I visited Yemen for the time in 2002 – for work. I was a panelist in a conference that brought together government officials, academics, representative of the private sector, and traditional leaders. Among the latter, I recall seeing a man surrounded by a large retinue of armed bodyguards and followers. People stepped aside when he passed by, and everyone seemed to treat him with much awe and respect. I was told his name was Naji ibn Abd al-Aziz al-Shayif, and that he was the Supreme Shaykh (tribal leader) of Bakil. Bakil is one of the two largest Yemeni tribes, with several million members (the other tribe being Hashed, to which the President of the Republic of Yemen, H.E. Ali Abdallah al-Saleh, belongs). Later in the evening, I asked whether there still were Arabian horses in Yemen, and was told that the same Naji al-Shayif owned about 20 to 30 of them, and that he’d recently given one of them to a Western ambassador as a gift. I was also told that the shaykh of the tribe of Juhannam, on the Red Sea coast of Yemen, owned some 40 to 50 Arabian horses too. That was all the information I could gather on the horses of a country that is believed…
Louis Damoiseau was born in 1775 in Chartres (France). In 1818 France interior minister M. Laine sent M. de Portes to Syria on the head of a mission to buy some 40 Arab Stallions. The aim was to replace the Arab and Oriental stallions bought by Napoleon and taken from the Imperial French Studs in 1814 and 1815 by the European armies who had invaded France (Prussians, Austrians, Hungarians). Louis Damoiseau was the veterinary of the mission, which bought 40 stallions and some mares from the Syrian Desert, Aleppo, and the Lebanese coast until Acre. Some legendary names like ”Massoud” the founder of the French Anglo-Arab race and ”Nichab” Lady’s Stanhope’s mare. When he returned to France Damoiseau wrote a book edited in 1833. One of the many interesting things in the book is a testimony of life in Aleppo, Tripoli, Beirut, Damascus, Saida, etc.. Plus families that Edouard, his father and myself know; The way in which the horses were medically treated or defigured to hide them from a greedy Turkish pasha, and the presence of many non-arab horses at that that time are also interesting aspects. Moreover, apart the love letters (in French) Count Rzewuski sent to Lady Stanhope, we have a third party testimoning on the Count’s horses…
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 past due and would be the purists’ answer to WAHO. Several Western organizations have come close to establishing such a registry. The largest effort so far is that of the Asil Club, which in addition to bloodlines represented in Western breeding [Egyptian bloodlines, various bloodlines from the USA, the Asil remaining 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 has 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, they tend to consider only those horses whose descendants came to the USA or Canada), it is without a doubt the most serious effort at researching the horses’ background and establishing their authenticity. Most recently, the Institute for the Desert Arabian Horse has been…
[This is the third in a series of four posts on the Ma’anaghi Hadraji marbat of Ibn ‘Ufaytan. Click here and here to access the first and second posts.] We reached the village of Ibn ‘Ufaytan [update July 17 2008: the village is Buthat al-Taqch] in the early afternoon, after having taken a dirt road that cut through the steppe. Faddan al-‘Ufaytan and his son, whose name I unfortuantely don’t recall, were waiting for us at the entrance of their house. Faddan, a Shammar Bedouin in his fifities, was the nephew and heir of Dahir al-‘Ufaytan, who owned the most famous and best authenticated marbat of Ma’naghi Hadraji in recent memory. Any Ma’naghi stallion coming from Dahir al-‘Ufaytan could be used as a stallion in the darkest of nights, as Bedouins would put it. Ibn ‘Ufaytan would only mate his mares to his own stallions, or to the stallions of his close relative and neighbour, Ibn Jlaidan, the owner of a famous Shammari marbat of Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz, and the subject of earlier post. Back in the nineteen fourties and fifties, the horses of Ibn ‘Ufaytan made a name for themselves at Beirut racetrack as good racehorses of Asil stock, and it was said they were favorites of famous racehorse…
This picture of Hakem, the young stallion that is the subject of a previous blog entry, is long overdue. He is pictured at the growthy age of two years old, and in racing condition, so don’t expect to see a show horse, but rather look at the features that make for a good desert-bred arabian horse: big eyes, fine midbah (throat), tiny muzzle, triangular shape of the head, sculpted, inward-turning ears, well sloped shoulder, long neck, high withers, shiny skin, deep girth, short, straight back, etc. There is also the flowing action, and electrifying presence, which the picture does not render. In short, I think this horse has it all. Give him time to mature and you’ll see. These creatures are not complete before they are six or even seven years old. They mature very slowly. He reminds me a bit of the pictures of the desert bred stallions *Hamrah, imported as a young stallion to the USA in 1906 by Homer Davenport. It seems that, shorly after the visit during which I took this picture, some people from Damascus came and bought the horse. He is now being used as a stallion. Is a good horse ever going to be left in the desert?
A lot of “Photos of the Day” these days.. it is easier to keep a quasi daily writing routine when posting a photo with a short comment, as opposed to posting in the “Strain of the Week” series, which requires me to access research material, old and new.. Don’t take this as a sign of laziness however, it is just that work has been keeping me busy recently, or busier than usual. Today’s photo is about La Tisa, a gift from Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud, (then Sultan of Najd and Hjaz) to Charles R. Crane, a noted Arabist and philantropist, and of the two main actors of the King-Crane Commission, which was to have such an impact on post-World War One Middle Eastern politics. La Tisa was imported to the USA in 1931. A year later, the Sultanate of Najd and Hijaz became the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Crane had helped the USA secure some of its earliest oil concessions in Saudi Arabia, so if you are feeling the heat at the gas pump and ran out of people to blame, you can just blame it on him.. Joking aside, the gift of that mare was probably a small “thank you” gesture from Ibn Saud to Crane, for brokering some of these oil deals.…
The mention of Nomah, the pretty grey Kuhaylat al-Mizher from Syria, in an ealier entry leads me to show you another picture of a mare from the same strain. I do not recall the name of this fleebitten mare (it starts with S…), but I took the picture at the farm of Hisham Ghurayyib in Damascus some 15 years ago. Click on the picture to enlarge it (that’s how it works now).
