearms, broad flat knees, and short cannons with broad, flat bone. Anyway, long legs on Arabians are usually the result of long cannons (combined with ‘normal’ forearms), while those sturdy horses with short legs often have short forearms.”
*Aziza (Gamil Manial x Negma) was *Roda’s half sister. *Roda was mentioned in a recent post. In 1996, RJ Cadranell wrote an article on the two sisters in Arabian Visions, which you read here. Like *Roda, *Aziza was imported to the USA by W.R. Brown in 1932. All this I knew from before. Having read F. Klynstra’s book “Nobility of the Desert”, which has lovely pictures of the mare Faziza (Fa-Turf x Azyya by Kenur x Aziza), who went to G. Olms in Germany, and her son Tufail (by Kaisoon, photo of Tufail below), I also knew that Aziza had left some asil descendents in Europe, rich in the blood of desert horses from Saudi Arabia imported to the USA (*Turfa, *Sunshine, *Nufoud, *Tairah). What I didn’t know is that the line might have persisted in the USA. The mare Sharziyya, a 1963 full sister to Faziza, has left a small number of descendants in this country. The youngest mare from this line is Shar Fazima (Hafid Faserr x Shar Azima) a 1986 mare bred by the Krausnicks’ of Shar Char Farms. She looks like the last (in the tail female, that is)asil from that line in the USA now and if alive,…
Also from “The Authentic Arab Horse”, but from Lady Wentworth, this time.. “Ears: these are all-important. A stallion’s ears should be small, exquisitely shaped, sharply cut, and thin at the edges. They should be also of marvelously delicate modeling, beautifully chiseled, the tip delicately turned inwards, the points being very sharply defined. Hearing is very acute and sensitive, lop ears are unknown and slack ears are a very bad fault. A good head can be discounted by badly carried ears.”
This is from a handwritten note which I copied from Lady Wentworth’s “The Authentic Arabian Horse”. I don’t have the book with me (it’s in Lebanon in my father’s library), but I vaguely recall that it is an excerpt from Lady Anne Blunt’s manuscript, which she was working on before her death in 1917, and which her daughter Lady Wentworth later ‘integrated’ (plagiarized?) in her book “The Authentic Arabian Horse”. “A straight profile should not be a defect if the forehead is very broad, the eyes placed low and very large, and the muzzle small”. Below is a headshot of Reema, a desert bred Hamdaniyat Ibn Ghurab, bred by the Aqaydat tribe of the Middle Euphrates region (the marbat originally belongs to the Shammar). Reema’s head is a good illustration of the above quote, although her eyes could be placed a tad lower.
There have been interesting discussions along many of this blog’s topics over the past two weeks, and I am having a hard time catching up with all of these. I owe readers a number of new entries on these topics, and I will get to these in the next week. Jaspre, a son of Roda Still, how many of you knew that there was still a thin tail female to *Roda out there? I vaguely remember reading somewhere that Margaret Shuey bred a daughter from her, Sunny Acres Fantasy, by the very handsome stallion Ibn Hanad, but did not know that this line was carried on until now. Check out the pedigree of this young (2005) mare, for instance. True, the line is now diluted in a sea of new Egyptian breeding, but if that’s the only way to keep these old lines alive, why not… (you’re getting an insight on some of my biases here) Anyway, isn’t it amazing to see that line managed to survive? I wonder if this was by chance, or if there was a concerted effort to preserve it.. There is even a chance of a nicer, more diverse female line to *Roda having survived,…
These an interesting dicussion currently going on on this blog, about whether this horse here is indeed Siglavy Bagdady VI (Siglavy Bagdady V x 250 Kuhailan Haifi I). In this context, here two more pictures of that asil Babolna stallion from Laszlo Kiraly of Hungary. The picture above distinctly shows the pink lips on the right side of the horse’s muzzle. In the photo below, there is much less pink on the left side of the lips, from what I can distinguish.
My friends Jean-Claude Rajot and Louis Bauduin have been breeding Arabian horses for a long time. They are the students and friends of the late Robert Mauvy. Robert Mauvy is, simply put, the Westerner who came the closest to understanding the Arabian horse and to breeding it as its original custodians, the Bedouins of Arabia, bred it. Forget Carl Raswan, forget Abd al-Qadir al-Jazairi of Algeria, forget Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfik of Egypt. Only Anne Blunt, in the later years of her life, equalled Mauvy’s ‘art of breeding’. While Mauvy is little-known outside of France and North Africa– despite his longtime connections with some of the fathers of the Asil Club movement in Europe, such as Foppe Klynstra, I am certain that his fame will skyrocket when an English translation of his small yet gigantic book “Le Cheval Arabe” will become available. This masterpiece was my Arabian Horse Bible, from age 10 until today. One of the key teachings of Mauvy, as laid out in his book, is that the Arabian horse, like all things living (plants, animals, and even humans) is the outcome of the environment in which it is bred. If you take it out of its original environment, it will live certainly live…