My beloved Wadha nearly died while foaling, and her foal by Monologue died too. A large bay colt, both hindlegs white, so large that he was stuck at the level of his hips for two and a half hours and died before he could come out. Wadha’s vagina was teared up pretty bad and she did not pass her placenta until several hours after she was rushed to the vet hospital of the U. of Pennsylvania. She remains there, but is doing better now. It was traumatic. It reminds of me of the note Lady Anne Blunt put in her herdbook about her Jallabiyah mare Makbula: “Foal dead, mare nearly dead”.
Lovas Nemzet, Laszlo Kiraly’s 22 years old Hungarian horse magazine is having its annual photo competition. The deadline is July 24, 2022. Everyone is encouraged to apply.
The last thing I wanted this year is another colt. Still, my appreciation for this latest one is growing at each candid shot Terry Doyle sends me through DeWayne Brown, who owns the dam. Look at that neck, that gaskin and these hocks, at such a young age. Bashir is really a good sire. I fancy the lines to *Mirage, *Euphrates, *Shahwan and *Al-Mashoor way in the back of the pedigree, and more closely, the cross to *Faleh and of course the Doyle blood. I have the highest respect for the influence of *Faleh and his full brother *Farazdac in any pedigree. Just a drop of that blood makes a huge difference (likewise with their maternal uncle *Aswan).
I like this little chap. He speaks well for his sire as a breeding stallion. The dam is of course excellent.
It’s a colt — the third in a row from that Ma’naqi line. This morning Pippa went into labor and quickly delivered a healthy chestnut colt at Terry and Rosemary Doyle’s in Oregon. He is by Bashir Al-Dirri, Jenny Krieg’s excellent horse (below). His name is Sharif Al Arab. Sharif means “distinguished, eminent, illustrious, noble, highborn, high-bred”, and he is all of that by birth. Other than his tail male to Mesaoud, his Ma’naqi tail female to *Haidee and his high percentage of old Blunt blood, he is the last horse — together with his sire — to carry the bloodlines of early Arabian imports *Euphrates and *Al-Mashoor in Al Khamsa, and one of the last ones to carry lines to desert-breds *Leopard, *Mirage, and *Houran. These are quintessentially American lines of Arabian horses.
Wadha’s foal by Monologue is due this week, and Pippa’s foal by Bashir (“the Dude”) the next. I am hoping for a bay foal in the first case, regardless of gender, and for a filly (chestnut, because no other option) in the second. Both should be nice foals, if delivery goes all. In other news, Belle is in foal to Jamr again.
My new book with Kate McLachlan and Moira Walker, “The Arabian Horses of Abbas Pasha” will be published in late-July 2022, capping six years of work. It is based on the (re)discovery and translation of the Abbas Pasha Sale List, an original Arabic document drawn at the close of the auction sale of the famed collection of Arabian horses of Abbas Pasha I, Viceroy of Egypt and the Sudan (r. 1848-1854), following the sudden death by drawning of his son Ibrahim Ilhami Pasha, who had inherited his father’s horses and bred them them on for six more years. The Sale List has 278 stallions, mares, colts and fillies, excluding very young foals at their dams’ side. The new book also features translations of six other smaller documents, including an early scrapbook of Ali Pasha Sherif, and two entries from his studbook, which is now lost. Taken together, the Abbas Pasha Sale List and the six smaller documents translated and analyized in this book allow us to fill in blanks in the pedigrees of the horses which Lady Anne and Wilfrid Scawen Blunt acquired from Ali Pasha Sherif between the 1889 and 1896. These horses traced entirely to Abbas Pasha stock…
The other day I was telling Carrie Slayton that I wanted to breed and own very powerful Arabian horses horses, with very deep girths, very round barrels, short backs, long hips, high and extended withers, flamboyant action, lots of spirit, fire in the eyes, dark skin on the face, very fine skin, shiny coats, masculine males, feminine females, very dry overall. And of course of unquestionably pure origins.
This document is a milestone, and it took a year to get it this far, in a true collective effort.
I woke up in Beirut this morning to good news from Yasser from his countryside house in the Nile Delta. My Khallawiyah mare Bint Rammah just foaled a well-built filly by Batal al Zaman. Yasser and I are partners on the filly. Yasser’s photo. We will name her Jawaher Al Arab. Her older sister was already Jawharah (jewel), and she is jewels in the plural, so Jawaher. Yasser and I carefully selected Batal al Zaman for his pedigree (a very simple pedigree, old EAO-lines only, and low Nazeer) and his outstanding racing record in Egypt. He is by Ibn Dahsha (Wasel x Dahsha by Adeeb, tf Bint Radia) out of Saddeeqah (Adawy x Eetimad by Mourad, Farida tf).
