Category: General

The neighborhood of al-Darb al-Ahmar. Photo from the Facebook page Ahl Masr Zaman.  

The three imported mares of Jenny Lees (her photo): Hamdanieh Habiba, Shuwaimeh Bint Warda and Kray Mohammedia

Wadhah and Belle are now boarded at a farm near my home where the children can enjoy them and see them more often. They will return to Pennsylvania for breeding to the Bahraini stallion Shuwaiman Al Rais this spring.  

A beautiful photo of the interior of one of the few remaining wonders of Syria still standing.

Different theories on the origin of the Arabian horse exist. The range is from a wild Proto-Arabian that lived in Arabia and is said to have been domesticated by the Bedouins, to theories that an already domesticated horse reached Arabia from outside. Some authorities maintain that the Arabian horse came from Egypt and compare the pictures of horses in ancient Egyptian art with petroglyphes (stone carvings) in Arabia and the modern Arabian horse. But except from the resemblence of those three groups no other proof can be found. The Arabian vocabulary concerning horses and horse-gear (saddles and so on) is on the other hand derived from Arameic or Persian words. Furthermore genetic findings, especially on maternal DNA (mtDNA) suggests that the Arabian horse has its origins from different sources. On the latter I have attached an excerpt from my book BEDOUIN HERITAGE. Click here for more: science Assyrian horses on the so called Lachisch relief Stallion Musannan Awaad (Rabdan Baher X Musannah Ghazwa) 2011 in Bahrain at the stables of Prince Mohammed

I have visited many great cities around the world, and nothing comes close to Aleppo before the Syrian civil war. Fes, in Morocco is a distant second. Photo from the Aleppo Photographic Museum

After several centuries of existence, the last French National Studs were sadly disbanded last year. However, bad things can sometimes lead to lucky opportunities. Many of the regional stallion stations and National Studs have kept listing of stallions at stud, details of imports, reports of missions to purchase foundation oriental horses, and those are now available for public review at the National Archives. I hope in the coming months to provide more information about them, recover our forgotten heritage and give more insight about some of the most important European foundation horses. Malheureusement, après plusieurs siècles d’existance, les derniers vestiges des Haras Nationaux français ont été dissous l’année dernière. Néanmoins, un événement aussi triste peu aussi parfois amener son lot de surprises. De nombreuses stations locales et certaines de nos grandes écuries nationales ont maintenu pendant toutes ces années des listing détaillés des étalons à la monte, de nombreux détails sur nos importations, les rapports sur les achats en Orient etc. Ceux-ci ont été regroupés et sont désormais accessible via les Archives Nationales. J’espère dans les prochains mois pouvoir vous donner de nouvelles informations à ce sujet, renouer avec notre héritage oublié et récupérer de nombreuses données sur certains de…

The following excerpt from the book BEDOUIN HERITAGE – THE WORLD OF THE ARABIAN HORSE deals with a question of importance: violence in Bedouin society. The horse made an important contribution to Bedouin warfare and raiding and has thus increased violence. click here  Wadi Rum, Jordan

Arabic Poetry, the only art of the desert, reflects the close relationship between man and his horse. In the book BEDOUIN HERITAGE – THE WORLD OF THE ARABIAN HORSE this is discussed at length. Here is an excerpt: Powerofpoetry To order this book, please go to       www.arabianheritagesource.com! Price 63,50 € (includes shipment worldwide), payment via PAYPAL.  The power of Bahrain: Hamdaany Zaizoom (Saqlaawy Saba´an X Hamdanieh Khaznah) 2004

Jeanne Craver just shared this short note signed on a White House card by US President Theodore Roosevelt to the US ambassador to Turkey. The note reads: “June 13 1906. Dear Mr. Leisheman Mr. Davenport is an awfully good fellow in every way. I hope that you can make a special effort to help him in his arab horse scheme; and any courtesy you can show him I shall accept as personal. Sincerely yours T. Roosevelt.”

Wonderful photos of a time long gone.  

Al Khamsa is updating its online roster to include  registrations from 2012 and 2013, and I was very happy to see two of my own breeding feature online: both Mayassa Al Arab and Jamr Al Arab now have their own pedigree page, and it’s very rewarding to see their old American pedigrees on an Al Khamsa page.

The Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah mare Yemameh/Yamama was the dam of the Crabbet foundation stallion Mesaoud, and the progenitor of the female line of Saqlawi Jadran that runs through the world famous Mahroussa and her offsprings at Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfiq of Egypt, many of which were exported to the USA and Europe and founded important families there. Yemameh/Yamama (same spelling in Arabic, different pronunciation  depending on whether it’s pronounced in Egpytian Arabic or Classical Arabic) was  from the breeding of Ali Pasha Sharif and went to the Khedive Abbas Hilmi II in his Qoubbeh/Koubbah stables. Wilfrid Blunt entered the following entry in his diary: “11th Jan. [1896] — Took Anne and Judith to Koubbah to see the Khedive. He received us with great empressement… and showed us his stud. He has got together some nice mares, but nothing quire first class, except two of Ali Pasha Sherif’s, one of which is our horse Mesaoud’s dam, a very splendid mare, with the finest head in the world. He has bred some promising colts and altogether the thing is well done.” The veterinary records for the Khedivial Stud offer the following additional information on the mare’s production: 2 July 1900: “The colt ibn Yamama is…

A very exciting development is the digitizing and online publication of eight Middle Eastern library collections, the result of a collaboration with the French National Library. There are so many Arabian horse related treasures in the French National Library, and I can’t help think how many more lie in the Middle Eastern ones.

Among the foundation stock of Old French Bloodlines, I would like to discuss one specific horse : the stallion Emmon born in 1819. Some have considered his blood as “Asil” for decades. But, does he really fit the “Asil” definition? What do we actually know about this horse? Honestly not much. The first french studbook describe him as : “a grey 1819 Arabian stallion, bought in England by Strubberg Senior and de Bony”. He stood at Pompadour from 1825 to 1836 and died in January 1837. Can we trace him to “Bedouin breeding of the Arabian peninsula”? No. No data from his breeding source is given in the French Studbook, nor inside the Journal des Haras. Indeed, he is sometimes listed as an Arabian horse…but also, he is sometimes not. Although, one must confess that French authorities did their best to try to classify their “oriental imports” (from Persians to Barbs), having him or any other horse listed as “Arabian” is not enough to prove he was “Asil”. We shall agree that the knowledge of “oriental breeds” was lacking depth at that time. The difference between Thoroughbred horses bred in England and orientals imports was also suffering great troubles. They…

 Lieutenant-General Sir Frederick Sleigh Roberts was the commander of the British expeditionary forces — the Kabul Field Force — that fought the second Anglo-Afghan war from 1878 to 1880. General Roberts led his 10,000 troops, including 2800 British soldiers, on the legendary march from Kabul to Kandahar, where he defeated the forces of Ayub Khan. The war horse General Roberts rode on the 20 days march from Kabul to Kandahar and on much of the campaign was Vonolel, a desert-bred Arabian stallion (photo below, at the National Army museum). Vonolel ranks high in the pantheon of history’s most famous war steeds

The French military airport in the foreground, the Euphrates and its modern bridge in the background. The bridge was built by the French in 1927 and destroyed by ISIS in 2013.

I will never, ever tire of watching that mythical photo of the Kuhaylan Haifi stallion, Monsoon (Tripoli x Ceres). Thank you Anita Westfall, for taking it. My Thalia (Javera Thadrian x Bint Dharebah by Monsoon) is a Monsoon granddaughter.

This week, my beautiful Ginger (DA Ginger Moon) left for Idaho, on lease to Bev Davison. She will be missed, but I could not give her the chance she deserved over the past three years, for lack of a suitable stallion, and competing breeding projects (and programs). Her 2015 miscarriage after a successful breeding to the aged Bahraini Mlolshaan stallion in Michigan still haunts me. Bev will attempt a breeding to Buckner (photo below), on lease from Rosemary, Terry and Lyman Doyle, and then to one of her handsome Babson-Doyles, if all goes well. Buckner is double Greggan and double Subani, and it does not get better than that!

This beautiful photo of Pericles appeared on Facebook yesterday, courtesy of PG Gregory.