Here’s a headshot of the pretty desert-bred mare Nomah, a Kuhaylat al-Mizher (some say Kuhaylat Ibn Mizher) from the Bedouin tribe of Tai, in North-Eastern Syria. Nomah, which was owned by B. Jadaan, was one of the most photographed Syrian mares, but this is one of her earlier photos. I have heard several people say that Kuhaylan Ibn Mizher is only a branch of Kuhaylan al-Krush, owned by a man by that name. Still, I am left wondering why anyone would change the name of such a prestigious strain as Kuhaylan al-Krush into something else. Perhaps mtDNA analysis could help elucidate this question.
According to noted French breeder and author Nicole de Blomac, in this article (in French), France imported 230 mares and 720 stallions from the desert up to 1945. Of course this includes French imports to Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. . Where have all these horses gone?
Arabesque Azieze is at the center of the biggest “what if” story I have recently been involved in. Scroll down this website to see a picture of him (I do respect copyrights, sometimes). This Asil stallion was born in Australia in 1978 and was later sold to New Zealand. He was by the Asil stallion Hansan (El Hilal x Hamamaa), a stallion of Egyptian bloodlines. Nothing to write home about.. yet. The real story concerns Azieze’s dam, Orilla, a 1960 chestnut mare. Orilla was by the legendary Oran (Riffal x Astrella), and out of the mare Rabiha, by Rheoboam out of Nuhra. Oran, a Ubayyan Sharraq of the marbat of Ibn ‘Alyan traced to the famed Blunt desert import Queen of Sheba, and was bred by Lady Yule at Hanstead Stud. Oran was the last Asil stallion used at Crabbet Park by Lady Wentworth. Rheoboam was born at Musgrave Clark’s Courthouse Stud from old Blunt bloodlines… wait, there is more: Nuhra was a bay Asil mare (picture below) imported from Bahrain to England in 1938 by the Earl of Athlone, the brother of Queen Mary of England. Nuhra was a Wadhnat Khursan by strain, and her sire was a Kuhaylan…
to Monika Savier from (from Italy), Karsten Scherling (from Germany) and Mahmud Abbas (from Syria) who created the WAHO 2007 Conference Syria website. One could spend hours watching the thousand photos and videos. Thank you.
A previous post listed the strain of the desert-bred Asil Arabian stallion El Sbaa as Ma’naghi. That’s the strain France’s premier purist Arabian horse breeder Robert Mauvy attributed to him in one of his books. A manuscript note, found in El Sbaa’s file in the archives at the government’s Pompadour stud, and cited by Nicole de Blomac and Denis Bogros in their masterpiece “L’Arabe: Premier Cheval de Sang” (Paris, 1978), says otherwise. Note #1244, which bears the handwriting of Inspector Rieu de Madron, who imported El Sbaa at an Egyptian racetrack, can be roughly translated as follows: “According to the testimony of Barjas Ibn Nederi, the leader of the ‘Abdah tribe [one of the two main sections of the Sba’ah tribe] and of Nawaf al-Salih, the leader of the Hadidiyyin tribe, the Ju’aitni family to which El Sbaa belongs, is a branch of Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz, not a branch of the Saqlawi, as I had understood before. Horses from the J’aitni strain are very rare now. One needs to look for them among the ‘Anazah Bedouins who never left Najd.” So El Sbaa is of the Ju’aitni strain after all. Note that the confusion about the origin of the strain persists…
The mare in this picture is desert bred, from the strain of Jilfan Stam al-Bulad. Her breeder is an old Bedouin from the al-Yassar section of the tribe of Tay. The picture is frm the early 2000s, and I think that mare is still breeding today. She is of interest because she traces to a stallion of the Dahman ‘Amer strain, which was owned by Saud al-Ajarrache, a Bedouin of the Shammar tribe, in the 1940s. The information on that stallion matches that available for the stallion “Douhayman al-Ajarrache”, which the record of the Beirut racetrack list as the sire of the racehorse El Nasser, imported to Egypt in 1943, and later used by the Egyptian Agricultural Organization (EAO) as a breeding stallion.
A hujjah (plural hujaj) is usually a certificate of authenticity for Arabian horses. But it can be much more than that. Some hujaj offer a detailed snapshot of the lifestyle and mindset of its authors. The hujjah of the Blunt desert import Meshura is a case in point. Take a look at its translation, here. It will be the subject of subsequent posts. PS: Throughout this past week, I have been experiencing some problems in posting photos on the blog. I am trying to sort this out, and apologize for the inconvenience.