… and I did not even celebrate it. Shame on me. The young girl after which this website is named was born on the day it was launched, and is now a teenager (left on the photo).
اقول ويلفظها البعض التخيرة بالتاء
.وأضيف الكحيلة الشكيلية هي وكحيلة العشيّر رسن واحد
This horse is actually Montezuma (Sir x Tara), a Kuhaylan Hayfi of Davenport lines that was mostly used to produce half-Arabs.
First time I see a photo of this mare. She was beautiful. I wish that her type had prevailed in these *Turfa horses. She was 44% *Turfa.
I usually try to follow these news, but this one escaped me: a cuneiform inscription — 26 lines, the longest discovered in Saudi Arabia so far — along with a stone relief of Nabonidus, the last Babylonian king, was discovered this past July in the ancient Central Arabian town of Fadak, south of Hail*. So far the best known representation of Nabonidus was in that in Harran Stela (below), which features him along the effigies of the moon-god Sin, the winged sun-god Shamash, and the goddess of Venus, Ishtar. The snake must refer to either Nabu or Marduk. Why Nabonidus (the wikipedia article is good) left his son to co-rule in Babylon and established his residence at Tayma in Central Arabia, remains a matter of debate. Some specialists say he went there to control the South Arabian trade routes, which forked at Taymaa — one road went to Syria and the Mediterranean cost and the other to Mesopotamia. Others say he was exiled there by the religious elite, who did not appreciate his attempts at religious reform, above all how he tried to put the moon god Sin atop the Babylonian pantheon. Soon after his return to Babylon, the elite…
Another rare set of photos, these of the Dahmat ‘Amer mare Ridaab also a the farm of Basil Jad’aan — with a young Basil holding her. She has a nice colt by Marzuk that year. Her sire was the Dahman ‘Amer stationed at the Military Housing in al-Hasakah in North-East Syria, and her dam one of the two Dahmat ‘Amer mares of Khidr al-Dairi of Ma’daan near Day al-Zur. Both sire and dam Dahman ‘Amer, but from different branches, the sire from a Jubur strain, but taken in war by them from the ‘Ajarrash clan of the Shammar ca. 1935, and the dam from a Sba’ah strain. Back in 1992, she was already the last Syrian mare from this precious strain, but her line survives today, thirty years later.
I took these two rare photos of ‘Abeerah, the black Shuwaymat Sabbah at the farm of Basil Jad’aan in 1992. Sired by the dark Ma’naqi Hadraji of the ‘Ufaytan clan of the Shammar, and out of a grey mare by the Saqlawi Jadran of Farhan al-Nayif of the Tai, and out of a black Shuwaymah by the ‘Ubayyan Suhayli of the leader of the Jubur, ‘Abeerah was one of the most beautiful desert-bred mares. She was much prized by Basil, and give him a beautiful black filly by Mokhtar, which he named al-Qahirah. ‘Abeerah traced to the horses of Sfuq al-Rahbi (al-Jarba), who obtained the damline from the leaders of the Bu-Mutaywit (a sub-tribe of the Juhaysh between Sinjar and Tall ‘Afar) who in turn got her (again) from the Jarbah leaders of the Shammar, who owned the strain. ‘Abeerah (alt. spelling Obeirah) was the dam of Khaldee, a horse present in almost every Syrian pedigree today, by the seal brown desert-bred Kuhaylan Ibn Jlaidan sire al-Asda’ (Khaldee was not by the Hadban Enzahi stallion Burhan, his official pedigree notwithstanding).