So much has been said about the five lumbar vertebra of the Arabian horse. Many authors still mention it up till now. But History and science reject this assumption. This feature was described by Auguste Rochau, then by his pupil André Sanson. Both of them were French veterinarians in the second half of the nineteenth century. This is a summarized translation of what Sanson said on the topic : — The aryan horse, with a straight frontal bone and rectilinear nose bones and six lumbar vertebra is from Asia. — The mongolic horse, with a convex profile and nose bones and five lumbar vertebra is from Africa.  Here under is the translated text of Sanson ( extract from Denis Bogros’s book) [Both brachycephalic, one has a flat frontal bone, rectilinear nose bones and six lumbar vertebra in the spinal column, with seven cervical , eighteen dorsal and five sacral. The other has a convex or rounded frontal bone, slightly curved nose bones, and only five lumbar vertebra, and seven cervical vertebra, eighteen dorsal, and five sacral;  and this one’s lumbar vertebra are not only different from the others by their inferior number, but they differ also by their transverse apophyses’s shape…

One of Hungary’s veteran Asil Arabian horse breeders, Laszlo really needs no introduction. Laszlo owns and edits a horse magazine owner and editor Lovas Nemzet, an historian of the breed, and a believer in the universality of Asil bloodlines. Suffice it to say he owns some of the last lines to Babolna’s Siglavy Bagdady VI and 25-Amurath Sahib, and the very last line to Abbas Pasha’s Selma that runs through Musgrave Clark’s Courthouse Stud, and that he has been successfully breeding them to some of the best Egyptian lines in addition to the Davenport bloodline of Delicate Air.

It is an honor for me to publish my thoughts and my experiences on the Daughters of the wind Blog from time to time. At the same time an honor and pleasure  knowing and learning from  the opinions of other people about our beloved Arabian horse. One of my experiences about the Arabian horses was a film from Bahrain. A long time ago, at the turn of the millenium, in 1998 or 1999 I received it as gift from a German friend, Jens Sannek. The film was made by an Austrian breeder,  Anton Tucek in 1985 (!). Today I learned that Anton Tucek died in 2004. I spoke with his very kind widow, who agreed to let me publish the recording. Anton Tucek was a breeder of Asil Arabian horses. I’m sorry I didn’t know him personally, but I knew about his horses. He imported two stallions from Bahrain in the 1980’s. One of them was Sarhan, whose 26-year-old son (out of an original Iranian mare) is still living, now owned by the family. It is not easy to identify the horses in the film. I only can guess the names of someone, but I hope there are people who knows them exactly. I…

This beautiful lithography of some of the stallions imported by the famous greek dealer Nicholas Gliocho in the 1820’s can be seen at the Tylers Museum in Netherlands and online here

Le débat autour de l’origine exacte et de la genèse du pur sang arabe date approximativement du XIXème siècle, en Europe du moins. L’hypothèse d’une origine purement arabe suppose l’existence d’un cheval préhistorique local dont descendrait presque sans changement le pur sang arabe actuel. Carl Raswan entre autres défendait ce point de vue. L’autre hypothèse rejette l’idée d’un cheval arabe préhistorique et situe l’arrivée du cheval dans la Péninsule arabique sous forme domestiquée très tardivement , vers le premier siècle après JC. Les premiers chevaux de par leur rareté auraient eu un statut prestigieux, semi divin, avant d’être utilisés pour la guerre ou la chasse. La croissance des effectifs, très lente, est évaluée à travers des inscriptions détaillant le nombre de fantassins, chameliers et cavaliers ayant participé à des batailles antéislamiques. Christian Robin et Saud Soliman Theyab ,(chevaux et cavaliers arabes, ouvrage collectif) résument ainsi une énumération d’inscriptions découvertes au Yémen et dans le Hadramaout :”Cette longue récapitulation n’est pas sans intérêt. Au Ier siècle les chevaux se comptent en unités; au IIIème siècle c’est par dizaines; enfin au IVème siècle c’est par centaines. Le cheval, très rare en Arabie méridionale au début de l’ère chrétienne, devient relativement commun trois…

A veterinarian by training who worked with Veterinarians without Borders in the Sahel, Yassine Jamali now breeds Arabians, Arab-Barbs and North African greyhounds (Sloughis) at his family farm in central Morocco, on the banks of the Oum er Rabiaa river. I have been enjoying and appreciating Yassine’s online contributions on the breeding of Arabian and Barb horses and Sloughis for many years now. His thoughts on function driving form in conformation and temperament, on the breed’s adaption and resilience to evolving market needs, and bringing equine history to bear, resonate with me. I am excited at the opportunity to share them with you here.