Back to El Nasser. An earlier post identified his sire, “Douhaymane El Ajarrache”, as a Dahman (or Duhayman) ‘Amer from the al-‘Ajarrash family of the Shammar Bedouin tribe. “Douhayman El Ajarrache” was actively breeding in 1937, when El Nasser’s dam was bred to him to produce El Nasser in May 1938. Last year – and here is the fresh information I promised – I stumbled on the hujjah (certificate of authenticity) of a desert-bred mare tracing to a stallion that could be “Douhaymane El Ajarrache”. The mare is now dead but she has descendants alive today in Syria, in the very area El Nasser was born, the Upper Jazirah. Here is the full translation of this mare’s hujjah: “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, I, the undersigned, ‘Ali al-Blaybil son of Husayn, from the village of Qartaba born in 1915, from the tribal section of al-Yassar, from the the tribe of Tai, testify by God Most High, that the grey mare which I sold to Mr. Nawaf al-Sulayman al-‘Abd al-Rahman in 1950, is from my horses, called Jilfat Stam al-Bulad; the sire of her dam is the horse of Sa’ud al-‘Ajarrash, a chestnut Dahman ‘Amer, and I did that breeding myself. And Gost is bears witness to what I say. Testifier: Ali Husayn al-Balybil, ID #: […], owner of…
The starting point of any serious discussion on El Nasser should be a short statement in Judith Forbis’ “Authentic Arabian Bloodstock”, p. 137, where she cites a letter from Henri Pharaon, the one-time owner of El Nasser. “Pharaon wrote to me on October 6th, 1970 that El Nasser was born on May 1938, that he had purchased the horse from Cheikh Ahmad Taha, that it was bred by the Gheiheich (Ajarash, El Ajarrache) of Upper Syria, the Jezirah region, and that his sire was Douhayman El Ajarrache of the Tibour tribe.” I saw the letter Pharaon wrote to Forbis, in French. I also saw a copy of the horse’s Lebanese racing papers, which match the information in Pharaon’s letter. Save a few small transcription errors (Tibour is Jibour, for example), and one incorrect analogy (Gheiheich and El Ajarrache are two different entities), all the names in the letter are those of well known and identifiable tribes, clans, and individuals. In September 1997, I asked a 90 year old horse merchant, ‘Abdl al-Qadir Hammami what he knew about all these names. Click here for his answer, which one of several inputs that helped clear El Nasser as an Asil Arabian horse. Hammami did not recall Douhayman El Ajarrache, the sire of El Nasser, but identified the strain of the horse as being Dahman (female…
I took this pricture in 1996, on a horse trip outside Aleppo. These kids lived in the stables, among the horses their father cared for. What struck me is how the colt seemed to be one them, following them everywhere, and wanting to partake in their games. The colt is a Kuhaylan al-Krush, whose dam, a pretty black mare I had come to buy, was bred by Atallah al-Nassar al-Jarbah of the Shammar tribe. His sire was a Kuhaylan al-Sharif of the horses of Ibrahim al-Dawwas al-Saadi. The mare had come in foal from Iraq, which was then under a UN embargo, and people were selling their horses and other assets to feed their families. Both strains are signature Shammar strains, and very dear to their breeders. The owner did not want to sell the mare at the price we were offering (5,000 USD, a huge sum for a non-WAHO-registered horse). Maybe it was for the better, I thought. They would have hated to see their little friend go.
This pretty bay mare, heavy in foal is a desert-bred Ma’naghiyah Hadrajiyah from the Shammar tribe. The strain originally came from the ‘Anazah tribe by way of tribal raiding.
It was already two in the afternoon when our van stopped at the house of Faddan Ibn ‘Ufaytan, the owner of the marbat of Ma’naghi Hadraji I had heard so much about. We had spent the entire morning looking at the horses of the Sherabiyin, in the villages of Tall al-‘Arab al-Gharbi and Tall al-‘Arab al-Sharqi, formerly Kurdish villages of North-Eastern Syria, now settled by a majority of Arab sheep-herders turned farmers. The modern-day Sherabiyin constitute a loose tribal grouping of Bedouins of humble descent and disparate origins, with a solid reputation as cattle thieves and petty robbers. Bedouins from more noble tribes do not typically hold them in high esteem as a group, and jokes about the Sharabiyin’s dubious sense of truth abound. Our host, Dahir al-Salih was a Sharabi from Tall al-‘Arab al-Gharbi, which everyone called by its more common Kurdish name: Garhok. Dahir’s sons and his extended family made a living by training horses for long distance racing. The traditional sport was quickly transforming into a profitable industry, fueled by rising demand for endurance horses from Damascus and the Gulf countries. Dahir was making good money, and his horses were fat. Our party included two friends from Aleppo, both horsebreeders, Radwan Shabareq and Kamal Abd al-Khaliq, in addition to Hazaim and I. Radwan and Kamal boarded their horses at Dahir’s, and visited…
I have a dream that one day all the Asil Arabians of the world will be united in one unique World registry. I have a dream that one day breeders of Asil Arabians worldwide will rise above specific labels, breeding groups and sub-groups, and will start breeding their horses to each other to produce the best Asil Arabians possible, the Straight Arabian. I have a dream that one day the remaining Asil horses of Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and other Arab countries will be recognized for what they are, true authentic Arabian horses, on par with Asil Arabians bred in Egypt, Europe and the USA. Let us work together towards that dream.
My fourth feature in the “Strain of the Week” series is late. This time, I will be telling you about the Ma’anaghi Hadraji strain, and in particular about the marbat (Bedouin stud) of Ibn ‘Ufaytan of Shammar. Meanwhile, here is a picture of Faddan Ibn ‘Ufaytan (left), the Shammar Bedouin who owns the strain, which we took at his house in North-Eastern Syria, in October 2005.
