A blog on desert arabian horses, past, present and future
As a follow up to the previous post on the quizz mare, Binni II (*Shams x *Munirah), here is a picture of her dam *Munirah, a Kuhaylat ‘Afayr bred by the Saud royal stables, imported in 1962 from Saudi Arabia to the USA by Richard and Laura Cavedo. Photo courtesy of Jeanne Craver. Thanks Jeanne!
If you anyone knows someone who could volunteer to write intelligently about asil horses in Saudi Arabia and Bahrain today, please email me privately at ealdahdah@hotmail.com. I am looking for someone who knows the horses and the country context hands on, and preferably but not necessarily from there. Fluency in English is not required since … Read more
The blog entry “Amer: a Saudi race stallion” and the ensuing online conversation has generated a heated debate, with potentially explosive consequences for many involved. To summarize using politically correct language: the stallion Amer, currently owned by Umm Qarn farms of Qatar, is an extremely controversial horse, owned by extremely powerful people. He has dozens … Read more
Another favorite photo of a second generation offspring of four desert breds. This is Ibn Taamrud (b. 1988), an Asil Hamdani, by Taam-rud (Taamri x Rudann) out of Alwal el Shahhat (Jalam al-Ubayyan x Sindidah). All four grand-parents are either from the stables of the Royal House of Saud and their close relative Ibn Jiluwi. My translation … Read more
Edie Booth of Antique Arabian Stud, Canton, Texas, just posted this video of three of her Asil stallions on the comments section of this blog. The black stallion is AAS al-Sakb, and the grey one is AAS Enan. I don’t know who the third one is. [Update Nov. 18, 2008: Edie Booth tells us the … Read more
I love this picture, and I love this horse. Alwal Bahet (Jalam al-Ubayyan x Sindidah), an Asil Hamdani Simri, the son of two desert-bred horses imported from Saudi Arabia to the USA, is just magnificent. Click on his parents’ link to learn more about his background. I read somehere that this picture was taken a few … Read more
Kuhaylan al-Mimrah: so where were we? In the last post about this strain, we had left it in the hands of the Muwayni’ section of the Sba’ah tribe, to which the Mimrah clan belongs. Today, the noble section of Al-Muwayni’ is split between Syria and Saudi Arabia but no longer owns horses from this famous … Read more
I thought I’d throw this question at you, before embarking on a discussing of the strain of *Turfa.. a delicate question here in the USA.
One day in 2006, my friend Hazaim al-Wair and I, intrigued by the addition of “al-Baida” to the strain of many (not all) Kuhaylan al-Krush horses in the Syrian studbook, made a number of phone calls to inquire about the owner of the marbat of Krush al-Baida. All the roads led to one Shaykh of Shammar by the name of Mayzar al-‘Abd … Read more
A previous entry quickly went through the Kuhaylan al-Krush horses that came out of Arabia. Of these, the stallion Krush (sometimes called Krushan), imported by Lady Anne Blunt to Egyptian stud of Sheykh Obeyd in 1911, is of particular relevance for the Krush al-Baida branch of that strain. This is what the Sheykh Obeyd Studbook, quoted by Rosemary Archer in “The Crabbet … Read more
The gorgeous Bint Nafaa was born in Egypt in 1962, and bred by Ahmed Hamza’s Hamdan Stables, yet she does not have the “Straight Egyptian” label. The Pyramid Society, who coined the “definition” of a Straight Egyptian and Egyptian breds, does not accept El Gadaa, Nafaa’s sire, as a Straight Egpytian. El Gadaa was a racehorse, who stood at … Read more
Western Arabian horse breeders are relatively familiar with the Arabian horse strain of Kuhaylan al-Krush (also known as Kuhaylan Krushan) through a variety of sources. A specific branch of this strain, Krush al-Baida (“the white Krush”) will be the subject of the sixth part of the “Strain of the Week” series (which, by the way, … Read more
This is one of my all-time favorite Asil Arabian mares. LD Rubic (Plantagenet x Tarrla) is unique for several reasons: 1) she is a great-grand-daughter of the mare *Nufoud, a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz mare from Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud born in 1925 and imported to the USA in 1931 by Albert W. Harris. You cannot get any closer to … Read more
The Bedouin tribe of Al Murrah has been immortalized by Wilfred Thesiger‘s gripping classic “Arabian Sands” (1959). If you want to have a less romanticized account of the life of this South Arabian Bedouin tribe, then you ought to read this book, by Donald Powell Cole of the American University in Cairo. Yet Cole’s book was written in the early … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
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; … Read more
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 … Read more
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, … Read more
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 … Read more