I grew up reading Lady Wentworth’s massive book “The Authentic Arabian Horse” as well as Robert Mauvy’s little book “Le Cheval Arabe”. I had a great deal of trust in the first, and the second was bedtime reading for me for many years. Both books featured intriguing mentions of an Arabic legend about “Hoshaba” and “Baz”, a pair of free-roaming wild horses in Yemen that were tamed by Biblical characters of same name (?), becoming the ancestors of today’s Arabian horses. Baz was supposed to be the female progenitor and Hoshaba the male one. The legend, according to both Wentworth and Mauvy, led credence to the belief that the Arabian horse was indigenous to the Arabian peninsula from time immemorial. I remember searching for both characters in the Bible and not finding anything remotely related, but still trusting the authorities’ word on it. A cursory Google search for the “Wild Mare of Baz” shows that, from the “Horse Encyclopedia” and “The Story of America’s Triple Crown” to the “Ultimate Guide to Horse Breeds”, the legend of Hoshaba and Baz is alive and well in recent mainstream equine literature, having spread well beyond Arabian horse books. See here for instance: …
An excerpt by the French Gamont, who was in charge of Mehemet Ali’s stud of Choubra between 1828 and 1842. Google Translate will get you a good translation. Haras d’abas-pacha. — Le haras d’Abas-Pacha est situé dans une plaine de sable, auprès d’Héliopolis. Ce haras est une copie de celui de Choubra. Longtemps, Abas-Pacha a tenu ses chevaux en plein air, au soleil, à la pluie, sans qu’il en résultât d’accidents. Juments et étalons du Nejd; les plus belles variétés. La direction du haras est confiée à un homme de l’Hedjaz. On n’y voit point de maladies de misère, comme morve et farcin. Beaucoup de naissances, mais moins qu’à Choubra. Les poulains sont nourris avec du lait de chamelle et des dattes; Orge concassée; luzerne; paille hachée. Admission de quelques principes mis en pratique par nous. Appareillements comme à Choubra. Bonne tenue des écuries. Poulains en liberté. Pas d’entraves. Très beaux produits. C’est le haras le plus riche de toute l’Egypte, par la qualité très supérieure des étalons et des juments. Cet établissement renferme de cent cinquante à deux cents têtes. Abas Pacha aime extraordinairement les chevaux. De tous les enfants de Méhémet-Ali, c’est lui qui les connaît le mieux.…
Finally, a photo of Shaykh Ahmad al-Taha, leader of the Juhaysh tribe in Northern Iraq. The Juhaysh were a large sheep-herding tribe. The belong to the larger Zabid confederation, which migrated northwards from Yemen to the Euphrates valley some 500 year ago. Only the leaders of the tribe kept horses. The Juhaysh had two main strains: Kuhaylan Da’jani (of which the RAS El Nasser, bred by Ahmad al-Taha, was the best known representative) and Hadban al-Malali. They also had a Dahman ‘Amir strain, which I think they got either from their Shammar or their Jubur neighbours. The leaders of a Juhaysh peasant subtribe, the Bu Mutaywit, owned a strain of Shuwayman Sabbah which is they got from the Jarba Shammar in the early 1900s. This is the strain of the stallion al-Khaldi, who is now in most Syrian pedigrees.
I am sure many of you have alreay seen the piece Yasser Ghanim al-Tahawi recently wrote for the Kuwaiti Bait Al-Arab’s magazine. Yasser has emerged as one of most precise and boldest thought leaders on the subject of the identity of the Arabian horse. Scroll down to the end of the pdf for the piece.
This is Jamr again, in stills. I want to see similarities with the Blunt horses in this 1922 video by British Pathe. Again, I wish the neck was a tad longer; and if he had three more inches to him. Part of it was due to poor nutrition because he was weaned at three months old;
I feel very comfortable with Jamr‘s head, because of the combination of the straight profile, the small muzzle, and the deep jowls. I think one needs to see beyond the flashy, in-your-face, provocative, even disturbing “beauty” of present day heads of Arabian horses of the showring kind, with its exaggerated features. One instead needs to learn to look at the proportions and the interrelation of all the individual elements of the head together. A relaxing sense of harmony needs to prevail, one that draws you in, and makes you want to look longer, and look slower.
In relation to the previous post, I am showing here two screenshots from the book Heroic Poets, Poetic Heroes: The Ethnography of Performance in an Arabic Oral Epic Tradition, by Dwight Fletcher Reynolds (Cornell University, 1995). They provide a good introduction to the epic of the Bani Hilal.