Algeria was a French colony from 1830 to 1848, and an integral part of France from 1848 till its indepedence in 1962, following one of the bloodliest colonial wars. The conquest of Algeria by France was extremely long and arduous, and could only completed by 1900, when the latest of the Tuareg chiefs (ethnic Berbers, not Arabs) surrendered to French troops. Horses were a major factor in the conquest and stabilization of Algeria. In 1877, the French Ministry of War (the equivalent of a Department of Defense), established a breeding stud near the town of Tiaret, in the mountains of central Algeria. The objective of the “Jumenterie de Tiaret”, which later became the “Haras de Tiaret-Chaouchaoua“, was to produce Arabian stallions, which were sent to local stallion depots, where they were used on Barb mares. The result was a sturdy Arab-Barb cavalry horse. Hundreds of Arabian stallions and dozens of mares were imported to Tiaret (and its equivalent in neighboring Tunisia, Sidi-Thabet) from the deserts of Arabia and the racetracks of Egypt and Lebanon. Depending on the expertise of the horse-buying commission and its budget, imports ranged from the outstanding to the mediocre. Overall, Algeria received much better quality desert-bred imports than Tunisia or even France. Outstanding genitors included: Bango, a grey Ma’anaghi…
Look at the picture of the magnificent El Sbaa below: a French government commission led by M. Rieu de Madron purchased this Asil Ma’anaghi Sbayli stallion straight from the desert [correction: from Cairo, Egypt] in 1925. El Sbaa stood at the Stud of Pompadour, France, but he was ill suited for its humid climate, so he developed a form of asthma and died a few years later. He left too few offspring behind, including the stallions Nemer (out of Ninon), Khartoum (out of Kioumi), the full borthers Medard and Meat (out of Medea), and the dark brown stallion Matuvu (out of Manon). Nemer was exported to Poland, and Khartoum to Romania, where they both started famous racing lines that endure to this day (although not in Asil form). Meat was retained for the Stud of Pompadour, where he took over from his sire, and Matuvu was sent to the stallion depot of Blois, where only a handful Arabian horse breeders used him. Two Asil lines to El Sbaa survived well into the 1970s: one old French dam-line at Pompadour, and another Algerian dam-line with the French breeder Robert Mauvy. At Pompadour, the last Asil to carry a line to El Sbaa was the very typey mare Ablette (by…
This morning I stumbled on an article I had written on the stallion *Al Mashoor some six years ago. I wish I could find the time to research and write more of this stuff..
We don’t know for sure, but it is possible to list a number of hypotheses. One hypothesis has to do with the lifestyle of the Bedouins who created these strains. Bedouins were nomads who roamed the steppes of Arabia searching for food and water for their flocks. Migrating Bedouin clans and families crossed paths around wells and pastures, mingled there for a few days, information was exchanged, social events took place, horses were bred to each other, then everyone moved on, often in opposite directions. Foals resulting from these breedings were born eleven months later. If the sire belonged to a clan or family that was following a diffrent migration pattern from that of the dam, he could be hundreds of miles away at the time of the foal’s birth. Because the most practical way to identify a foal and trace its origin was to associate it with the parent it was born next to, foals took the strain (i.e., the family name) of their dams, rather than their sires’. A second hypothesis may have to do with Bedouins not keeping the same numbers of mares and stallions. It was not uncommon for a tribe that was endowed with two hundred broodmares to maintain only two or three breeding stallions. Why? One reason was that stallions were rarely used at…
A previous post gave me the occasion to mention Zanoubia, which is something I have been looking forward to for some time now. Zanoubia was my first mare. Rather she was the first mare from my father’s horses in Lebanon that I considered mine. She did not make it in my recent top ten of the best Asil mares ever bred; she would have ten years ago, before I become acquainted with the wonderful Asil Arabians bred in the USA. Dad had bought her as a yearling in 1977 0r 78. At that time, he owned some 15 mares and a couple stallions, not all of them Asil. There were few Asil Arabians left in Lebanon, and Zanoubia was one of the them. She was a ‘Ubayyah Sharrakiyah from the horses of the Dandashi landowners of Western Syria, who were famed for the beauty and purity of their horses. The strain came from the Sba’ah tribe. A couple of the Dandashi horses made their way to Europe and the USA. The Dandashi were the owners of the 1880 black Babolna stallion O-Bajan, who’s left such an imprint on Asil breeding in Europe. They were also the breeders of the Saqlawi Jadran, sire of the Asil mare *Muha, imported by Ameen al-Rihani to the USA. That Saqlawi Jadran was a gift from…
