This young stallion from France is, in my opinion, one of the most representative elements of the original Arabian type. This is one of the types once favored by North Arabia’s Bedouins as a sire. Click on the photo to enlarge it. He is Murad Sbaa, by Shueyman el Badawi and Murad Ouarda Sabah, by Jahir et Murad Hadiya, par Ourki and Hamada, by Irmak (Tunisia); his sire Shueyman el Badawi by Mokhtar (Syria) and Murad Haouda Sahib, by Cherif et Hamada, by Irmak (Tunisia). He looks both like his sire and his maternal grandsire, Jahir. He won French USCAR’s 5200 meters race — by a long shot — in September 2014. The real Arabian horse still exists. Photo of his maternal grandsire Jahir (a gem of a horse, that should have bred 300 foals) below:
Jeanne Craver just shared this photo of the 2003 Kuhaylan Hayfi Davenport stallion Twickenham (Regency CF x Kiddleywink CF by Regency CF), who is still at Craver Farms. I have always loved that little stallion.
Check it out here.
Of the new generation of stallions rising at the EAO thanks to Ali Shaarawi’s tireless efforts, the Saqlawi Gabour (El Ragel x Gobrana by Kasemy x Gomanah by Maleeh x Bedaat by Ibn Akhtal) is certainly my favorite. He is not striking, but is well built and well balanced.
I so like this photo of the 1985 black Ma’naqi Sbayli mare Suuds Juli Aana (PRI Saqlawi Suud x Julyana ZHS). The muzzle, the jaws, the look in the eye (reminiscent of a mare from Cal Raswan’s pictures of desert horses, don’t remember which one), and again, that overall air of a wild animal. In the second photo, the same mare looks like a tank. A desert background would be mor fitting for these photos.
So we will be heading back to the USA this summer after two years in Egypt. I am both happy and not happy about this development. I don’t know what it is, or rather, I don’t know how else to put it, but in Egypt, gravity, in the sense of the force that ties you to the land, is stronger than in other places I have lived in. It’s a place that is hard to leave, despite the challenges of life here. But looking forward to seeing my horses regularly, and my horse folks, too.
This photo of the 1964 French and North African Arabian stallion Saadi (Ourour x Oureah by Ghalbane OA) has recently surfaced on the internet. I had not seen it before. It is likely from a magazine.
I am in Doha, Qatar for two days. I just came back from a visit to the brand new “old suq” of Suq Waqif. It’s an anthropological experience of the first order, in how a country can and did re-imagine and reinvent its past, or rather bits and pieces of the past of many neighboring countries, re-package it, and present it to the world as its own — with success. I could not distinguish what was specifically Qatari, if anything, but then again the Arabian Gulf culture is a largely supra-national culture. The architecture is a mix of Oman’s and Bahrain’s, the Bedouin-pattern textiles are Syrian imports, the metal lamps are Egyptian, the glass patterns in the walls are Yemeni. The tricks works, up to a point, even for the trained eye. Just imagine the effect on the random tourist.
This was taken in a Damascus interior by French photographer Gervais Courtellemont in 1908, and gleaned off the internet. The Facebook website I got it from notes that the oldest color photo ever was taken by the Lumiere brothers in Lyon in 1907 using the same autochrome technology. What epitomes of refinement old Damascus and old Aleppo were.. and old Bagdad, and old Mosul, and old Sanaa, old Mecca, old Medina, and old Jerusalem… now all gone.
By far my favorite stallions at Mrs. Barbary’s Shams El Asil farm are the 2002 bay Hadban stallion Zay El Amar (SEA Halawat Zaman x Meshmesha by Anas x El Anood by Akhtal) and his own sire the 1998 grey SEA Halawat Zaman (SEA Shams El Asil x SEA Set el Hosn by Lokman a.k.a. Ibn Adaweya). Perfect conformation, muscular stallions, with high withers, deep girth, sloped shoulders, good bone, short backs, plus all the rest, the result of 50 years of selection. Mrs. Barbary is a master breeder for sure. Photo below by Ahmed Nashaat.
Pedigree link here. Dam of Sahmet, and granddam of Saher, Safir, and others.
Yet another Hayfiyah, and another Presto CF daughter (it’s never too late) out of Ala Athena Hafiah (Riposte CF x Femina by Ibn Alamein), one of my favorite mares of this strain. She is pretty and looks a lot like her dam.