On a very old strain, from the Arabic original of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript, translation mine: The Gmassah [a branch of the Sba’ah tribe] were asked about the [strain of] ‘Ubayyah of Ibn ‘Alyan, which marbat she is from? The elders of the Sba’ah informed that: ‘She is ‘Ubayyah Huwaynah, [belonging] to [the tribe of] Bani Sakhr; she came to them [i.e. to Bani Sakhr] in ancient times; when they [the Sba’ah elders] asked about her, they found out that she was from an ancient marbat, and is to be mated, so they started mating her; it is said that she belonged to Bani Hilal; the Qudat [a branch of the Bani Sakhr] took her in war [qila’ah] from under the Sultan Hasan [the leader of the Bani Hilal] when the Bani Hilal went westards [gharrabu, i.e. to North Africa].‘ Some context here: The tumultuous XIth century migration of the Bani Hilal and other tribes from Arabia to North Africa, all the way to the Atlantic Ocean, is one of the defining moments in Egyptian and North African history. The historical events were described by XIVth century historian Ibn Khaldun. The saga of their migration was transmitted in verse by…
The following are excerpts from the RAS Dr. Ahmed Mabrouk’s book “A Journey to Arabia”, pertaining to his visit to Eastern Arabia in 1936: [King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia] gave me two recommendations, one to H.H. Prince Seoud Ibn Galawi, Ruler of El-Ehsa […]. The well known hospitality of H.M. The King and his Governors in Arabia was evident in H.H. Prince Ibn Galawi. In the Prince’s stables, near his private palace, I saw about 80 horses. These I believe ar the most pedigreed in Arabia owing to their concentration in a limited spot and the conseuqent exclusion of any outside blood. Nevertheless, I do not consider them bedouin bred horses but stable bred like those in Egypt […]. Photographs and descriptions of some of these horses follow. Among the stallions he noted, there were three of the ‘Ubayyan strain, two bays (one dark) and a chestnut; he also noted two ‘Ubayyan bay colts; two ‘Ubayyah mares, one a safra (light grey) the other a hamra (bay). Other strains he saw horses from include Krayaan (which he wrote was a branch of the Krush), Harqan, Krush, Musinn, and Kuhaylan (no details), and Hamdani. Mabrouk also noted the horses markings,…
A mes lecteurs francais: je vous conseille vivement ce livre, auquel j’ai eu le plaisir de contribuer il y a quelques annees: Homer Davenport’s Quest of the Arabian Horse. Les images sont superbes et les annotations tres documentees.
I bought AAS Nelyo last July from Edie Booth as a potential outcross for my horses down the line. He is a ‘Ubayyan, from the line of *Mahraa, a 1943 mare of the horses of Sa’ud ibn ‘Abd Allah Ibn Jalawi Aal Saud, the governor of the oil-rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. I think the full strain is ‘Ubayyan al-Suyayfi, a branch of Ubayyan Hunaydees, which is itself among the best of branches of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak, but I can’t prove it yet. AAS Nelyo, who is six years old, is closely linebred to a few of the early horses imported from Saudi Arabia, including close crosses *Taamri (9 crosses), *Rudann (8 crosses), *Munifan (8 crosses), *Munifeh (8 crosses), and Muhaira, his female line (7 crosses). He was being training for endurance racing. He is very different in type, temperament and coat color from anything else I have seen before. He is registered as bay, but he looks to me like he could be a seal brown or a dark shade of chestnut.
Barakah is now 5. I think she may have more growing (and widening) to do. She is 95% Davenport (four generations of Davenport stallions on top) but she looks nothing like full-Davenport horses. She is leggier, and differently balanced, with flatter bone. She has her sire’s drooping quarter (when moving this does not show). Pity she did not inherit her dam’s beautiful level croup, highly set tail, extra-long ears or blood mark. There may also be a looser coupling than either sire or dam, and I am not sure where that came from, or if it’s here to stay. Still, she has her sire’s deep girth and his broad chest. Overall, her build is an improvement over her dam’s, and I believe the line is now ready to be crossed with Monologue CF, who will bring extra balance. Like her dam, she has a lot of style, and a “dry”, “deserty” look.
Wadhah is now 11, and looks truly magnificent. She is in foal to Monologue CF, and due in mid-May for her first foal. She really looks like the Thadrian daughter that she is. She has fully transitioned from the zarqa (darker, blue-grey) to the safra (light grey, almost white, with yellowish mane and tail) shade of grey. That’s when you wish you had brushed her before the photoshoot.
I am about to state the obvious about horses that combine different, well-established bloodlines: sometimes they look like horses of one bloodline, and sometimes like horses of the other bloodline, depending on the angle, the stage of growth, the light, etc. Jamr, who is roughly half Davenport, half Doyle (i.e., Blunt), sometimes reminds of me his sire Vice Regent CF, like in the picture below; at other times, he reminds me of his paternal grandsire Regency CF (but he’s not nearly as good); and yet at other times, he looks like his material grandsire Dib, a Crabbet/Doyle horse. Vice Regent has a longer neck; his son has a better coupling, and longer hip (at least in this picture of Vice Regent, I have never seen him in real life). Both are smooth-bodied. The heads also look the same, with the small muzzle and the deep jowls. Vice-Regent’s eye is larger, but I think it’s because the muscles around the eyes, including those of the eyelids, are stronger and more dense in Doyle horses than in Davenports.
I went to see the horses a few days ago. They looked wonderful. The younger ones have finally matured into what I was expecting of their bloodlines. I felt so vindicated, in terms of the breeding decisions I took over the past decade. I had remained uncertain about these decisions until recently. Jamr, albeit small, looks magnificent. I waited almost ten years before seeing him mature into his current state. He is very masculine and tightly build; he has the deepest of jowls; a small muzzle; a naturally arched neck; a very broad forehead; large, prominent, bony eye sockets, and a straight profile — the way I like it in stallions. And he moves with so much power and style. When I remember Lady Anne Blunt’s quote ““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”, it’s him that I have in mind.