I just wanted to follow up with a few photos of some horses I mentioned in my previous comments on this blog that were of the Maanagi strain. These three I saw on my trip in 1996 through Jordan, Syria, and the Gulf region. I have other photos of representatives of this strain on that tript but these three just happened to be quickly available on my computer. The first is the grey Maanagi Sbaili stallion Atiyah, a son of the mare Wadeehah which Edouard posted. Atiyah was presented at Basil Jadaan’s place in Syria. As you can see he is a splendid horse. His balance and harmony were impressive, forming an ideal silhouette of an Arabian, and you can see the exceptional overall leg and conformation quality he has. the second picture is the grey Maanagi Hadruj stallion owned by Shaikh Mohamed Abdul Razak Al-Taiee. He was another magnificent horse and although our photo opportunity was more limited here, this horse left a very favorable impression on all of his for his quality, character, and noble appearance. The third picture is of a bay Maanigieh filly owned by the Emir of Bahrain and a part of the WAHO presentation…
This is one of my favorite old pictures. The horse pictured is Dahman, a dark chestnut stallion bred by the Shammar Bedouin tribe in 1905, and sold to a French horse-buying commission led by Inspecteur Quinchez in 1909. Dahman was a herd sire for the Shammar prior to his importation to France. He was by a stallion of the Dahman strain out of a mare from the Rabdan strain. Al-Rabdah is one of the many families of Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz, but somehow the Kuhaylan part is frequently dropped from the strain’s name, and the horses are simply referred to as Rabdan (fem. Rabdah). Dahman stood at the French government stood of Pompadour until he was 25, and sired some of the best Arabians of his day. Unfortunately, there are no Asil horses tracing to Dahman left today. [Correction, Jan. 06th, 2009: well, maybe there are]
I found a picture of a Kubaylat Ibn Jlaidan to show you, as well as a writtten certificate of origin (hujjah, plural hujaj). The picture, taken in the mid 198os, does not do justice to the mare, and I hesitated a bit before posting it: it shows a chestnut desert-bred mare in rather poor condition, against a background of miserable mudhouses. These were built in the second half of the twentieth century by impoverished Shammar Bedouins who had finally abandoned their black tents and camel herds, and settled in a relatively barren area of North Eastern Syria (known as the Upper Jazireh), not far from the Iraqi and Turkish borders. Many Shammar clans paid a heavy price for clinging to their nomadic lifestyle till the very end: the more fertile lands had already been grabbed by earlier settlers. The picture also shows the concrete houses which Bedouins started building as of the 1980s, to replace the older mudhouses. Barely an improvement. The mare herself is well built, with a deep girth, high withers, a round hindquarter, a well-sloped shoulder, a nicely set tail, and a pretty head. Her neck is thick though, a defect typical of many of the desert-horses of the twentieth century. The man holding her…
Kuhaylan Ibn Jlaidan is the third strain featured in the “Strain of the Week” series. You will almost certainly not find a representative of this strain outside of Arabia today. A few of you may have heard of it in the context of their trips to Syria. The strain is emblematic of the Shammar tribe, as opposed to the two other strains featured previously, Kuhaylan al-Hayf and Kuhaylan al-Mimrah, both of which were owned by the ‘Anazah group. Kuhaylan Ibn Jlaidan is very simply, Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz of the marbat of Ibn Jlaidan, a Bedouin from the Hdibah clan of the Shammar. Many Shammar Bedouins still refer to the strain as Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz. Some time in 2006, my friend Hazaim and I spoke to ‘Abdallah Ibn Jlaidan over the phone, as part of our project to collect as much information as possible strainght from Bedouin sources. ‘Abdallah told us that his “fifth grandfather” (i.e., the grandfather of his grandfather) Muhammad al-Jlaidan once visited the Sharif of Mecca, and that the latter gave him a Kuhayla al-‘Ajuz mare as a gift. He could not tell us the exact day when this occured, but said that it was more than a hundred years ago…
I find it baffling that some Arabian horse breeders here in the US still believe that the strain of Kuhaylan Jellabi is carried on in Egyptian Arabian horse breeding. Ten years have elapsed since Michael Bowling’s ground-breaking article on the Arabian mare Bint Yemama and her descendants at the stud of Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfik in Egypt, yet most breeders of Asil Arabians of Egyptian bloodlines still refer to the stallions *Fadl, *Nasr, *Adhem, among others, and the mares *Maaroufa, Mahroussa, Negma and their tail-female descendants as Kuhaylan Jellabi. I refrained from using the pedigree website www.allbreedpedigree.com to link to the pedigrees of the horses mentioned above, because it erroneously has them tracing back to the desert-bred mare Jellabiet Feysul, owned by Abbas Pascha, and otherwise a Kuhaylah Jallabiyah true and true. Even respected Arabian horse breeders and researchers such as Judi Forbis show these horses as Kuhaylan Jallabi (I prefer to write Jallabi with an ”a”, but I aslo want this entry to be found by those using the more common form “Jellabi” in their search engines). Michael Bowling shows that the mare Bint Yemama (Saklawi I x Yemama) of Prince Mohammed Ali is actually the maternal half-sister of the famous Mesaoud, the Saqlawi Jadran of Ibn Sudan bought by Lady Anne Blunt from Ali Pasha Sharif. …
After Kuhaylan al-Hayf and Kuhaylan al-Mimrah, next week’s “Strain of the Week” series will feature Kuhaylan Ibn Jlaidan, a personal favorite of mine. Stay tuned.
This is Reem al-Oud, a desert bred Ubayyah Suhayliyah of the horses of Mayzar al-Ajil al-Abdul Karim al-Jarba of Shammar, and the number one on my top ten list of best Asil mares ever bred. A diamond in the rough.