I extended the pedigree of some foundation horses of the Bahrain royal studs by a few generations drawing on information from Vol. 1 and 2 of the studbooks, and other sources (like the pedigree of South Africa’s Tuwaisan). You can see it on allbreepedigree here. The only Bahraini sire line now extends beyond the Shawaf stallion “Felhaan Alshawaf” to his sire “Dhahmaan Aloud” (al-Oud meaning “the ancient”), which must have been active towards the end of the XIXth century. Other than being the sire of “Old Jellabi Speckled”, a.k.a. Jellaby Almarshoosh Alawal, b. 1914, “Felhaan Alshawaf” now appears as the sire of  the Jellabieh that is the maternal granddam of the three foundation Jellabi brothers (Jellaby Alwasmiya, Jellaby Sakhir, and Jellaby Najib).  In turn, “Old Jellabi Speckled” is the sire of “Wathnan Bay” a.k.a. “Wadhnaan” (photo below).

Another series of amazing videos of the presentation of Bahraini horses at the WAHO conference in Feb. 2017. Thanks to Chuck Saltzman for sharing. This is part 5, sharing in no order.

Jessie Heinrick send me these nice photos of her Wadd, who seems to be enjoying the vast expanses of the Oregon High Desert. He has never looked so happy, and that makes me happy for him. Thank you, Jessie. I hope he will show his worth with your new mares. The last and smallest photo in the evening light, shows similarities with the XIXth century Arabian horse lithographs of Carle Vernet and Victor Adam, very much in the style of his mother Wisteria: an arched neck, a powerful shoulder, a broad chest, a deep girth (deeper than many of his relatives I have seen), a short back, a round barrel and that small Wisteria croup.

Third mare not in foal this year, after Thalia CF and RL Zahra Assahra. SS Shadows Aana is at, 17 years old, the youngest of the three, is a built like a tank and is a personal favorite despite her lameness. I long for a colt by her. And a filly. Why is it that the best mares have the hardest time conceiving?

One of Hungary’s veteran Asil Arabian horse breeders, Laszlo really needs no introduction. Laszlo owns and edits a horse magazine owner and editor Lovas Nemzet, an historian of the breed, and a believer in the universality of Asil bloodlines. Suffice it to say he owns some of the last lines to Babolna’s Siglavy Bagdady VI and 25-Amurath Sahib, and the very last line to Abbas Pasha’s Selma that runs through Musgrave Clark’s Courthouse Stud, and that he has been successfully breeding them to some of the best Egyptian lines in addition to the Davenport bloodline of Delicate Air

“Le Naceri”, Nicolas Perron’s (1798-1876) classic translation into French of the masterpiece of Andalusian author Abu Bakr Ibn Badr Eddine Ibn al-Mundhir al-Baitar, who was master of horses and head veterinarian of Mamluk Sultan Al-Nasir ibn Muhammad ibn Qalawun (1245-1341) is now available in Gallica, the digitalized archives of the French National Library. The publication of Perron’s translation caused quite a sensation in nineteenth European equestrian horse circles, and helped spread the idea that Arabic veterinary science and horsemanship was the most advanced of its time. The full reference to the book is “Abu Bakr ibn Badr, Le Nâçerî. La perfection des deux arts ou traité complet d’hippologie et d’hippiatrie arabes. Traduit de l’arabe d’Abou Bekr ibn Bedr par M. Perron. Paris, Bouchard-Huzard, 3 vol., 1852, 1859 et 1860.” The original manuscript titled “kitab kashif al-wayl fi ma’rifat wa ‘ilaj amrad al-khayl” appears to have been written in Cairo for the Mamluk Sultan in 1333 AD, and is available somewhere in Istanbul. A later copy from the XVIIIth turned up at Christies’ a few years ago, and my friends Yahya Eliwa al-Tahawi and Muhammad Saud al-Tahawi have two later copies from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, done by a Syrian copyist.  

In another bout of bad luck, Zahra (RL Zahra Assahra, by Portent x Antezzah by Grand Pass) turned out not to be in foal to Latitude HD (Atticus x Lycia CF by Lydian), to which she had been bred to last October. That cross if successful was going to be the 2017 vintage of the Al-Dahdah program. Carrie Slayton, who boards her for me, took this shot of her below, which shows her conformation well. I really like the dark black skin of her muzzle, and I also like the strong back and coupling, which are characteristic of this strain. Carrie also bred her yesterday and the day before to her beautiful Audacious CF (Telemachus x Audacity), photos of Audacious below. Lets see if she takes, she is 22 so still young by my standards. I am so looking forward to that cross, they are a good match. Photos from Carrie.