From the 1936 book of Dr. Ahmad Mabrouk of the Royal Agricultural Society of Egypt, “Rihlah ila Bilad al-‘Arab”, comes this picture of a stallion of King Abd al-‘Aziz Aal Saud at the al-Kharj stud in Najd. Arabian horse fans would do well to carefully study the horse in this picture: he was the senior stallion in the senior stud of the most senior person in Arabia at the time. You’re looking at the archetype of the breed in its native homeland. Note the power, length and slope of the shoulder, the pointy ears, prominent withers and the length of hip. Note the straight profile and the strong neck. Neither swan necks nor extreme dished profiles were not a thing. Ten years later, in 1946, the archetype at al-Kharj did not look much different.
This video sent along by Talal Farah shows a race held in Bahrain between a part-bred Arab horse from Lebanon and a Bahraini mare owned by the Bahraini ruler. The part-bred, a grey owned by famous racehorse owner Mahmud Fustuq, is Bahr al-Hadi, who sired a good deal of the Lebanese part-breds. He was very handsome. The Bahraini mare is a Kuhaylah Jallabiyah. See how she overtook him in the long run, after he led on a short distance.
In the same vein as the photos of lesser-known Crabbet horses which Kate re-published below, here is a photo of Rasim (Feysul x Risala, born 1906) from the December 1933 edition of the French magazine Le Sport Universel Illustre, with a nice description of him in French. The photo was taken during a visit of the author of the article to the Ujazd stud of Baron William Bicker in present-day Poland. Baron Bicker had purchased the 18 year old stallion from Lady Wentworth in 1924 for a very large sum.
This evening I had a bout of nostalgia for my old horses, so I went looking for pictures of Dahess, the desert-bred stallion my father and I bought from a racing stable in Beirut in 1993. I was 15. One afternoon, as I was just coming back from school, my father told me that he had been contacted by the secretariat of the organization managing the Beirut racetrack about two Arabian stallions that had recently been imported from Qatar, one of them a Syrian horse of desert lines. They were being housed at one of the racing stables on the road to the airport. Both were for sale. I pressed to drive down to the racetrack to see them at once. Half an hour later, we were standing in front of two stallions, an exquisitely balanced grey with a milky white coat, 14.3 hands, and a much taller, loosely built cherry bay. The grey we were told was “Syrian” and the bay “Russian”. Both were a bit thin. My father nudged me from his elbow, and started praising the bay horse, while deliberately turning his back to the grey one. The groom fell for the trick and hinted that the…
From the Arabian Horse Archives comes this beautiful photo of the 1922 desert-bred Hamdani Simri stallion *Saoud, imported by Amin Rihani to the USA in 1928.
Today I found the following note in the 1935 book of Prince Mohammed Ali. It is an excerpt from the Abbas Pasha Manuscript (or one of its drafts), on a mare of the Jilfan Dhawi strain acquired by Abbas Pasha: The intensely black Jilfah Dahwa mare of the Fid’an, owned by Nasir al-Wayil of Shammar, came into the possession of Nasir from the Tawman of Shammar. The Tawman got it from the Fid’an. Its mother is still in the possession of Shammar and its father is the black Mu’niqi Hadraji of the horses of the Tawman of Shammar. The mare was acquired by its (present) owner through purchase. Just noting that this is the same marbat as that of the mare Wadha, a Jilfat Dhawi bought by a French government commission from a Fad’aan camp in 1875, and sent to Algeria, where she founded a famous damline.
Today Kate found my Holy Graal. Two of my Holy Graals. Ever since I was 12, I have been wanting to see photos of the two fountainhead mares of Algerian Arabian horse breeding, at the Jumenterie of Tiaret: the two mares Olympe and Primevere. Robert Mauvy’s precious gem of a book, “Le Cheval Arabe” has a section on these two mares that left an imprint of the teenager I was. Today, 31 one years later, when I need to take a flight somewhere, the first book I instinctively grab is this one. I never tire of reading it again and again and again. I don’t believe anyone has captured the essence of the Arabian horse the way Mauvy has. Both Olympe and Primere are the grand-daughters of two mares imported from Arabia to Algeria by the French: respectively Wadha, a Jilfat al-Dhawi of the Fad’aan Anazah, and Cherif (b. 1869), a Shuwaymah Sabbah of the Sba’ah Anazah. The French bought both mares at the camps of these of two tribes. Some 150 years later, both lines are still thriving worldwide. Here are the two pictures from the Sport Universel Illustre. Thank you, Kate. You have given shape to a longstanding…
I just miss beautiful photos of Davenport mares and stallions, so I went digging among the old ones. I am particularly fond of chestnuts with blazes, long pricked ears, broad foreheads, protruding eye sockets and beautiful soulful eyes like Decibel CF.