It tends to change every other day. For what it’s worth, here is today’s top ten: 1. Reem al-Oud, (Ubayyan Suhayli x Ubayyah Suhayliyah) desert bred from the Shammar tribe, born ca. 1980 2. Reema, (Ma’anaghi Sbayli x Hamdaniyah Simriyah) desert bred from the Aqaydat , born ca. 1975 3. Jauza, (Dahman Shawan x Kuhaylat al-Krush) desert bred from Mutayr, born ca. 1910, imported by Lady Anne Blunt to her Sheykh Obeyd farm in Egypt 4. Bismilah (Besbes x Berthe), a Jilfat al-Dhawi, bred by the French government at the Pompadour stud, born ca. 1985 5. Sahmet (Hadban Enzahi x Jatta), from the strain of Murana, bred by the German government at the Marbach stud, born ca. 1960 6. *Turfa, (Ubayyan al-Hamrah x Kuhaylat al-Khorma), bred by Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud at the Al-Khorma stud, imported to the USA by Henri Babson, born ca. 1930 7. *Bint Maisa al-Saghirah (Nazeer x Maisa) , a Dahmah Shahwaniyah, bred by the Egyptian government (the Egyptian Agricultural Organization) at the al-Zahraa stud, born ca. 1950 8. Sayfia, desert bred from the Fad’aan tribe (Ma’naghi Sbayli x Ma’anaghiyah Sbayliyah), born ca. 1985 9. LD Rubic (Plantagenet x Tarrla), a Kuhaylah, bred by Carol Lyons, born ca. 1980 10. Ceres (Aramis x Dharebah),…
As with many Arabian horse strains, Kuhaylan al-Mimrah takes its name from its owner. The Kuhaylat al-Maryum mare that came from the tribe of al-Dhafeer to tribe of the Sba’ah became known as Kuhaylat al-Mimrah, or Kuhaylah Mimrahiyah, after the Sba’ah Bedouin who owned her. The strain bred on at al-Mimrah’s, and was passed to his sons and grandsons. Of these, Subaylah al-Mimrah was the most well known for breeding it. Al-Mimrah (the people) is one of the many closely-related families that compose the larger Muwayni’ clan (click here for a genealogical table of this clan). The Muwayni’ is the leading clan of the Bayayi’ah section of the ‘Abdah tribe — itself one of the two branches of the Sba’ah tribe. The clan even assumed the leadership of the entire ‘Abdah, until a date in the 1880s when an armed incident with an Ottoman tax-collecting detachment resulted in its downfall and replacement by another rival clan. Still, the Muwayni’ enjoy special respect within the Sba’ah tribe and the general ‘Anazah, partly because of their past status, and partly because of their famous copper seal, one of ‘Anazah’s oldest. Around the time the Abbas Pasha Manuscript was compiled, the Shaykh of the Muwayni’ and head of the Sba’ah ‘Abdah was Nahar Ibn Muwayni’, whose close cousin was Za’aazi’ al-Mimrah. Za’aazi’ al-Mimrah was a fierce warrior who owned a…
According to the Abbas Pasha Manuscript, Kuhaylan al-Mimrah was one of the favorite strains of Abbas Pasha, the man who ruled Egypt from 1848 to 1854. The Manuscript contains an interesting account of the history of the strain. Unfortunately, it assumes a good deal of prior knowledge of Arabian medieval history, without which the story’s full significance cannot be grasped. Here is a summary of the account in the Manuscript: the strain is one of the most ancient Kuhaylan strains. Its history can be traced back to the time of a certain ‘Ijl ibn Hulaytim, “from the ancient tribe of Aal Mughirah”. The Kuhaylah of ‘Ijl was lost to the Qahtan tribe during a raid, and a mare tracing to this Kuhaylah was taken from Qahtan by al-Maryum, a Bedouin of the Suwayt ruling clan of the al-Dhafeer tribe. It became known as Kuhaylat al-Maryum after his name. The strain then went from al-Maryum to al-Mimrah, a Bedouin of the Saba’ah tribe, and there it became known as Kuhaylat al-Mimrah. This may look like your standard story of Bedouin horses constantly changing hands, and changing strains in the process, but it isn’t. The mention of ‘Ijl ibn Hulaytim is very…
The “Strain of the Week” series continues this week with the second strain featured: Kuhaylan al-Mimrah. Modern breeders and pedigree students, especially those familiar with Asil Arabian bloodlines from Egypt will remember Kuhaylan al-Mimrah as the strain of several of the older Royal Agricultural Society (RAS) horses: the stallions Mansour and Mabrouk Manial, present in almost every pedigree of Asil Arabians of Egyptian bloodlines, are both from this strain, and so are their respective maternal half-brothers, Ibn Samhan and Hadban. Mansour and Ibn Samhan trace to Donia, a bay desert-bred Kuhaylah Mimrahiyah bred by Ibn Muwayni’ of the Saba’ah Bedouin tribe, and imported to Egypt in 1880. Mabrouk Manial and Hadban trace to Freiha, another bay desert-bred Kuhalyah Mimrahiyah bred by Ibn Huraymis of the Fad’aan tribe and imported to Egypt around the same time. The line to Donia has died out a long time ago, but a thin Asil line to Freiha survives in South Africa, through the famous Barakah, which the RAS sold to this country in 1945. Other than its rarity and prestigious origin, this line is of interest because it brings in the blood of the Asil stallion Tuwaisaan, a present of the ruler of Bahrain…
I took this photo of the Asil stallion Khalid (Mahrous x Khalidah) in Aleppo, Syria in the mid-1990s, at the farm of Mustapha al-Jabri. Khalid is a half-brother to the stallion Basil, the subject of an previous post by Joe Ferriss. Both Khalid’s sire and dam are desert breds. Notice the excellent legs and the strong sinews on this horse. Khalid’s dam, Khalidah, is a Saglawiyah Jadraniyah from the horses of Hulu al-Hulu, the leader (Shaykh) of the ‘Adwan Bedouin tribe, and traces to the glorious marbat (tribal stud) of Ibn ‘Amud of the Shammar tribe. His sire is a ‘Ubayyan Suhayli (a branch of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak), also from the Shammar. According to Mahrus ibn Haddal, who was Shaykh of the al-‘Amarat tribe in the 1920s, Ibn ‘Amud obtained his original mare in a ghazu (tribal raid) against the al-Frijah section of the Ruwalah tribe. Ibn Haddal’s testimony is given in Khairi al-‘Azzawi’s great book on the tribes of Iraq (in Arabic). Other accounts I have gathered from recent conversations with Bedouins have the Saglawiyah Jadraniyah of the marbat of Ibn ‘Amud (or Saglawiyat ‘Ibn ‘Amud for short) trace to the ‘Anazah tribe in general, of which the Ruwalah is a part of. To me Khalid is the quintessential Asil stallion: powerful but graceful, strong but…