A newly born Kuhaylah Hayfiyah filly of Davenport bloodlines by Presto CF (Ibn Alamein x Pretty Fancy by Ionian) out of Du Soleil BPA (Triermain CF x Circe by Odysseus) at Claudia and Jim Burris. The dam is a Triermain daughter out of a Triermain sister.
From the collection of his grandson and namesake Ahmed Ibish, Jr, who writes: These are some photos of winning horses of Ahmed Ibish, you can identify them with the previous photos, by horse shapes and numbers. It’s a pity no names preserved. I can only recollect my father describing how some of his father’s horses “took the Primo.” As to the racing track I can not be sure, is it that of Beirut or Alexandria? No clue. Mostly Beirut, simply because it could not be practical for him to transport his stallions all the way to Alexandria for the sheer purpose of racing. He used to go there for rather selling some of them, and given his old age in the photos I do not think he would have taken the burden. I only can remember how my father spoke of the exquisite method of training and weight loss (Tadhmeer) Ibish used to apply on his horses. He also said that he was a stern man who would not utter a single word about these secret methods. But in general he was close to the Bedouin tribes of the Syrian desert, hence he learned most of his techniques.
Jeannie Lieb’s war mar Fin deSiecle CF (Jamboree CF x Bonne Fortune). I saw Jamboree at Craver Farms last month, and what a regret he is not as fertile as she should be. What a good sire, judging from his only offspring.
News this morning that Saudi Arabian airstrikes have leveled the 1,100 year Imam Hadi mosque in Sa’dah, in the far north of Yemen. Sa’dah is one of the last well-preserved medieval cities in the Middle East.
This wonderful, very promising black Kuhaylat al-Krush filly was born this month at Kim Davis’ in Illinois, out of HH Karisma Krush (Othello LD x Kashmir Krush LD by Sportin Life). After the devastating tragedy that befell the group of Krush mares in Texas, she is one of two rays of hope for the next generation of this precious (and ever) strain.
This Arab (ie, Bedouin, not Egyptian peasant) village was right next to Lady Anne’s Sheykh Obeyd property. The photo was taken in 1911. Today it is a sprawling informal, poverty-stricken suburb of Cairo, home to around a million people.
This rare shot is from the Facebook page “Ahl Misr Zaman” which I thoroughly recommend you to follow. It’s a great window to Egypt’s past. King Fuad of Egypt and the Sudan heads the procession (in black, towards the right). The page notes that Prince Kemal El Dine was offered the Egyptian throne upon the death of his father Sultan Hussein (who ruled 1914-1917) but he turned it down, so his paternal uncle King Fouad ascended the throne.
The other day I was on the 16th floor of the Egyptian Ministry of Finance (the one where they have this impressive portrait gallery of all former ministers of finance), and I saw a painting of Muhammad Sherif Pasha (with a tenure date around 1840, don’t remember exactly), with the mention “father of Ali Sherif Pasha”). I was reminded of this upon reading the December 8th, 1910 entry of Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals, where she mentions that “on the conquest of Syria the plan was — Mohd. Ali’s plan — to have Egypt for himself and his heirs, Syria for M. Sherif (his Minister and Govr. of Syria) and Yemen for Kurshid.“
From Carrie Slayton, a fellow Arabian horse preservationist (thank God for these angels): “Polynesia LD foaled a lovely bay Sharp filly April 23rd,sire is the Davenport stallion Fire Dragon LF. She will be named DI (Desert Ice) Pele, for the Hawaiian volcano goddess”. That’s the same pedigree as this horse, three generations of Davenports on top, and a particularly close tail female line to Manial’s Mahroussa. Photos below from Carrie.