روى سليمان العزو السليمان الفيحان من قبيلة الشرابين تجاوز الستين من العمر عن تاريخ قدوم الخلّاوية الى أهله قال: درجت الخلّاوية الى جد أبي اسمه فيحان منذ ما يقارب 180 عام من اعنزا حيث حدثت مشاجرة بين الرعاة من اعنزا والشرابين على المراعي حوالي منطقة جبل سنجار وفي هذه المشاجرة أُصيب رجل من الشرابين وبعد سنة توفّي متأثراً بهذه الاصابة فاصبح الرعاة من الشرابيين يشاجرون اي اعنزي في تلك المنطقة لعلهم يجدون القاتل فيأخذون بالثأر فأرسلوا اعنزا وفد جاهة لفض هذا الخلاف وبالفعل تم دفع الديّة لذوي المقتول وكان سيّدهم وشيخهم فيحان وبعد دفع الديّة اهدوا فيحان فرس وقالوا له (( دير بالك عليها تراهي الخلّاوية وهي فرع من كحيلة العجوز )) واعطوه حجة يشهدون بها أنّها أصيلة وفحلها من الخيل الشبوّة { للأسف لم نجد الحجة } ونمتْ هذه الفرس عند فيحان وبعد فترة بسيطة وُلدَ سليمان الفيحان بتاريخ 1842 تقريباً توفي 1951 عاش قُرابة مائة وعشرة سنين عندما كبر سليمان اهتم بالخيل كثيراً فأعطاه والده وهو فتى صغير فرس أو فرسين قبل زواجه. وهو الوحيد الذي حافظ على هذه الخيل وانقطعت عند باقي اهله واقربائهوعاد ووزع عليهم من خيله فاستمرت عند حفيده سليمان العزو الفيحان صاحب (( الراوي )) وجوديف الحمود واخوانه يطلق عليهن اسم خلاويات الفيحان ومدرجات…
Marwah had these magical soulful eyes and long eyelashes. She was small, but built like a tank. Both photos from Marwa’s owner Basil Jadaan. The strain belongs to Hasan ibn Amud who led the Amud clan of the Northern Shammar, but traces to the Jadraniyat mares of the Frijah clan of the Ruwalah. The Frijah were the fountainhead of the Saqlawi Jadran strain.
Basil Jadaan’s gorgeous foundation mare Marwah, a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah of the marbat of Ibn ‘Amud from the Shammar, pictured here with the late Najm al-Himmayri. Najm’s day job was “horseman”, or “horse expert”. Marwah was the dam of Hijab (by Ward al-Mayel), exported to France and the maternal grandam of the French-bred Syrian stallion Menjad Maram Al Baida (by Mokhtar). Najm, together with a few others like Abd al-Qadir Hammami (from Aleppo), ‘Uqlah al-Hanshul (from Deyr), Fawwaz al-Rajab (from Homs), Rashid ‘Issa (from Hama), Shakir al-Salluh (from al-Mayadin), was a fountain of knowledge. He knew all the stories and the all the horses and all the strains. I never met him, but Basil knew him well.