It’s Friday afternoon, and I am in a light mood. So I have a game (again!) for you all. Give me your ultimate top ten list of the greatest Asil Arabian mares ever bred. Here are the rules of the game: 1. The mares need to be Asil. A working definition of Asil for the purposes of this game is: Al Khamsa eligible if the mares are from bloodlines imported to North America, Asil Club eligible if the mares are from bloodlines imported to Europe, and tracing exclusively to Bedouin-bred horses if the mares are in Arab countries. For a more accurate (and conceptual) definition of Asil, click here. 2. The mares don’t need to be alive now: they may have been bred as early as the late XIXth century (when photography was invented). 3. You have to provide me with at pictures of at least two mares out of ten, preferably your top 2. 4. You don’t need to justify why you have ranked them the way you did (but it would nice if you did) 5. You can be the current or former owner of all ten mares (but it would be nice if you included at least some mares owned or bred by others in…
Basil, the masculine grey stallion pictured in Joe’s entry below was one of the first acquisitions Syrian Government Stud as it began operating in the mid 1990s. Basil, born in 1985 at the stud of Mustapha al-Jabri in Aleppo, was not Bedouin-bred, but both his sire and dam were. He was by Mahrous, a ‘Ubayyan Suhayli from the Shammar, then Mustapha’s head stallion, out of Hallah, a chestnut Kuhaylah Mimrahiyah also from the Shammar. Basil’s dam Hallah, pictured below at al-Jabri’s farm in 1996, was arguably the best of Mustapha’s herd, which consisted of 100-plus mares; Mustapha owned her dam and her sister as well. Basil joined his sire as a herd stallion for Mustpaha before he was gifted to the Government. Abdul-Qadir Hammami, a veteran horse-merchant and one of the sharpest experts on desert horses I have come to meet, picked Hallah, her dam and her sister for Mustapha’s stud. Next week’s “Strain of the Week” series will be about Kuhaylan al-Mimrah. It will discuss Hallah’s family, among other families belonging to this ancient strain.
Another horse that I saw at Al Basel was, to me, a real charmer. His name is Shawal. He is a Shuwayman Sabbah stallion. He is handsome, very charismatic and an excellent mover. Unfortunately I did not get the chance to go inside the arena to take pictures so he was photographed from the railing and it cuts of the view of the whole horse. Nonetheless, I wanted to share his photo because even in his body language you can detect a special personality, one which is enhanced by his very dark bay color against the backdrop of bright sand. He is another prized Asil stallion at Al Basel. I don’t now about his present status. -Joe Ferriss
I just wanted to quickly add to the wonderful blogs on the Kuhaylan Hayfi strain. I learned much by reading them. I just wanted to add that I found it comforting when I visited Syria in 1996 that the Kuyahlan Hayfi strain that came from there via *Reshan is still very much alive. When we were visiting the newly built Al Basel government stud, they introduced a number of their stallions of various strains. One handsome young bay stallion was of the Kuhaylan Hayfi stallion. I got a snap shot of him. It is fairly descriptive and I wanted to share it here. It is not a very sharp image because he was quite far away in a very large paddock and we did not have the opportunity to get in the arena close up. So I set my camera to the max telephoto and offer the image here in web resolution. The sire of this colt was the senior stallion at the time, a handsome grey named Basil. I do not recall getting to see the dam but perhaps someone who sees this blog and is familiar with the breeding at the stud can tell us more about this…
I am never tired of showing this picture of the lovely mare Wadeehah, a 1970 desert-bred Asil Ma’naghiyah Sbayliyah from the marbat of ‘Atiyah Abu Sayfayn. The strain is also known as Ma’naghiyat Abu Sayfayn. I took this picture of Wadeehah in 1992 in Aleppo, Syria, where she spent the latter part of her life in the ownership of my friend Kamal ‘Abdul Khaliq. It is a shame Kamal never managed to get a filly out of her, only colts. She did produce the mare Sayfia, however, which is the subject of an earlier post. Sayfia is now in her early twenties and is still in the desert with ‘Abdallah Abu Sayfayn, ‘Atiyah’s son. Sayfiah has now a filly by a Saglawi Jadran of from the tribe of al-Baqqarah. So the line goes on. Kamal had bought Wadeehah in 1982 from ‘Atiyah Abu Sayfayn himself. She had a young colt by her side. The colt, named Marzuq, was accidentally hit by a truck soon after arriving at Kamal’s, but he survived his hinquarter injury and went on to become a leading stallion for Kamal, leaving plenty of splendid colts and fillies, before dying a few months ago. The most striking thing about Marzuq was his kindness. You…
Early mentions of Kuhaylan Hafi by Western travelers to the desert link it to two Fad’aan clans (large families): al-Mahayd and al-Hubayqan. Lady Anne Blunt mentions that the strain acquired a certain reputation when Turki Ibn Jad’aan al-Mahayd, the head of the Fad’aan tribe, was killed in a raid against the Ruwalah tribe, who captured his war mare, a Kuhaylah Hayfiyah. Turki was slain by Khalaf al-Adhn al-Sha’laan after he fell on the ground, his mare having stumbled on a jerboa – a desert rodent – hole. The Fad’aan felt that the Ruwalah had violated the rules of desert warfare, and a long feud between the two tribes ensued. Bedouin accounts of the story say that the mare was not captured, but that she made it back to the Fad’aan camp, where Turki’s fellow tribesmen ragingly hamstrung her for letting their leader down (yikes!). I don’t know the exact date of this event, altghough I suspect it took place in the 1890s. The clan of al-Mahayd, which is the ruling clan of the Fad’aan, is generally acknowledged as the “owner” of the marbat of Kuhaylan Hayfi. Most hujaj (authentication certificates delivered for desert bred Arabian horses) of Kuhaylan Hayfi horses I have seen trace the horse in the hujja…
