I am very proud to share with you some photos of the remaining asil horses of the Tahawi clan in Egypt. These horses are the very last remaining asil descendants of the large breeding program of the Tahawis, based exclusively on desert-bred Arabians imported from the tribes of Sba’ah, Ruwalah, Fad’aan, Hssinah and Shammar between the 1880s and the 1940s. This one is a Kuhaylah J’aithiniyah, a grand-daughter of the mare Bombolla (Rock x Masquerade by Ibn Bakhshish), of Sheykh Soliman ‘Abd al-Hamid Eliwa al-Tahawy, and tracing to the desert-bred mare “J’aithiniyah al-Kabira”, brought by the Tahawis from the ‘Anazah in the 1920s. I, Yasser, am the proud owner of this mare. She is one of the handful mares that has been recognized as “horses of interest” by Al Khamsa at their last annual convention.
In a few days, Al Khamsa will be in a position to announce a very good news concerning the last remaining asil horses of Tahawi bloodlines. In the meantime, I am sharing with you this 30 year old photo, which Yehia al-Tahawi, a member of Cairo’s Jockey Club and otherwise a breeder of Straight Egyptian Arabians of modern Tahawi lines (Fulla, Futna, and Bint Barakat), sent me of his father Sheykh Abd al-Sattar ‘Eliwa al-Tahawi with his asil Kuhaylah Tamriyah Ammoura (‘Darling’ in Arabic). Ammoura traces to a desert bred K. Tamriyah mare imported to Egypt by Sheykh Quwayti’ Smayda al-Tahawi from the ‘Anazah Bedouins in the Syrian desert. Her sire is a Hamdani Simri horse called “Ibn Damas” bred by Mohammed Fergani El-Tahawy, and tracing back to a Hamdaniyah Simriyah mare imported from the Sba’ah Bedouins. Yasir Ghanim who supplied all this information from his cousin Yehia also tells me Ammoura has an asil granddaughter that is still alive today. This news is a great ray of hope for the Arabian horse in general and for the Kuhaylan Tamri strain in particular, of which this mare would be the single remaining representative, as far as I know.
Read this entry in the stud book of Faysal ‘Abd Allah Sa’ud al-Tahawi, excerpted from the tribe’s website: “Then, in the year 1356 H, we bought the bay ‘Ubayyah Sharrakiyah from Ibn Samdan, when she was in foal, and she gave birth, while in our ownership, to a chestnut colt whose sire is the [Kuhaylan] Nawwaqi who was [standing at stud] with the Arabs of Sba’ah, and whose owner was Fanghash, on the first day of Rabi’ al-Awwal 1356 H [equivalent to the 12th of May, 1937]. And we solt that colt to Cairo.” And further down: “And on July 27, 1949, Faran Ibn Samdan came to us, and we each took our shares [in horses], and he gave up his shares in al-‘Ubayyah and received from us 172 pounds. This was the bay ‘Ubayyah which came from Salih al-Misrab at the hand of Husayn Abu Hilal in 1356 H.” Now please tell me, how many people in 1950, just over sixty years ago, had the luxury of receiving Ibn Samdan, the breeder of the best and most authenticated marbat of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak among the Sba’ah, in his own house, to pay him his share of the ‘Ubayyat Ibn Samdan,…
The 1974 Hadban Inzihi stallion Asjah ibn Faleh (*Faleh x *Dawlat by Anter) was the best Egyptian racehorse of all time. I am no fan of what the Egyptian horse has become today, but that was a very good horse. See the naturally arched neck, curvy throat and deep girth. He was no china doll. Ralph Suarez’s blog has an article about his sire *Faleh, here.
The Tahawi website maintained by Mohammed al-Tahawy is a wonderful resource of original testimonies about the horses that this Bedouin clan bred throughout the XXth century. A few months ago, English translations of some of the hujaj (Arabic certification documents) of some of the foundation horses acquired by the Tahawi were featured on this website, as part of the collective effort of getting the three Tahawi mares of Egypt’s Hamdan stables accepted in the roster of Al Khamsa, Inc, the North American preservation organization. Here is a translation of another one of these original documents; this one is not a hujjah but rather a letter written to a member of the Tahawi tribe: To our beloved brother Faysal Abu Abdallah [al-Tahawi] may God protect him, Greetings and salutations, and longings to see your beautiful face, and after that, I would like to congratulate you on the advent of this holy month [of Ramadan], may God make you witness its advent again in health and well-being. You had asked us about the lineage of the colt, and in accordance to your demand, we are writing to you about the lineage of his dam and her ancestors, and that of his sire and his ancestors. The dam of the horse is al-Dahmah…
Now this is the list of asil tail female Egyptian lines around the world (including Egypt). This list has been compiled many times before, including by J. Forbis in Authentic Arabian Bloodstock and by Colin Pearson in the Arabian Horse Families of Egypt. Kuhaylan 1) Rodania, Kuhaylah Rudaniyah, imported to the UK in 1881, through descendants Bint Rissala and Bint Riyala, and bred by the Ruwalah (‘Anazah) 2) El Kahila, Kuhaylah (maybe Krush), imported to Egypt in 1927, from the House of Saud 3) Nafaa, Kuhaylah, imported to Egypt around 1945, from the House of Saud 4) Futna, Kuhaylah Khallawiyah, from a line imported to Egypt by the Tahawi from either the ‘Anazah or the Mawali ca. 1910 Saqlawi 5) Ghazieh through Bint Helwa; Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah, Ghazieh imported to Egypt around 1850, bred by the Ruwalah (‘Anazah) 6) Roga El Beda, Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah, from the Stud of Ali Pasha Sharif in Egypt; research on tribal connection ongoing. 7) Mabrouka, Saqlawiyah, imported to Egypt in 1945, from the House of Saud. 8 Hind, Saqlawiyah, imported to Egypt in 1945, from the House of Saud. 9) Bint Barakat, Saqlawiyah Jidraniyah, from a line imported to Egypt by the Tahawi tribe from the…
Ansata Shah Zaman, by Morafic out of Ansata bint Mabrouka by Nazeer. Photo in 1972 from the Billy Sheets photo collection.
The four shots of Ansata Ibn Sudan (Ansata Ibn Halima x Ansata Bint Mabrouka by Nazeer) were taken in 1972, and are from the photo collection of the late Billy Sheets. They were taken in 1972.
I don’t think these two photos of the Egyptian stallion Ansata Ibn Halima (Nazeer x Halima by Sheykh El Arab) have been published before. They were taken at the 1972 nationals, and are from the photo collection of the late Billy Sheets.