Fawaz al-Rajab passed away last week. The news of his passing saddened me greatly, perhaps because he was directly connected to my family’s story with horses. Fawaz was one of Syria’s very last hassanah, (in Arabic حصانة, “men of horses”). Part merchants, part experts, part brokers, part stallion handlers, but never breeders nor owners, the hassanah lived for and from the horses. They were one’s first point of contact when buying, selling or inquiring about a horse. They knew the landscape like nobody else. Abu Hussein Khattab and Abd al-Qadir Hammami were the main hassanah of Aleppo. Uqlah al-Hanshul and Najm al-Himmayri were the main two for Deyr al-Zor. They all passed. Today, with the rise of direct advertising, social media, and specialty magazines, there is no room for the hassanah anymore. The profession is a thing of the past. Fawaz was the main such “man of horses” for the Syrian city of Homs from the 1960s to the 2010s. He took over his father’s business. In 1976, my father, then newly engaged to my mother, made his first visit to her family in Homs. He asked his future in-laws where he could see horses around the city. My uncle…
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وقعت عيناي على حجة باسم جهيم المطخان يفيد بها ان ام الفحل الشهير كروش جهيم المعروف باسمه هي كروش محمد النواف الجربا مما يعني ان كروش جهيم يرد الى فرس علي العبد الرزاق الجربا التي وردت مع امه العمشة اثر رجوعها من حائل حيث اقامت عدة سنوات في ضيافة ابن رشيد وقد اتى ابن رشيد بالكروش من الدويش شيوخ مطير
Seven years after this post, it’s time to say goodbye to Ginger (DA Ginger Moon, photo below). She went to Bev Davison, who had been keeping her for me for some time. Bev now has quite a collection of horses with high percentage Abbas Pasha blood from the dam lines of both Gulida and Rabanna, where Ginger will fit in nicely. She also has Ginger’s younger full sister, DA Moon Dancer, who at 21 is yet to produce a foal . It was very rewarding to have owned Ginger. She is a grand mare, with style, power, distinction, a long slender neck, deep jowls, soulful eyes, and an unmatchable shoulder-withers complex. She has produced several good foals over the past years, in addition to those she’s had for her breeder Sheila Harmon, who sold her to me. Ginger came to me with a 2014 black colt by Sheila’s good Babson stallion Serr Serabaar; I gave the colt to Chris Yost who’s been training him for endurance racing. He has grown into a fiery black stallion (video here). Chris also owns the colt’s full sister, DA Ebony Moon. Together they finished the Tevis Cup in 2013 (photo below). I then…
This interesting 2019 article from Aramco Expat is an obituary of sorts for John Ames, an early (pre-World War II) Aramco employee. He was the husband of Dr. Esther Ames, who imported the Ubayyah mare *Mahraa and her daughter *Muhaira to the USA. The following exceprt struck me: John was married to Esther – Esther Ames MD. As the only American woman doctor in Aramco, she spent a fair amount of time in Riyadh tending to the women of the royal family: the dowagers, the princesses and their daughters. She was a great favorite and was showered with elaborate hand-embroidered dresses, finely worked brass coffee pots, silk scarves and the like. Sometimes Emir Saud bin Jiluwi, the governor and most powerful man in eastern Saudi Arabia, would send his personal black Cadillac and two bodyguards to take her to his palace. John even managed to get a blade out of the connection when some grateful prince sent him a curved, eight-inch dagger in a beautiful jet black scabbard filigreed in fine gold-plated wire. Surely, if Dr Ames, the only American female doctor in East Arabian, had attended to the wealth of the wives, sisters or daughters of Saud Ibn Jalawi,…
This handsome stallion, a personal favorite of mine, born in 1988, is the sire of the flee-bitten Kuhaylat Ibn Mizhir mare that many of you liked in the entry below. He was one of the last stallions the Tai Bedouins used as a herdsire, in the village of al-Na’em, where some Tai had settled. This earned him the nickname “Krush al-Na’em”. His sire was a Hamdani Ibn Ghurab of the Tai, sired by a Dahman Amer of ‘Ajil al-Yawir al-Jarba, the Shammar. His dam’s sire was the Ma’naqi Hadraji of Zahir al-Ufaytan, and the sire of the maternal grand dam — is said to have been a Kuhaylan Krush. The maternal grand-dam is from the horses of Mutlaq al-Haybah of the Shammar.
