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.
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..