I received the following message yesterday, as a comment to one of the entries on the Tahawi tribe horses. Dear Edouard, I write to you on behalf of Al-Tahawia website managed by my cousin Mohammed ‘Etman (Othman) El-Tahawi. We are glad that the photos and documents we posted on the site were valued by you and your visitors. We are also very pleased with the recent acceptance of the three Tahawi mares to the notable Al Khamsa Roster. By this decision the Tahawi mares are now fully acknowledged by all the Arabian horse organizations. In addition to the few documents from our website that you posted here, we still have a larger number of authentic documents that we will be glad to share with you. We are in contact with Mr. Bernd Radtke who visited us in the 80s and we are aware of his work about Arabian horses. We will be glad to communicate with you and see how we can help. I will be glad to receive from you on the e-mail registered here. Best Regards This message illustrates the generosity and authenticity (asalah) of the Bedouin in general and the Tahawia in particular. I feel humbled by it,…
This entry is a follow up on an earlier entry on the Egyptian stallion Ibn Ghalabawi, sire of the 1971 mare Azeema out of Naglaa 1963 (Azeema’s photo is below, thanks Timur Hasanoglu for sharing it with me), which was exported to Germany. While implicitly included in the Pyramid Society’s definition of a Straight Egyptian Arabian, Ibn Ghalabawi is explicitely left out of the Asil Club’s otherwise wholesale embrace of the Egyptian Agricultural Organization’s Studbook. He shares that distinction with two other stallions, Sharkasi, and Registan (Skowronek x Riz). In 1978, WAHO accepted Ibn Ghalabawi’s daughter Azeema as purebred, based on the testimony of Sayed Marei of Al Badeia Arabians. That testimony identifies Ibn Ghalabawi as by Ghalabawi out of the mare “Bint Nabras”, by Nabras out of “Bint Soniour”. Soniour is only identified as a “desert-bred horse”. Assuming that pedigree information is correct, further research is needed on the following four horses before the credentials of Ibn Ghalabawi can be bolstered: the three stallions “Ghalabawi”, “Nabras”, “Soniour” and the great-granddam in the tail female, about which nothing is known. “Ghalabawi” is said to be by Balance x Bint Magboura by Ibn Rabdan, and to be bred by the RAS. I…
For decades, several different authors (Raswan, Forbis, Schiele in Germany and also Lady Blunt and her daughter Lady Wentworth) have been telling us that the best breeding stock of Arabian horses had left the Arabian peninsula during the 19th century to go to the Egyptian Pashas by either force or negotiation, or as gifts. The stud of Abbas Pasha I was famed for its unrivalled quality of authentic Arabian horses in his time. We even have a report that tells us that some Abbas Pasha horses were brought back to the Bedouin tribes because of their outstanding reputation. One such returning stallion was bought by Von Bruderman (an Austrian) for his government from the Rualla for exportation to Europe and we are told that this particular stallion was even exchanged between the tribes for mating their mares after he had come back from Egypt. As a result of this and also because of missing information from the Arab countries, the opinion was widespread in the West that nothing of interest was left with the Bedouins, who had already been settled by the second half of the last century (1950-2000), when a greater interest in Arabian horses aroused in the West. And was it not much…
I am proud to introduce Dr. Matthias Oster as an occasional contributor to this blog. Matthias is breeder and student of “Straight Egyptians in Germany” and a veterinarian. His wife is a daughter of the late Gunter W. Seidlitz (the breeder of Messaoud by Madkour and Maymoonah), and they now own the stallion Safeen (Ibn Safinaz x Abitibi Madeenah). His website, Arabian Heritage Source, is a resource for those breeders who like to think of Egyptian Arabians as part of the broader heritage of the asil horse of the Bedouins. Below is Masr El Dahman (Madkour x Maymoonah), bred by Matthias’ family.
Yesterday night, as I was sitting to draft notes for my presentation at National Breeder’s Conference tomorrow in Atlanta, I had some thoughts on the evolution of asil Arabian breeding, which I thought I’d share with you, for feedback: The greatest risk – and there are many – facing the asil Arabian horse today is the “decoupling” of the “Straight Egpytian” Arabian from the rest of the asil Arabian community. The “Straight Egyptian” brand/label is so strong, so prevalent, so well-marketed that your average Arabian horse breeder — including an ever increasing number of Middle Eastern breeders, completely disconnected from their ancestors’ breeding legacies and traditions — now believes that the only asil Arabian horses left in the world are the “Straight Egyptians”. The implications of this disconnect are several, and they play themselves out on many levels: at the financial level, where the gap between the prices of some “Straight Egyptian” horses and those of other asil horses is ever widening; at the genetic level, where the gene pool of the “Straight Egyptian” horse is ever narrowing; finally, and perhaps most significantly, at the cultural level, where the “Straight Egyptian” horse is being experienced, branded and understood as more “Egyptian” and less “Arabian” (less “Arabian” as in less from…
Abbas Hilmi Pasha I (1813-1854) is probably the one modern Egyptian ruler Arabian horse breeders know best, for the magnificent collection of desert-bred Arabian horses he is said to have kept. His son’s only claim to fame was to have dispersed this collection in 1861. In every single Arabian horse related publication, I have seen the name of Abbas Pasha’s son transcribed as “El Hami” Pasha, which sort of means ‘the Protector’, but which is not a first name. I always wondered about this, since Arabic first names seldom start with the definite article El/Al, and thought it was a mistake of some sort. Yesterday, I fell upon an Egyptian chancery document where Abbas Pasha’s son’s name is clearly written “Ilhami”, which literally means ‘My Inspiration’, and was a rather common first name within the Egyptian upper class at the time. Names with a possessive form and a romantic connotation were not uncommon within Egypt’s ruling family at the time. Another example is Ilhami’s own father’s second name: Abbas Pasha’s middle name was Hilmi, and it means “My Dream”. It was also the middle name of Abbas Hilmi II. By the way, if you’re into the history of Egypt around this time,…
Kuhaylan Khallawi (often misspelt Halawi) is a strain of Arabian horses little-known in the West. It is mentioned in Lady Anne Blunt’s list of strains derived from the Kuhaylan family, and in Carl Raswan’s list. The only other place it is mentioned is in Roger Upton’s writings, where his desert-bred import Yataghan (sire of the Ma’naqiyah mare *Naomi, which still has an asil tail female in the USA) was recorded as having been sired by a well-regarded Kuhaylan Khallawi stallion belonging to the Shammar. That’s it. In Egypt, the 1943 mare Futna, bred by the Tahawi Arabs, and bought by Ahmad Hamza as a broodmare for his Hamdan Stables, was from that same strain. Her dam is recorded as a Kuhaylah “Halawiyah”, just another way to write Khalawiyah, depending on how you choose to pronounce the Arabic letter [?]. Futna still has a thin tail female alive in the USA and Egypt, so the Kuhaylan Khallawi strain still goes on. According to their family website, wihch has a very rich section on horses, the Tahawi clan leaders brought all their horses from the area of Hims and Hama in Central Western Syria in the period extending between the 1880s and 1930s. …
Yesterday, the Al Khamsa Board of Directors unanimously approved the proposal submitted by Joe Ferriss to include the three mares Folla, Fotna, and Bint Barakat in the Al Khamsa Roster. The three mares were bred by the Tahawi tribes and sold to Ahmad Hamza of Hamdan Stables. On Saturday, the general assembly of Al Khamsa will be taking a vote on these three mares, in the next step towards their final inclusion in the Al Khamsa Roster.