This is one of the nice surprises which maintaining this blog can offer you from time to time. Some time ago, Dr. Ahmed Ibish, the grandson of his famous namesake, left some comments on Daughters of the Wind about his grandfather’s involvement with horse-racing, and he now sent me these precious, precious photos. I believe these are the first photos the Arabian horse community gets to see of Ahmed Ibish (of Aiglon, hence, *Exochroda, hence Sirecho fame). Please do not take them or reproduce them without his permission. Click on the photos to enlarge them. Ahmed wrote in his message: “I could copy these pictures in Damascus; Unfortunately none of them was dated, and they have not titles or comments of any kind. I believe that the racing track shown is that of Beirut? Date must be around end of 1930s; My grand father lived between 1857-1941; the young man with the mare is my late father Nouri Ibish (1891-1975), picture apparently taken in Damascus. While the picture of Ahmed Ibish sitting, shows his two sons, Hussein (1884-1967) & Nouri; None of them was a horse breeder, but were both keen enthusiasts of outdoor life and big game hunting. I wish I…
This morning I was reflecting on the number of tail females left at the Stud of Ali Pasha Sharif after the plague which ravaged his stud around 1875, until his death in 1897. It is surprisingly small: 1) Ghazieh line (Saqlawi Jadran ibn Sudan); mares: Horra, Helwa, Bint Helwa, Johara, Bint Horra, Yemameh (dam of Mesaoud); stallions: Wazir, Amir (Aziz x Horra) offered for sale to Blunts but declined; young stock: Ghazala, Mesaoud, Ibn Johara, Ibn Helwa, Ibn Yemameh Sr, Ghazieh, etc. 2) Nura line (Dahman Najib); mares: Bint Nura Esh-Shakra, various Bint Nura mares (a brown, a bay and a white); stallions: Ibn Nura; Ibn Bint Nura El Hamra (offered for sale to the Blunts March 5 1891 but declined); young stock: (ibn) Mahruss; Abu Khasheb; Kaukab 3) Faras Naqadan line (Dahman Shahwan); mares: Bint ‘Azz (went to Amato the dealer), Mumtaza, Bint Mumtaza (Badiaa); stallions: Aziz, Azz (Aziz x Mumtaza) offered to the Blunt who delined, Nasrat; young stock: Bint Bint Azz; Sahab; 4) Arussa line (Kuhaylan Nawwaq); mares: Noma, Bint Arussa (Harkan x Arussa); 5) Jellabiet Feysul line (Kuhaylan Jallabi); mares: Bint Bint Jellabiet Feysul; Makbula; El Argaa; Yamama; young stock: Khatila; (Bint) Makbula; Kasida; Manokta; Jellabieh; Merzuk; Yatima…
I could not get decent pictures of Jamr (Vice Regent CF x Jadiba), who is not three years old yet, and is going through a growth spurt — a real teen-ager. I was taken aback at first (my eye got used to the Egyptians) but then I took a second look and thought he was promising and had a lot of the right things in the right place. He still needs at least three years before I showing his true promise. What I could already see was that Vice Regent’s Davenport blood shortened the longer back of Jadiba and did not affect the deep girth. It turned Jadiba’s rectangle into a square. The legs are good. The head I could not tell yet (he had a few teeth coming out), I could already see his sire and dam’s big jowls, but it looks like he will be taking a lot after his dam’s sire, Dib.
That’s the best head shot I could get of my DA Ginger Moon, a tail female Rabanna mare, with lots of Blunt and Ali Pasha Sharif blood (and it shows). There is a lot of the Bint Moniet el Nefous in there (Nazeer x Moniet el Nefous), close up, and it shows too. That’s a very different mare from my other horses, all of whom have a majority of Davenport and other early desert blood. She turned out not to be in foal to the Bahraini Mlolshaan stallion. What a disappointment. So much time and resources invested to make it happen, all gone to waste. Oh well.
Last week I saw “Belle” for the first time. Jadah BelloftheBall (I so don’t like that name and I want to change it) is Jeannie Lieb’s gift to me in 2013. I liked the mare, she sent all the right vibes to me. Looking at her, you’d easily forget you are in the woods of Pennsylvania, and you would feel transported in time and space to Arabia in the early twentieth century (one of my favorite time and space combinations, but I don’t think I would have survived more than a few days there and then). She is a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz tracing in tail female to *Nufoud of King Abd al-Aziz Aal Saud, sent to Albert Harris in 1932. She is only five generations removed from the desert (from both *Nufoud and *Turfa), and she looks like she came straight out of there. The mare is not without defects, I would have especially liked to see a deeper girth and a longer croup, but I don’t mind her just the way she is; I appreciate the big bone, the short and thick cannons, the large hocks and hooves, the high wither, the highly set tail, and above everything else, that overall look…
A photo of the Davenport foundation mare Portia (Tripoli x Dhalana) I had not seen before.