So I went to see the horses today, all were beautiful especially Haykal and Barakah. I was riding Wadha, and had just started galloping, but the saddle strap was loose so the saddle slid to the side and I fell on my back, while my foot remained stuck in one of the stirrups. The whole thing hurts.

This story starts in Syria in the 1820’s. In those years, many European nations maintained trade and diplomatic representatives, or “consuls” in the Orient, especially in Aleppo, a cosmopolitan city, hosting European, Turkish, Greek, Jewish, Armenian traders. Aleppo was also one of the best places to start looking for the noble Kuhaylat horses bred by the Bedouin tribes of Northern Arabia. Many of these European consuls hosted horse buying expeditions during the 1820’s, such as those led by Count Rzewuski or by the French de Portes and Damoiseau in 1819-1820. Among these consuls were Van Massec (Van Masseyk) the Dutch consul, de Riguello the Spanish consul and the four Pithioto brothers (or Pitiota but the original spelling was probably Picciotto), the respective consuls of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Piemont-Sardinia, Prussia and Russia. This commercial web extended beyond Aleppo, and these diplomatic traders often dispatched various members of their family to other Mediterranean trading cities such as Trieste, Smyrna or Marseille. The European consular community and the town of Aleppo were vividly described by Damoiseau, the veterinary of the de Portes French expedition, in his book “Trip to Syria and the Desert”. During part of their expedition, the French traveled with the Polish Count Rzewuski and an Armenian agent of the Austro-Hungarian consul Pithioto/Picciotto, both looking for noble…

How I miss those days. 2005. North Eastern Syria, not far from the border with Iraq. From right to left: Ibn Ghurab’s son, yours truly, Ibn Ghurab, our driver. Ibn Ghurab had the best collection of desert bred Hamdani Simri mares I had ever seen. His family has owned them for some 250 years. From his stud, they spread to the tribes.

My friend Lyman Doyle is showing this “new” photo of Dib (top) on his Facebook page. Dib was the sire of Huntington Doyle, the stallion who revived Doyle breeding, and of my beloved Jadiba (bottom), now in a retirement home. Compare the likeness between sire and daughter, especially in the hindquarter.    

Many mysteries surround Marengo the mythical white stallion of Napoleon Bonaparte. Did he really exist or was he just a mirage created by the Emperor’s predilection for the “oriental” horse? Did the British really capture the old stud after the defeat at Waterloo? And why is he not recorded in the French studbooks listings of Napoléon’s horses? Napoleon’s legend tells us that his favorite white charger was named Marengo after the famous victory in Italy. This means that he was known after a different name before the battle of Marengo, and perhaps that name could be found in the French Studbooks. Interestingly, one of the horses described in the first ever published French Studbook (1838), fits the known description of Marengo perfectly. This stallion is called Seidiman (Sédiman in French). Seidiman was a light grey horse, born in 1794 or 1793. He was not taken during the battle of Aboukir as the myth says. Several other stallions were indeed…but this is another story for a later time. Rather he was shipped to France from Hungary by a M. de La Barthe (a royalist of this era) and likely confiscated for the benefit of the new Emperor after his coup d’état. For several years indeed he was one of the Emperor’s favorite war horse. Seidiman was without a doubt at the battle…

From Rehan Ud Din’s wonderful page on Facebook comes this photo of King Abdallah I of Jordan, petting his prized stallion, c. 1948. Photo by John Phillips — the LIFE Picture Collection. I wonder who the horse is. The halter is the way Bedouin halters should be.  

This mare is 25, but she is very precious, so I am not giving up.