This photo of the stallion Rock (Ragie x El Charsaa by Gezeier) with proud owner Shaykh Sulayman ibn Abd al-Hamid ibn ‘Ulaywa al-Tahawi was taken from the Tahawi family website. I am so grateful to Bernd Radtke for among other things, his sharing with me the pedigree of Rock’s daughter Bombolle (Rock x Maskerade), which has allowed to reconstitute Rock’s pedigree. Rock’s strain is Kuhaylan al-Kharass, and his tail female traces to the Kuhalyan al-Kharas marbat of the Sba’ah Bedouins. Kuhaylan al-Kharas is a flagship strain of the Sba’ah, and is the strain of the Blunt import Proximo, among other well known Arabians of Lebanon and Syria. Rock’s pedigree is heavily linebred to the two strains of Dahman ‘Amer (from the marbat of Jarallah Ibn Tuwayrish) and ‘Ubayyan Sharrak (from the marbat of Abu Jreyss).
This photo was sent by a horse merchant in Syria to one of the Tahawi clan leaders in Egypt, bto probe his interest in purchasing the horse. Here is what figures on the back of the photo: “Photo of the Saqlawi Jadrani horse, his sire is ‘Ubayyan of the horses of Ibn Samdan and his dam a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah of the horses of the Sba’ah” A couple noteworthy observations: 1. The marbat of Ibn Thamdan (mispelt Samdan on the back of the photo) is one of the most respected and authenticated marabet of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak among the Sba’ah tribe. It survived in asil form in Lebanon until the late 1950s. 2. Notice the resemblance of the horse in the photo with the Blunt mare Basilisk, who was from the same strain and the same tribe.
This hujjah comes from the Tahawi tribe website and is very interesting, because of the place of origin of the horse: unlike most of the Tahawi hujaj I saw, this one comes from the Upper Mesopotamia area (al-Jazirah) while the others came from Western Syria. I hope the horse referenced in this hujjah document left some modern descendants, because his origin is precious. Here’s my translation of the document: “We testify by God and his Prophet, in truth and righteousness, that the grey horse, brother of the bay horse, which [the grey] has a small star on his face, and which is five years of age, and which was purchased by Abdel Aziz Bek and Husayn al-Hilal from Adham al-Humayyid that he is Saqlawi Jadran, and that his dam is a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah, and his sire a Saqlawi Jadran, from the horses of Dari Ibn Mahmud, the Shaykh of the tribe of Shammar al-Zawba’; and the horse is ‘shubuw’ [to be mated] and can be mated, and is protected [from the side of both] his sire and his dam, and that there is no impurity in his origin; and for this reason we have prepared this testimony, and God is the…
Excerpts from the Tahawi clan/family website, translation mine: When in the 1850s, the Tahawi began to settle in the province of al-Sharkiyah, in the areas of Bilbeis, Abu Hammad, Geziret Saoud, Kfar Saqr, al-Ismailia, and Abu Sultan, they owned horses which they used for transportation and nomadizing; then they settled down and acquired agricultural land, and gave up their pastoral and war-like lifestyle; their Sheykhs then went on to constitute their own horse studs (marabet); around this time, the Syrian region of Hims and Hama was the homeland of the Arab horse, and was known as al-Sham, since it was home to some of the Bedouin tribes like ‘Anazah, Shammar, al-Fad’aan, and al-Sba’ah, which specialized in the breeding of Arab horse and the tracing of its bloodlines; The Tahawi Arabs owned some land and maintained social ties with their relatives living in this area, as well as some close friends, so they started bringing brood-mares and stallions to Egypt. Some of them would travel there [to the area of Hims and Hama in Syria] and buy horses, then return [to Egypt] and wait for their horses to arrive; others would buy horses through an agent. Each horse came with a pedigree document, which included a description…
The Tahawi family website in Arabic is a gold mine of original information on the asil horses of Egypt’s Tahawi tribe. Here’s what I found today on this website concerning the horse Barakat, who is the paternal grandsire of the three foundation mares Folla, Futna, and Bint Barakat [my own annotations in between square brackets]: “The stallion Barakat is the son of the old Dahman, the stallion of ‘Abdallah Saoud al-Tahawi which was bought from the ‘Anazah Arabs in 1322H (1898 AD), and the origin of this Dahman stallion is from the Dahmat ‘Amer mare of Jar Allah ibn Tuwayrish, and his sire is a Saqlawi Jadran [Note from Edouard: This is the same horse whose hujjah was reproduced and translated in an entry below]. As to the dam of the stallion Barakat, she is the mare of Mnazi’ ‘Amer al-Tahawi, and she is Dahmat Shahwan“. Further above on the website there is the mention that “the Dahman horses of Mnazi’ ‘Amer al-Tahawi are from the horses of Ibn Maajil of Syria.” The information on Barakat’s dam is extremely interesting. Not only because it allows us to go one generation back in the pedigrees of the three Hamdan stables foundation mares: Folla, Futna, and Bint Barakat.…
Doug Marshall of Gleannloch Farms was behind one of the largest and most famous importations of asil Arabians from Egypt to the USA: *Morafic, *Ibn Hafiza, *Zaghloul, *Sakr, *Bint Maisa El Saghira, *Bint Mona and many others were part of this imortation. Here’s a short movie from YouTube, which shows the Marshalls at the Egyptian Agricultural Organization ‘s El Zahraa Stud, then in USA. I believe the white horse in the video is *Morafic (Nazeer x Mabrouka by Sid Abouhom), the star of the first Gleannlock importation.