I am in the USA for a few days, for the first time in two years. I am here for work reasons, but you can imagine I took advantage of the weekend to go see my horses. So Saturday, Darlene Summers and Jenny Krieg drove up with me to Pennsylvania to see the 7 (well, 6.5) I have there, and had a wonderful time talking horse on the way. As usual, my camera died on me half-way through the visit, and I have to rely on my friends’ photos. Here is a photo of my Wadd, which Darlene too. He will be 4 years old this September. He is a slow grower, and Charles Craver told me today that the inbred ones are even slower growers than the others. He had just rolled in the mud, and still had a lot of his winter coat. I still think highly of him, and hopefully he will keep improving and taking more after his sire, the glorious Triermain CF (whom I also saw today — what a privilege).
Last week I visited Mrs. Barbary at her Shams El Asil Farm outside Cairo. It was a lovely moment, and I enjoyed seeing her and her horses; I was especially struck by the stallions from the Bilal (Morafic x Mona) sire line, who have a very desert look about them, and are very correct and well built. The grey 1998 stallion SEA Halawat Zaman (SEA Shams El Asil by Sabah El Noor by Bilal, out of SEA Set El Hosn by Lokman/Ibn Adaweya) stood out, and so did his bay son and otherwise lookalike, SEA Zay El Kamar. That said, one interesting part of the conversation was about the stallion Sharkasi; Mrs. Barbary is the custodian of the most credible story about him, a story apparently obtained first hand from one of the protagonists. I recall reading a short version of this story in an investigative report WAHO commissioned in 1976. In essence, Mrs. Barbary told me that there was a sandy open area near the present location of the El Zahraa farm, where horse merchants from al-Sham (Syria, I asked if traders from other areas like Najd came there too, but no, these were apparently only horse traders from Syria) used to bring horses for…
A photo of Saudi Arabian King Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud with King Faruk during the former’s official visit to Egypt in 1946. Taken on board of the train from Suez to Cairo (King Ibn Saud had come to Egypt by sea from Jeddah to Suez). The year before, several Saudi desert mares had been presented to King Faruk.
A verse from pre-islamic [Bedouin] Arabian poet Tufail b. ‘Awf al-Ghanawi (died ca. 610), know as Tufail al-Khail [Tufail of the horses] for the emphasis on horses in his poetry, from Abu Ubaida’s “Book of Horses” [translation mine]: Horses the likes of wolves, so well-protected, for they are the pick of what’s left of [the bloodlines] of al-Ghurab and Mudh-hab Al-Ghurab and Mudh-had are two famous steeds from these ancient times. Their offspring had become rare, at least within Tufail’s tribe, and they were treasured and well-guarded for that reason.
I am looking for a template with placeholders for the names of the parents, the grandparents, the great-grandparents, etc. which can be printed later. I am tired of doing all that stuff by hand.
Another beautiful photo from the Dandashi landlords of Tall Kalakh, those master breeders of Asil Arabian horses; they were the equivalent of the Tahawis in Syria, really. Photo courtesy of Mukarram Abd al-Karim Othman al-Dandashi.
A specimen from the collection of Muhammad Saoud al-Tahawi, who is looking for a catalog of Mamluk bits, if you know which Museum has published one.
You get a window into Lady Anne Blunt’s selection criteria when purchasing new horses when reading this passage of her Journals, March 15, 1887: “He [Zeyd, who was sent on a purchasing trip in the desert] is to be very particular about plenty of bone, height of wither, length, of course everything else perfect and origin mazbut. Everything else perfect, but three points stand out in this concise statement. Where is the bone, and where are the high withers today? Check the withers of DA Ginger Moon, my Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah (back to Basilisk) of overwhelmingly Blunt/Crabbet lines.
Mukarram al-Dandashi, grandson of Abd al-Karim Osman al-Dandashi, one of most prominent leaders of the Dandashi clan of Tell Kalakh — the breeders of the best horses in Syria and Lebanon historically — sent a number of historical photos of his family on horses, which I will publish in his name. A whole book could be written about the Dandashis and Arabian horses. Barazi barely scratched the surface in his book.