The previous discussion concluded (for now) that the strain of Kuhaylan Hayfi has developed sometime between 1850 and 1875. What was it known as before that? and where did it derive its name from? Like many, but not all, Kuhaylan strains, Kuhaylan Hayfi, which by the way is also called Kuhaylan al-Hayf, branched out of Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz. Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz appears to have been more than a strain — i.e., a family name for Arabian horses related through the dam line. Rather, it seems to have been a generic name for a “pool” of horses not necessarily related to each other, but sharing something else in common, perhaps the same owner (more on that in a subsequent post). Kuhaylan al-Ajuz typically “mutates” into a new strain when it becomes associated with a new owner (e.g., Kuhaylan Khdili), a celebrated mare with a specific characteristic (e.g., Kuhaylan al-Musinn), or an event of some importance. The later case is that of Kuhaylan Hayfi or Kuhaylan al-Hayf. Kuhaylan Hayfi “belongs” to the tribe of the Fad’aan, which means that the mare that founded the strain and became the first Kuhaylah Hayfiyah was a Kuhaylah al-‘Ajuz owned by Fad’ann Bedouins. Al-Hayf in Arabic means the social exclusion resulting from a ban. A rough synonymous term would be the word “ostracism”…
When in March of 2007, I called Abdallah ibn ‘Atiyah Abu Sayfayn on his mobile, I knew I had a date with history. Abdallah, 55, lives in the desert in north-eastern Syria, and is the owner [sahib] of a marbat of the strain of Maanaghi Sbayli known as Maanaghi Abu Sayfayn, after his family. He is the son of ‘Atiyah Abu Sayfayn, a Bedouin who reportedly lived to the age of one hundred, and was an authority on Arabian horses. ‘Atiyah was a master breeder, too and you can see for yourselves: he bred the gorgeous mare Sayfia, which is pictured here. The Abu Sayfayn are a clan of the Shumaylat, which is one of the main branches of the Fad’aan tribe. Other closely related Shumaylat clans include Ibn Hubayqan’s, who owns the main marbat of Kuhaylan Hayfi, and Ibn ‘Amayir’s, who owns Kuhaylan al-Musinn (more on these guys later). If you take out the flurry of unfamiliar names of people, places, and horses that clutter the interview and may seem off-putting, you will find this conservation helpful in shedding light on a number of Bedouin practices: inbreeding, stealing horses, exchanging horses from brides, transfers of ownership, and so on. Read the full text of the conversation here, and let me know what you think.
The discussion about the blood marks on the bodies of grey Arabian horses elicited the most reactions this week. Readers shared photos of Asil Arabian horses from different breeding groups (Bahraini, Davenport, Egyptian, “modern” Syrian, and Saudi) with bloodmarks on their shoulders and bellies. These pictures serve as reminders that regardless of the artificial breeding categories in which breeders have sought to put them, these horses are all one. They are all Asil. Thanks to Jenny Lees for this photo of an Asil Kuhaylat al-Kraay at the Royal Studs of Bahrain with the blood mark on her shoulder.. I will be blogging more about such fun topics, showing pictures whenever possible.
It was a hot and humid summer afternoon in Marseille, France, where I was living at the time, and a rather less hot, albeit equally humid afternoon in Bristol, UK, where my friend (and fellow horse enthusiast) Hazaim still lives. We were in the midst of one of these heated phone conversations about the origin of a particular strain of Arabian horses, with little hope of converging any time soon, when Hazaim said: “Lets just ask the Bedouin who owns the strain!” “How?” “Well, just like we’re doing here: over the phone!” So we started calling our friends and contacts in Syria, many Bedouins themselves, and we asked them to give us the contacts of the Bedouins horsebreeders they knew. It often took days, even weeks, before these friends came back to us with the number we wanted. Sometimes we were lucky enough to get hold of them directly on a cell phone number; sometimes the number was that of the only household that had a land line in the village, and we had to wait until whomever answered the phone went and fetched the Bedouins we wanted to speak to; and sometimes, we were just informed that their neighbor or relative had packed his tent and taken his flock some place else, and that we had to call back in the…
A nice article by Gudrun Waiditschka about the 2007 WAHO Conference in Syria, with lots of pictures of desert Arabian horses. I was invited to make a keynote presentation about strains at the conference, but had to drop out at the last minute. This is the first time I regret not attending a WAHO conference. My friend Hazaim al-Wair, who prepared the presentation with me, confronted the crowds on his own, and did a superb job by all accounts. Hazaim you need to turn your laptop on, and start blogging..
Let me share with you this picture of one of my all-time favorite desert-bred Arabian mares. *Al-Hamdaniah, the bloody-shouldered mare, was a present from the governor of the oil-rich al-Hasa province of Saudi Arabia to Admiral Richard Lansing Connolly, who brought her to the USA in 1947. Superstitious Bedouins believed that the large reddish spots on some horses’ shoulders were the blood of slain warriors, and considered that these horses brought bad luck to their owners. Others, on the contrary, valued these marks as a sign of purity and good breeding. Take a look at similar markings on the body of the mare Helwah, a Maanaghiyah Sbailiyah born in the Syrian desert in the early 1970s.