My research project about Syrian horse-racer Ahmad Ibish is progressing well, but I am not ready to share the results on this blog yet. Ibish, of Damascus, Syria, was on the top of my list of influential urban Middle Eastern horsemen of the twentieth century, along with Henri Pharaon of Beirut, Lebanon, Iskandar Qassis of Aleppo, Syria, and a few others. However, I can say a couple things about the horses he was associated with, at different times. I could find four of these, all stallions. The first, and perhaps most famous here in the US, was Aiglon. Aiglon was a Saqlawi Jadran imported by Ibish to Egypt for racing, around 1920, according to the export document for his daughter, *Exochorda, attested to by Dr. Branch, the Director of the Royal Agricultural Society of Egypt. *Exochorda, named after the ship that brought her to the USA, is of course best known as the dam of Sirecho. The second was El Sbaa. El Sbaa, a chestnut, was bought from Ahmad Ibish by a French government mission led by Madron and Denis at the Cairo Heliopolis racetrack in 1925, and sent to the French Stud of Pompadour where he was used as…
Jackson Hensley, of Bedouin Arabians Farm, in New Mexico, just sent me pictures of the latest addition to his stud; Sabella Al Krush, an asil Kuhaylat al-Krush filly, tracing in tail female to the mare *Werdi imported from Syria to USA by Homer Davenport in 1906. *Werdi hails from the Krush marbat of the Fad’aan Bedouins. As an aside, the famous stallion Krush Halba, the foundation sire for the Turkish Arabian horse breeding program, hailed from the same Fad’aan marbat as *Werdi. Krush Halba was one of the most prepotent sires of racehorses of his time. He was active in the northern Lebanese town of Halba in the 1920s and 30s, and was purchased in 1933 by a Turkish Government Commission and exported to Turkey where he was known as Baba Kurus. Check out his hujjah here (scroll down to Appendix B). One of Krush Halba’s sons, the grey stallion Kroush (actually a Kuhaylan al-Nawwaq by strain) was bought from the Beirut racetrack in 1936 by Dr. Mabrouk of the Egyptian Royal Agricultural Society (RAS), and was used by the RAS for breeding . Kroush appears in the Egyptian “RAS History” studbook (EAO Vol 1) on page 48. He had three registered offspring in Egypt: the stallion Tamie (1937) out of Nagiya; the mare Bushra…
Look what I just found in the archives of the Egyptian weekly newspaper Al Ahram: a recent (2006) article citing a much older (1938) Al Ahram article reporting on the january 20, 1938 wedding of Egypt’s king Faruk to Safinaz Zulfiqar, who became Queen Farida. All the article is interesting, but what is most remarkable is this sentence: “Al-Ahram presented a register of the gifts that states had presented to “His Majesty the King of Egypt”. Ibn Saud, the king of the Hijaz, presented four horses “that are pure-bred from 400 native horses. They are “Kahilan, a colt, Al-Saqlawiya, Abiyan, a race horse, and Al-Jilabiya. The name of each is traced back to the names of the Arab houses that have preserved them since the ages of the first Arabs.” What happened to these horses? Do you think we can find their trace in the Inshass Original Herd Book?
Al Khamsa President Pam Studebaker, her daughter Jill Erisman, and a few other dedicated breeders have began an effort to identify, locate, and preserve the remaining horses of Richard Pritzlaff’s breeding in the USA, which includes the bloodlines from Rabanna (Rasik x Banna by Nasr), pictured below. I wish them good luck. RJ Cadranell wrote about Pritzlaff’s life and breeding program, in an article which you can read here.
Check out Joe’s latest article in Arabian Essence. I love the comparison of some mares of the Egyptian Om Dalal family with the *Abeyah line, just as much as I love re-re-reading the late Carol Lyons “homogeneous background of Al Khamsa Arabians” article.
The reference to Alzabra Stud in connection with the Egyptian stallion Sharkasi got me interested in learning more about these small local Egyptian farms which, from time to time, appear in historical documents on Arabian horse breeding in Egypt as the suppliers of breeding stock to the Royal Agricultural Society’s studfarms and/or Inshass, the private stud of Kings Farouk and Fouad. One of these farms is that of Kafr Ibrash, which is where the mare Bint Kareema (Lady Anne Blunt’s Rasheed x Kareema) and others came from. All I succeeded doing for now is locating Kafr Ibrash (also spelled Kafr Abrash or Abraash) on the map of Egypt. It is in Egyptian delta fertile agricultural region, in the Sharkiyah province, where the Tahawi Arab tribe is settled (see Google Map below, where Kafr Ibrash is market as point B on the map, you may need to zoom out to see it). View Larger Map Next step is to ask some friends from Egypt to go there and see what they can learn about this place, and its owners. I suspect they were closely associated with the Egyptian Royal family in some way or another. Note in particular the close proximity of the…
Teymur from Germany sent me this photo of Sharkasi with his owner TGB Trouncer, before the Royal Agricultural Society of Egypt (RAS) acquired him in 1955. I had never seen a picture of Sharkasi before and confess being pleasantly surprised at his good looks. The way his neck is set and his straight shoulder also make me wonder how he ever became the good racehorse he was supposed to be. The Alzabra stud, where his sire and paternal grandsire were supposed to come from, according to a WAHO investigation report, was probably one of these rural stallion depots maintained by the RAS across Egypt, where surplus RAS stallions were stationed for use by the local population. You can infer that from this sentence of the WAHO report: “His sire was one of the Alzabra Stud distributed to villages to cover the mares of farmers. His dam was also by an Alzabra stallion and out of a Bedouin mare.” If Alzabra was a private stud, why would it ‘distribute’ its stallions ‘cover the mares of farmers’? Its description actually fits the role fulfilled by government-owned stallion depots. Stallions would typically spend part of the year in the depot/stud, and the rest…
I normally don’t use this blog to relay unsubstantiated rumors, but this one is so funny I could not resist sharing it with you: a well-known horsebreeder from Egypt is claiming that the poorly documented (a euphemism) Egyptian stallion Sharkasi is actually from the ‘Ajman Bedouin tribe of Central Arabia. The ‘Ajman, no less… Of course, this breeder has Sharkasi bloodlines. Now I understand that there is an ongoing push from various parts of the community of Arabian breeders in Egypt to ‘sponsor’ further research on the few Egyptian bloodlines outside of the mainstream Egyptian breeding (e.g., the three Tahawi mares, El Gadaa, Ibn Ghalabawi, Sharkasi, etc), and that is always welcome, but I never thought someone would make so brazen a claim as to link an unknown stallion from Upper Egypt to one of the most respected horse-breeding tribes of Arabia. I mean, even WAHO stopped short of making up such a prestigious ascendency when it accepted Sharkasi. You can read the WAHO report on Sharkasi here; it essentially says that “Sharkasi was bred by a man in Upper Egypt. His sire was one of the Alzabra Stud distributed to villages to cover the mares of farmers. His dam was…
Take the time to (re)read this article by RJ Cadranell, one of the best ever written on the sale of Egypt’s Ali Pasha Sharif collection of asil Arabian horses, drawing on two souces: Lady Anne Blunt (her Journals, her Sheykh Obeyd Studbook, and some of her private, unpublished notes) and Carl Raswan (his Index). By the way, I don’t think I’ve ever shared with you my personal assessment of Raswan’s standing versus Lady Anne Blunt’s, as sources of scholarly information on Arabians. I don’t think many of you will like this assessment, but here it is anyway: I have found Lady Anne Blunt to be generally correct unless the contrary is proved; and Raswan to be generally incorrect unless the contrary is proved. Raswan’s defenders usually use such statements as “he was not a native speaker of English”, “his thinking was so complex and elaborate that few could understand it” or even “he was constantly making corrections to what he wrote” to absolve him. All this may be true, but scholarly research on Arabians is not rocket science, yet in my opinion, Raswan’s monumental body of work (his Index) is cryptic, garbled, ambiguous, incoherent, confusing and often downright contradictory. It…