تُعتبر كحيلة ابن مزهر من الارسان الحديثة وهي بالأصل كروش بطحها رجل من الجوالة من قبيلة طي يُقال له حماد الاسيود الخابور من رجل من الفدعان يُقال له ابن ماضي ثم اخذها من الجوالي ابن مزهر من اقارب شيخ طي انذاك محمد العبدالرحمن العساف توفّي نهاية اربعينيات القرن العشرين وهو الذي أطلق عليها اسم كحيلة ابن مزهر لأن الاعنزي اخفى نسبها عندما سُلبت منه وبعد فترة من الزمن جاء الاعنزي الى شيخ طي يطلب فرسه فقال له الشيخ اذهب الى تلك الفيضة والخيل موجودة فيها إن عرفت فرسك فهي لك فذهب الرجل وجاء ثلاث رؤوس من الخيل تزيد او تنقص وبالفعل جميعهن من فرسه سأله الشيخ كيف عرفتهن ؟ قال: قصر جين وبگاع عين فقال له الشيخ نعطيك نصفهن بشرط ان تخبرنا اصلهن فقال الاعنزي هن من رسن كروش وبقيت الخيل تتبارك عند مشايخ طي وعندما بدأ الواهو بالتسجيل تم قبول الخيل في المنظمة ودرجت من الشيخ محمد الفارس العبدالرحمن فرس الى نزار الاسعد اسمها مواضي وفي عام 1983 أعطي عبدالعزيز المحمد العبدالرحمن مهرة لحمود الملحم الجرباء من مشايخ شمر وبينهم قرابة خولة ولحمود الجرباء ومن بعده ابنائه دور كبير في الحفاظ على هذه السلالة ونمت وتباركت عندهم تميّز من هذا المربط بطل السرعة هدّار وهيشان وبرزان وفرسي الانتاج لزاز…
يقول حماد الجدوع الجزعة سمعتُ من أبي يقول الصگلاوية الجدرانية التي عندنا بالأصل لآل غبين شيوخ الفدعان من اعنزا وقدا أهدوا فرس الى ابن اختهم ضاري ابن محمود شيخ زوبع من شمر في ثورة العشرين في العراق جَلى ابن محمود الى الجزيرة السورية لأنّه كان احد القادة للثورة وجلبَ معه مجموعة من الخيل ضمنها الصكلاوية الجدرانية فباع هذه الصكلاوية لمحمد الدندح شيخ الجوالة من طي من خلال سائس الخيل اسمه سرحان فارسل معه الفرس وحجتها وكانت الفرس لاقح وذُكر في الحجة اسم الحصان الذي تشبت منه الفرس وهو دهمان عامر من خيل ضاري ابن محمود وبعد عِدّة أشهر ولدتْ الفرس مهرة اشترى جدوع الجزعة نصف هذه المهرة ب 125 نيرة رشادية وجمل ( جمل بيت ) سمّاها جدوع فرحة جدوع عندما كبرت هذه المهرة ( فرحة جدوع ) شبّاها من حصان عبو الحميّد من رسن صكلاوي جدراني اسمه فرحان ايضاً وصل للحميّد من ضاري ابن محمود ثم افلت فرحة جدوع بمهرة شقراء ثم شبّاها من نفس الحصان فرحان وبعد شهور قليلة حان موعد الفكك جعل محمد الدندح المهرة وفوقها 20 نيرة كوم (( حُصّة )) والفرس كوم (( الحصة الثانية )) فاختار جدوع الجزعة الفرس ودفع 20 نيرة لمحمد الدندح (( هذه طريقة للمشاركة في الفرس عند الفكك المالك يكوّم…
DeWayne Brown visited the horses at Terry and Rosemary Doyle’s farm in Alfalfa, OR the other day. He sent me these two pictures of my Ma’naqi Sbayli colt Shaykh Al Arab (Tamaam DE x DaughterofthePharaohs by Chatham DE), who is now 15 months old. He has many barn names: Terry calls him Naj, Rosemary calls him Notch, and DeWayne calls him Eddy. I call him Shaykh. I have seldom seen such strong barrel, deep girth and round rib cage on an Arabian yearling, at least not in the USA. My friend Pienaar Du Plessis from South Africa said the same thing. I feel it’s worth to wait to see him grow. He is the first colt in the second picture, the third is his maternal uncle Shaman, who is a couple months younger. Long live the Ma’naqis.
This is the year I have planned the most breeding since 2006. Five mares were bred or about to be bred. Of these three are going to Davenport stallions: Andre DL, Anecdote CF, and Monologue CF. 1/ CSA Baroness Lady to the Da’jani stallion from Syria (planned) 2/ Wadha Al Arab to Monologue CF (in foal) 3/ Mayassa al Arab to Anecdote CF (planned) 4/ DaughterofthePharaohs (Pippa) to Bashir Al Dirri (in foal) plus a fifth mare I am not talking about yet.
Jens Sannek sent me this message, a few days ago: In Germany Falko Zimmermann bred the mare Murjana, a Saglawieh Jedranieh Ibn Sudan via Ghazieh, born 2012, bay, by Menjad Maram al Baida (Mokthar x Hijab) out of Assads Galifah (Maamoon Tarik x Gazeera (Sindbad x Golson)). Sindbad is by Hadban Enzahi out of Sahmet and she is by Hadban Enzahi out of Jatta by Jasir). Falko takes Murjana and Assads Galifah for Western riding. I add two photos. I think you will enjoy them. The first is Murjana, the second is Assads Galifah. The dapples on the bay of Murjana is characteristic of Mukhtar’s lineage; his dam was like that. So much rare and precious Arabian blood in these mares. Not just the Syrian desert blood of Menjad, which is very clean, but also that of Maamoon Tarik, which I had pointed to in another entry on this blod, but also that of Soldateska, through Sindbad. Wow.
This is the stallion I am going to breed my mares to this year. I chose him because of his extreme arched neck, his extreme throat latch, his extreme high set tail, his extreme muzzle, the extreme black skin around his eyes, and above all else, his extreme floating action. Wish me extreme luck.