Barely Surving Lines: Kesia I, Kesia II, Mameluke
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.
.jpg "Segario, a Kuhaylan Nuwaq tracing to Kesia")
Today, the blood of Kesia survives in less than seven horses around the world, through Segario’s grandson Gharis (Abu Zeyd x Guemura by Segario), and then Gharis’ grandson ASF David (Daaldan x Dihkenna by Gharis). Believe or not, the six or seven horses with a line to ASF David, and which were mentioned in a recent entry, are indeed the only remaining link to the Al Khamsa Foundation Horses Kesia I and Kesia II, but also to another foundation horses, the stallion *Mameluke.
If we lose these six or seven mares, then not one, but three foundation horses of early American breeding would have been lost to asil breeding. As far as I know (and this needs checkign), this would be the first time that a Foundation Horse (in this case, three) would have to be deleted from the Al Khamsa Roster, since the last remaining line to the desert-bred *King John was lost in the 1980s.