El Dahma is the foundation mare of the most prized tail female line of Arabian horses worldwide. Yet she remains shrouded in mystery. She was a mare from the Stud of Ali Pasha Sharif of Egypt, born around 1880, no color given, and was known only by her strain name as “The Dahma”. The little we know about this elusive yet extremely influential matriarch is summarized here. The information in this link comes from three sources: first, the book known as the “RAS History” (page 33), which is the official name of Volume I of the Egyptian Agricultural Organization (EAO) studbook, published in 1948; second, an early herd book of Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfiq of Egypt, which mentions that this mare, “the Dahma”, was a gift from Ali Pasha Sharif to the Khedive (the viceroy of Egypt, then Khedive Tewfiq the father of Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfiq and of the next Khedive Abbas Hilmi II). third, Carl Raswan’s Index. However, given that Raswan’s was not a primary source, and that he did not mention his primary sources, I will take the liberty of discarding it for the purposes of this discussion. El Dahma seems to have produced at least four horses at both Khedive Tewfiq and his son Khedive Abbas Hilmi…
Joe Ferriss has a short article on the Egpytian mare Nefisa (Balance x Helwa by Hamran II) in the newsletter Arabian Essence.
I recently saw in the online brochure of a well known stud that breeds “Straight Egyptians” that the Saqlawi Jadran descendents of Roga El Beda (i.e., the tail female line represented by Moniet El Nefous and El Bataa in modern pedigrees, among others) was made to trace back to the desert-bred mare Ghazieh through Bint Horra (allegedly the dam of Roga El Beda, according to this brochure). This is plain wrong, and was based on erroneous information from the Raswan Index, which has been relayed in Al Khamsa Arabians I and II, and later corrected in Al Khamsa Arabians III. Decade old Mitchondrial DNA research (Bowling, 1999, unpublished) indicates that the haplotype market for the Roga El Beda tail female is different from that of the Ghazieh tail female. I don’t know what you think, but I have found some of these errors much harder to dispel in the case of Straight Egyptians than for the rest of the asil Arabians, despite rock solid evidence to the contrary (e.g., the myth of the Kuhaylan Jallabi tail female as surviving in Straight Egyptians).
A few days ago a friend asked me if I knew whether anything about the Egyptian stallion Ibn Ghalabawi and I said I didn’t. Then I consulted his pedigree on allbreedpedigree.com. Granted, this is by no means a reliable source (anybody can enter, remove or edit whatever the want), but in this case I suspect the information in there was extracted from information Sayed Marei (of Al Badeia Arabians) has provided and which was used to make a case for the acceptance of Ibn Ghalabawi’s daughter Azeema by WAHO, in 1978 I think. I did not have access to any other information anyway, except for a two liner in the last pages of Colin Pearson’s (and Kees Mol) excellent “The Arabian Horses Families of Egypt”, but there was no pedigree information in there either. Later I thought more about it, and it remembered that Ibn Ghalabawi’s recorded great grandsire Soniour (to be pronounced Senor like in the Spanish for “Sir”) was mentioned in Ali al-Barazi’s old book in Arabic as as a famous desert-horse having raced in Egypt in the 1920s or 1930s. He is mentioned alongside other famous old racehorses such as Renard Bleu and Nabras, who was later…
Joe Ferriss has a nice article on Egyptian Arabian stallions of the Hadban strain in the online newsletter Arabian Essence. Speaking of Hadban stallions of Egyptian bloodlines, I was lucky to have known the grey stallion Kaheel (by Ashour who was by Anter out of Ayda x Yosr by Ibn Fakhri out of Bint Yosreia), who was bred by the Egyptian Agricultural Organization in Cairo, and died in my home country of Lebanon, leaving no progeny, some time in the late 1990s. I made plans to purchase Kaheel after I saw him for the first time. When I went to see him again at some equestrian center north of Beirut, he had just died from a colic. Kaheel was a unique individual in many ways: a Anter grandson in the tail male, both sire and dam from the Hadban strain (he actually qualifies as Sheykh Obeyd and Heirloom) and otherwise the direct grandson of three lesser known but very special Nazeer offspring, all three of which belong to good racing lines: 1: Ayda, by Nazeer x Lateefa, and hence a full sister of Serenity Ibn Nazeer / Lateef 2: Bint Yosreia, by Nazeer x Yosreia, and a full sister of Tersk’s Aswan / Rafaat, among…
Beshier El Ashkar and Badria, the two Arabian horses known in modern Egyptian pedigrees as the Bisharat horses, are some of the least documented Arabians to have joined the Al Khamsa Roster of Arabian horses (in 1995, I think). There was another mare, Ward, from the same source, but she did not leave any modern descendents. Most of what we know about Beshier and Badria is from the Inshass Original Herd Book (IOHB, entries #80 and #83, Inshass being the stud of King Faruk of Egypt), and some of that information later found its way in Volume 3 of the Egyptian Agricultural Organization Studbook. This includes information on the horses’ color, sex, date of birth and the date the horses were presented to King Faruk. The Al Khamsa Roster, which aggregates all the information available on the two horses, has this succint but telling note: “Neither offer strain or family history”. Since Beshier and Badria’s blood runs in the veins of some of the most popular (and expensive) Arabian horses in the world (e.g., Jamilll, Ibn Galal-I, Salaa El Dine, etc), many breeders, especially in Germany, tried to learn more about them. Dr. Hans J. Nagel in particular, has a 1982 letter or letters from Midhat Bisharat,…
Click here for an informative article on the Jordanian Bisharat family, by one of its scions, George Bisharat, a professor of law at Hastings College in San Francisco. The article appeared in a political journal, and is not concerned with Arabian horses but it nonetheless offers interesting background information about the Bisharat family, which may be of interest to those of you who breed Arabian horses of Egyptian lines. The Bisharat family is a Christian family of merchants and entrepreneurs, orignally from the area around the palestinian city of Nablus. Like several other palestinian christian familties, the Bisharat moved to the eastern bank of the Jordan river at some point in the late 19th century, and settled the area of al-Salt and then moved to the south of Amman. They rose to economic and social prominence in the first part of the 20th century. At some point in the 1940s, a member of the Bisharat family, Shibli Bisharat (who may or may not be the Shibli mentioned several times in the article), sent three horses as a present to King Faruk of Egypt. Two of these, the mare Badria and the stallion Besheir (also known as Besheir El Ashkar) left modern descendents, and famous…
[Dec 4, update: Tzviah is announcing a herd reduction] If you have not done already, check out the new photos Tzviah Idan has uploaded on her Facebook page. These are horses of Egyptian bloodlines bred by the Hungarian state stud of Babolna. I think you will hear a lot about these horses in the months and years to come. Ralph Suarez’ blog has an entry on Tzviah’s horses, too. Sara Gefen photo.