This is work in progress. In face of fading memories and changing narratives, and documented truths that don’t seem to matter anymore, and in keeping with my obsession to safeguard all I can from a previous Middle Eastern order, I have taken it upon me to list and document the part-bred Arabian horses that came to the Lebanese racetrack from Iraq starting from the 1950s and well into the 1980s, and were later used as stallions by the most prominent breeders. Together with the Lebanese civil war (1975-1990), they were responsible for the destruction of the asil, purebred Lebanese Arabian horse breeding program, and there were spillover effects into neighboring Syria (mostly Homs and Tell Kalakh, but also Hama and Damascus and into Deyr Ezzor), where part-bred Iraqi stallions were also used. There were grandsons and great grandsons of the grey English Thoroughbred known as “Tabib” and “al-Suri” in Lebanon and Syria, and sometimes had more than cross. Iraqi imported stallions to the Beirut racetrack, grandsons of Tabib, 25% Engligh Thoroughbred blood, 1950s and 1960s, later used as stallions:   Hisham, by Walans/Violence by Tabib, one of the earliest and perhaps the most used to all these Iraqi imports; raced by Henri…

I now have a reliable account of the story of warriors eating horses in Iraq and Syria. When I first heard the story, it was about American soldiers buying and eating Arabian horses, but it did not make much sense, given food habits in this country and restrictions imposed on US soldiers. Lately, someone told me that it was actually ISIS fighters from Kazakhstan, a country where people eat horse meat regularly, who were seeking Arabian horses, and white ones in particular, to eat them. Several Kazakh squadrons appear to operate within ISIS ranks.

So a Syrian man, Amir Mardini, plagiarized the reference book of renowned Arabian horse authority ‘Ali al-Barazi — now out of print — and put the entire content of the book online, under his name, here: www.kutub.info_18708. He removed the name of Barazi and put his name instead on the entire book. Oh, and he added a cover image. Fortunately, some of us still have copies of the Barazi book, which I can scan and put online for everyone.  Who does he think he is fooling?

Towards the end of 1831, the French National Stud’s Journal dedicated a series of articles to the Prussian studs. French imports of horses for cavalry remount from their eastern neighbors, including the Prussians, had been massive for several decades. This matter was indeed of utmost importance to the French and this report provides interesting details on several Arabian stallions used in Prussia during the early 19th century. The first report of this series is devoted to the private Stud of the King of Wurtemberg in Stuttgart (which became renown as the “Weil Stud”). The use of “Oriental” stallions was first reported in 1818 with the use of Persian, Turkish, Nubian and other stallions, but more importantly a good number of Arabian stallions. Fifteen to eighteen of them were maintained at the Stud. However by 1831 only five of them remained and are described as follows: – Bairactar (aka Bayracdar): a magnificent dapple-grey stallion, bought in 1817 aged 4 in Trieste for the King by Colonel Baron Von Gemmingen and used at stud since 1819. For 4 years, he was one of the King’s mount, and without a doubt one of the most magnificent. He was after appointed head stallion for the stud and…

This one is for my daughter: Today I explained to her to that her mare “Belle” was the daughter of Invictus son of Sportin Life son of Brimstone son of Dharantez son of Dhareb son of Letan son of *Muson.

First, I would like to thank Edouard who generously offered me to post on this blog about the numerous findings from the French archives. It will be, I hope, the first of many posts to be shared with the worldwide community of Arabian horse breeders and enthusiasts. In January 1829, the “Journal des Haras”, the French National Stud’s Journal, included a very detailed article of a visit of National Stud officials to the Babolna Stud in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The visit took place in 1827. At that time, the French were presented with 10 Arabian stallions. From these 10, 5 belonged to a group of 13 Arabian stallions and a couple of “other” horses sent in 1824 to Hungary by M. Glioccho (spelled “Pliocho” by the French). They were purchased from the Panz family of Constantinople for 8,000 ducats and had already been used as breeding stallions before. Here are the details provided by M. Erdelyi, with my translation: 1 – Siglavy-Gidran aka *Shaklavy-Gidean, 16 years old, 14 hands and 3 inches, a Saklawi of Nedjd, Gidran family, dark chestnut, a star on the forehead and both white hind legs. 2 – Gidran, first son of Siglavy-Gidran and the Nedjdi mare Tifle aka *Fisle…

Amelie is a French breeder lover of Asil Arabians. She belongs to a new generation of savvy researchers and has recently been making some pretty amazing discoveries mining the old French Studbooks (the oldest from the earliy 1800s) now available online on Gallica, the French National Library’s open access catalog. Her hypotheses are daring and some of her findings will please Arabian horse historians.  

Talawat is a superb broodmare from the line of Cherifa, a bay Shuwaymah Sabbah imported by the French from the Sba’ah ‘Anazah Bedouins in Syria in 1869. She is now owned by Fabienne and Severine Vesco in France.