These have been quite busy days for me, and I have not been able to write as often as I wanted to. That said, I wanted to quick highlight the fact that two new proposals to add new horses to the Al Khamsa Roster have been sent to the Al Khamsa Board of Directors. The first was sent by Joe Ferriss, and concerns the three Tahawi (an Egyptian peasant tribe of Arab stock) mares that are the foudation of Egypt’s Hamdan Stables: Fulla (a Shuwaymah Sabbah), Futna (a Kuhaylah Khallawiyah), and Bint Barakat (a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah). The second proposal (click here if you interested in reading it) was submitted by yours truly and concerns the mare *Lebnaniah, a Ma’naqiyah Sbayliyah imported by W.R. Hearst to the USA in 1947. The AK Board is currently discussing both proposals.
Recently, Ambar Diaz started posting photos of some of this blog’s authors and regular contributors mounted on asil Arabian horses, as a way to put names on faces. Here is a photo that reader Predrag Joksimovic sent me of himself, mounted on Mahiba (Shams El Arabi x Mansoura), a very deserty little mare. Mahiba’s sire Shams El Arabi (Farouk x Bint El Arabi by El Araby) is of Egyptian bloodlines, her dam’s sire El Aswad (Ibn Galal x 10 Hosna) is also Egyptian, but her grand-dam Malaga (Madani x Berriane by Titan) was bred in Tunisia from predominantly Algerian bloodlines (and some old French through Mossoul). Malaga traces to several desert-bred imports featured on this blog, such as Bango, El Managhi, Ghazi, and others. She was a Jilfat Dhawi by strain, and so is Mahiba. She was exported to Germany in the 1960s. Egyptian and Algerian/Tunisian lines tend to blend very well with each other, further empasizing the added value of “combined source” breeding.
This is Nauwas, a chestnut mare born in 1967. Her sire is the Hamdani stallion Al-Khobar (Ibn Fadl x *Al Hamdaniah), and her dam is the desert-bred mare *Muhaira, a ‘Ubayyah from the horses of Prince Saud ibn ‘Abdallah ibn Jalawi Aal Saud. Her pedigree is interesting because the sire line is Egyptian, and all the mares are desert-bred imports to the USA from Central and Eastern Arabia. Fadl sired the stallion Ibn Fadl, out of the desert-bred mare *Turfa; Ibn Fadl in turned sired Al-Khobar (photo below), out of the desert-bred mare *Al-Hamdaniah (the “bloody shouldered mare”, who was featured in one of the first entries of this blog); the beautiful Al Khobar sired Nauwas, out of the desert-bred *Muhaira. You can’t get better bloodlines than these, so noble, and so close to the source. I love this photo of Nauwas. It blends two of the characteristics of the true Arabian mare: the sweet, soft look of a new mother; and the strength of a war mare. This is a mare I wish I had seen, and owned. PS: I just noticed, after publishing this post that Nauwas bears some resemblance in her body structure, her ears, and the…
Don’t ask me how this ancient line made it into the 21st century. It’s a near miracle. Lady Anne Blunt imported the Hamdani Simri mare Sobha (Wazir x Selma) from Egypt in 1891, from a certain Mahmoud Bey who got her dam from the Abbas Pascha collection. Sobha’s line was one of the most represented lines at Crabbet Stud, after Rodania’s and Dajania’s. It produced a stallion at the first generation: Seyal (Mesaoud x Sobha), despite the latter’s grey color (the Blunts were not big on greys). Lady Anne also used Sobha’s other son Antar at her Sheykh Obeyd Stud in Egypt. Seyal’s sire line is still in existence today: Seyal -> Berk -> Ribal -> Ghadaf -> Jadib -> Ibn Gulida -> Omagh -> Dib -> Huntington Doyle, a chestnut 1990 stallion I saw at the Doyle Ranch in Oregon last August. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about here. Sobha had a daughter at Crabbet, Siwa (by Ahmar), who had Somra by Daoud, who had Safarjal by Berk. Safarjal was Lady Wentworth’s gift [purchased Thanks for the correction RJ] to Musgrave Clark of the Courthouse stud, which I wrote about in an earlier entry. Clark bred Safarjal to…
Some time last year, this blog featured the precious asil Kuhaylan al-Mimrah line to the mare Baraka (Ibn Manial x Gamalat) which has been flourishing in South Africa. The series of postings on Baraka and her descendents attracted a lot of attention from South Africa and Namibia, and is by far the most popular thread on this blog. Now is the time to feature another asil line that has survived in South Africa, and which carries crosses to desert-bred lines that are extinct almost everywhere else around the globe. That’s the line of the mare Rosina (Saoud x Ruth II by Bendigo), a 1950 Kuhaylat al-Rodan exported by H. V. Musgrave Clark to South Africa in 1953. The line is a tail female to Rodania, an 1869 desert-bred Kuhaylat Rodan imported by Lady Anne Blunt in 1881, and one of the most influential mares in Arabian (and asil) horse breeding. What’s so special about this line, will you ask? Kuhaylan al-Rodan asil horses are all over the place. Well, first of all, the absolute majority of Rodania tail female horses are within what is known as “Straight Egyptian” breeding, a sub-set of asil breeding which has branched out into a category – and…
*Aziza (Gamil Manial x Negma) was *Roda’s half sister. *Roda was mentioned in a recent post. In 1996, RJ Cadranell wrote an article on the two sisters in Arabian Visions, which you read here. Like *Roda, *Aziza was imported to the USA by W.R. Brown in 1932. All this I knew from before. Having read F. Klynstra’s book “Nobility of the Desert”, which has lovely pictures of the mare Faziza (Fa-Turf x Azyya by Kenur x Aziza), who went to G. Olms in Germany, and her son Tufail (by Kaisoon, photo of Tufail below), I also knew that Aziza had left some asil descendents in Europe, rich in the blood of desert horses from Saudi Arabia imported to the USA (*Turfa, *Sunshine, *Nufoud, *Tairah). What I didn’t know is that the line might have persisted in the USA. The mare Sharziyya, a 1963 full sister to Faziza, has left a small number of descendants in this country. The youngest mare from this line is Shar Fazima (Hafid Faserr x Shar Azima) a 1986 mare bred by the Krausnicks’ of Shar Char Farms. She looks like the last (in the tail female, that is)asil from that line in the USA now and if alive,…
There have been interesting discussions along many of this blog’s topics over the past two weeks, and I am having a hard time catching up with all of these. I owe readers a number of new entries on these topics, and I will get to these in the next week. Jaspre, a son of Roda Still, how many of you knew that there was still a thin tail female to *Roda out there? I vaguely remember reading somewhere that Margaret Shuey bred a daughter from her, Sunny Acres Fantasy, by the very handsome stallion Ibn Hanad, but did not know that this line was carried on until now. Check out the pedigree of this young (2005) mare, for instance. True, the line is now diluted in a sea of new Egyptian breeding, but if that’s the only way to keep these old lines alive, why not… (you’re getting an insight on some of my biases here) Anyway, isn’t it amazing to see that line managed to survive? I wonder if this was by chance, or if there was a concerted effort to preserve it.. There is even a chance of a nicer, more diverse female line to *Roda having survived,…
This is Atiq Ayla (Laheeb x Al Hambra B by Salaa el Dine out of 228 Ibn Galal I to Bint Azza I, from the Egyptian Dahman Shahwan line tracing to Bint El Bahreyn). Ayla has a very large, expressive eye of the ‘human type’ with plenty of white showing and long eyelashes. She is bred by my friend Tzviah Idan of Idan Atiq Arabians in Israel.
Kuwait recently announced the launch of its brand new state stud, Bayt al-Arab, to replace its older Arabian Horse Center. Their nice website includes an interesting — but too sketchy — historical timeline. Most of the founding stock is of Egyptian bloodlines, and was imported from Germany, Qatar and the USA, mainly from Ansata Arabian Stud.
Those of you who have looked at the Saudi Arabian Stud Book may have noticed that most of the horses registered in it trace back to a grey horse by the name of Al-Harqan, born in 1947. This horse is the sire of 25 horses in Volume I of the Saudi Stud Book. Pure Man, who by virtue of his knowledge of asil Arabians in Saudi Arabia, is a main contributor to this blog, tells me that Al-Harqan is Kuhaylan Harqan by strain. He also tells me that King Abdel-Aziz Aal Saud (d. 1953) asked a Bedouin from the tribe of Harb by the name of Ibn Fadliyah for a stallion from his famed Harqan horses, and that Ibn Fadliyah gave the king his best stallion: Al-Harqan. Pure Man also tells me that before Al-Harqan, the House of Saud maintained two other stallions of the same strain, but that they don’t appear in modern pedigrees because Saudi authorities did not keep written stud records back then. I think the strain of Kuhaylan Harqan is extinct in the tail female today, but I may be wrong, because there might still be desert horses of this strain in Saudi Arabia which I would not…
This document recently appeared on one of the discussion threads below. For those of you who know the Abbas Pasha Manuscript in its English edition, this is just the first page in one of the original Arabic editions.. This is a quick and dirty translation (writing from work, gotta go home soon), without the Quran verses in the reversed triangle: “Warning/advice about breeding/mating horses; I say, about stallions to be mated; the first to be mated (yushabbi) is Duhayman Shahwan from the strain (rasan) of Kunayhir, and Duhaym al-Najib; the second is Kuhaylan al-Mimrah; then al-Saqlawi al-Jadrani and it is from three branches, the dearest of which is the strain of al-Simniyyat, then the strain of al-Sudaniyat, then the strain of al-Abd; followed by the strain of al-Saqlawi al-Ubayri and al-Marighi, which are the same strain; and following that, Hadban al-Nzahi which consists of six strains: the first (ie, the best) is Hadbat al-Munsariqah; the second is Hadbat Mushaytib; the third is Hadbat Jawlan; the fourth is Hadbat al-Fard; the fifth is Hadbat al-Mahdi; the sixth is Habdat al-Bardawil which is not to be mated; following that is Kuhaylan al-Tamri; and after that, Shuwayman al-Sabbah; and after that, Hamdani Simri al-Khalis; and…
The horses of Tzviah Idan are now on Facebook. One link includes horses of Egyptian bloodlines that Tzviah imported from Babolna, and the other is a link to their progeny. Tzviah, I like them all, and feel that you’ve been doing an outstanding job, but I can’t help feel that there is something extra special about Hila B and her progeny. PS — social networking sites are all over now. I never thought I’d be linking to Facebook on an desert Arabian horse blog..
Another nice article by Joe Ferriss in the Arabian Essence online magazine, on the desert-bred stallion El Deree and his get.. Joe’s articles, always insightful and often filled with old pictures I have never seen before, are the only thing I read in this magazine. To me, everything else is glossy pictures of poor four-legged creatures forced to adopt artificial pauses, with shaved ears and make-up on their nostrils and their eyes. But the most appalling sight is no doubt that of these poor little foals with shaved heads and faces. For heaven’s sake, these are Arabian horses, not sheep! Not sure if this is the right time to start another war — I feel I have been provocative enough here — but I happen to have to lot to say about El Deree and his origins. Maybe another time.
Two nice articles (part 1 and part 2) from Joe Ferriss in the website/newsletter Arabian Essence on the influence of the grey stallion Rabdan Al Azrak on Egyptian Arabian lines.
While visiting Egypt for week a couple weeks ago, I spent a morning at the Egpytian Agricultural Organization’s (EAO) stables of El Zahraa in Ein Shams. I was joined by my father, General Salim Al-Dahdah, who lives in Beirut, and came to Cairo to spend a few days with me. EAO Director Ali Said welcomed us, and we spent three hours visiting the stallions‘ stables as well as the mares‘ paddocks. The magnificent grey stallions Harras (Kisra x Hebat El Nil) , Serag El Din (Mourad x Safinaz) and Baydoun (Gad Allah x Bint Ibtisam), in that order, were both our personal favorites. Too bad I did not bring my digital camera with me.. The photo of Harras below is from the Asil Club’s website.
Je voudrais rappeler le cri d’alarme lancé par Monsieur Robert Mauvy ! : “Renouvelant mon cri d’alarme, mon cri de désespoir ! Il faut absolument et à tout prix sauver ce qui reste du véritable Pur Sang Arabe. Il est impossible de laisser disparaître l’une des plus belles oeuvres du Créateur. Que l’initiative privée, que les amis et admirateurs du Noble Cheval se resserent et prennent en main cette admirable mais dure tâche : Sauver à tout prix le Cheval Arabe ! Je les en supplie car demain … demain il sera trop tard !…” Monsieur Robert Mauvy qui avait plus de quatre vingt années d’expérience a fait éditer un petit livre; oh, non pas un album de photos ni même une encyclopédie mais le contenu en est d’une très grande richesse : “Le Cheval de Pur Sang Arabe” chez Crépin Leblond. Il est très néfaste et dangereux pour la race chevaline entière de vouloir élever l’Arabe en fonction d’une mode ou d’une discipline ! L’Arabe est et doit rester le cheval de chasse et de guerre des nobles Bédouins d’Arabie. c’est le “Don d’Allah”. “L’Arabe de Sang Pur” est fait pour l’attaque et le repli avec ses démarrages, accélérations et arrêts…
These four rare photos of Mohalhil are courtesy of the late Billy Sheets. No idea where he got them from. Mohalhil was a grey Ma’naghi Sbayli bred by the Shammar tribe in 1922 and imported to Egypt in 1925, by Fawzan al-Sabik, who raced him there before presenting him Charles Crane in 1929. Crane imported him to the USA, where Mohalhil still has a very thin line. Notice the striking physical resemblance between Mohalhil and another stallion that was featured on this blog, Bango. But the similarities in their backgrounds is even more striking. Like Mohalhil Bango was a grey, desert-bred Ma’naghi Sbayli; like him he was bred by the Shammar tribe, at around the same time (Bango in 1923 and Mohalhil in 1922); like him he raced in Egypt.
According to the Abbas Pasha Manuscript, sometime in the first half of the nineteenth century, a Bedouin warrior by the name of Rashid ibn Jarshan, from the tribe of al-Buqum, owned a branch of the strain of Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz that was known as Kuhaylat Ibn Jarshan, after his name. His marbat was famous, and one of his mares was even the subject of a Bedouin ode. Ibn Jarshan sold one of his Kuhaylat mares, a grey by the name of al-Shuhaybah, to another Bedouin, Sarhan al-‘Abd of the tribe of al-‘Ajman. The strain of Kuhaylan Ibn Jarshan seems to have prospered at al-‘Abd, because al-Shuhaybah produced a grey daughter for him (by a Saqlawi), and that daughter in turn produced a grey daughter (also by a Saqlawi). Al-‘Abd leased the latter, the grand-daughter of Ibn Jarshan’s Kuhaylah, to a third Bedouin, Ibn Jallab of the tribe of Aal Murrah. She stayed at Ibn Jallab for six years without producing any foals, so al-‘Abd took her back by force, and sold her to Ibn Khalifah of Bahrain for a ton of money, plus camels, falcons, clothes, a slave (!) and a sizeable bunch of dates, a sale that effectively turned him (al-‘Abd) into a precursor of today’s Gulf millionnaires.. Her short and unproductive stay at…
Another horse from Egypt that has left his mark on Tunisian breeding is the chestnut Ibn Fayda (Ibn Rabdan x Lady Anne Blunt’s Feyda), a gift from Egypt’s Prince Kemal El Din Hussein to the Tunisian government stud of Sidi Thabet. This chestnut Ibn Fayda, b. 1925, is the full brother of the bay Ibn Fayda, b. 1927 (picture below), who was the sire of the Inshass stallions Adham (xZabia), El Moez (x Bint Zareefa) and Zaher (xZahra). Inshass is Egypt’s King Fuad’s private stable, which had acquired the bay Ibn Fayda from Prince Kemal El Din. The chestnut Ibn Fayda (I’ve never seen a picture) had a long career at Sidi Thabet in Tunisia, where he was noted as a sire of broodmares. One of his daughters, Imama, produced the chestnut masculine stallion Ourour (photo below, by Duc) and another was the grand-dam of the beautiful brown stallion Sumeyr (photo below, by Bango O.A.) both of whom become important government stallions in France (Ourour at Tarbes, and Sumeyr at Pau then Pompadour). Sumeyr is the sire of the pretty Pompadour mare Ablette, featured here.
Nasr, the chestnut [January 23rd: Sporthorse-data lists hims as “brown”, and the French studbook as “bay”] horse pictured below was a desert-bred stallion that was imported to the Tunisian stud of Sidi Thabet in the 1920s. He was imported from Egypt, where he’d had a good career as a racehorse. French masterbreeder Robert Mauvy, who knew Nasr, referred to him as “the prestigious imported horse Nasr” in one of his books. MIchael Bowling tells me that the Egyptian Royal Agricultural Society (RAS) used a desert bred racehorse by the name of Nasr as a stallion in the 1920s, and that this horse was subsequently exported to Tunisia. He also tells me this horse is the reason why the other more famous *Nasr (Rabdan El Azrak x Bint Yemama) was renamed “Manial”, when he was raced by Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfik before being exported to the USA. If so, then it seems like the chestnut horse in the picture is the “Nasr, a racehorse” of one of the early EAO studbooks. He left many descendents in Tunisia, and in France, of which Mauvy’s Moulouki is one. Moulouki’s maternal granddam Arabelle is a granddaughter of this Nasr. [Jan 23rd update: He is also…