February 8, 1882: “I had a visit from Zeyd of Kasim. He was riding a fleabitten Dahmeh Shahwan, a fine mare with good hocks. He said she belonged to a certain Aga, she came from Ali Pasha Sherif from Abbas Pasha’s horses, is six years old. The Aga is afraid to ride her, she jumps and shies and he asked Zeyd to ride and teach her — break her in, in fact. Her head is remarkably good and she seems good tempered. I like her looks.” Who could that 1876 mare be? Certainly not the dam of *Shahwan, who was apparently still with Ali Pasha Sherif when Shahwan was bred (so in 1886). What about this other one, born in 1881? March 14, 1892, at Ahmed Pasha’s: “There is a little white Dahmeh Shahwanieh, 11 years old which they say has never had a foal and I should like to try getting her… Yanko said there had been no luck with the Pasha with that strain”.
So my beloved old Jadiba (Dib x Jabinta by Jadib) went to her retirement home on Christmas Eve 2014, thanks to Monica Respet’s help and friendship. She was the Christmas gift for a family with small children. I wish her well. My only regret is not to have been able to breed a replacement daughter. I will always regret that September 2011 failed AI breeding attempt to a stallion born in 1979. The semen was dead when it reached the mare, and she never cycled after that.
A photo of my 2011 Wadd Al Arab (Triermain CF x Wisteria CF) from about a year ago. I like the way he is turning out, especially the broad forehead, the small pricked ears, the small muzzle, the good shoulder, the distinct withers, the short back, and the balance in general. I hope to breed him this year or next. Earlier photos at 3.5 months here.
What a balanced, well-built, harmonious desert-looking mare. You can see the influence of both *Hamrah and *Haleb on her. She was by *Hamrah out of *Meleky (*Haleb x *Hadba). Does anyone know where this look can be found in today’s Davenports?
That’s a recent shot Darlene Summers took of my CSA Baroness Lady (Sab El Dine x Takelma Rosanna by Prince Charmming), a 1999 Ma’naqiyah Sbayliyah of overwhelmingly Egyptian lines, with 6 generations of Egyptian sires on top of the old Crabbet female line. She is in foal to Monologue CF, a stallion of Davenport lines, due in August 2015. She is one of six asil younger (17 years old and less) mares of that Ma’naqi Sbaili line in existence in North America. Her sister and a maternal cousin of hers are with Jacquie Glasscoe Choate in Texas, and three other mares, all daughters and grand-daughters of this mare, can be last traced to Janice Park’s South Springs (SS) program, which line-breeds to El Reata Juan (Julyan X Mist Aana by Hallany Mistanny), and produces mostly blacks. She will need to go to a good preservation home, to make space for the new foals coming in the summer. If you know someone who is interested, let me know.
The seventh anniversary of this website, which coincides with the birthday anniversary of my elder daughter Samarcande, was on January 18th. Like other years before, I like to publish a photo of Samarcande on this day, and looking back at the January entries of the past seven years, you can see how much she’s grown. This year, her two year old younger sister makes her debut on the site. She too is a fan of “hossezz”.
If you are interested in weaving and textiles, as well as in Bedouins, then this is apparently the definite book on the subject. I just bought a copy.
Happy holidays to all the friends and readers of Daughters of the Wind around the world. May the new year bring you good health, happiness and peace of mind.
I mentioned earlier that Shahwan of Dahman Shahwan fame was an historical character. I am now happy to report that I found a solid, dated historical reference to this Shahwan in a book by Mamluk-era chronicler Abu al-Mahasin Taj al-Din Abd al-Baqi ibn Abd al-Majid al-Yamani (born in Mecca in 1281 AD — died in Damascus in 1343 AD). The book is called “Bajhat al-Zaman fi Tarikh al-Yaman“, in short, “History of Yemen”. It is a chronicle of historical events in Yemen before and during the time of the author, who appears to have lived at the same time as Shahwan. The mention of Shahwan of ‘Abidah (of Qahtan) occurs in page 95 of the book, under the events of the year 678 Hijri (1279 AD), under the title of “Account of Muzaffar’s takeover of Dhofar, Hadramaut and the city of Shibam“. This Muzaffar is King al-Muzaffar Abu al-Mansur Shams al-Din Yusuf, second king of the Rasulid dynasty of Yemen. Muzaffar ruled Yemen and its dependencies from 1249 to 1295 AD. The account is as follows (my translation from Arabic): “Account of Muzaffar’s takeover of Dhofar, Hadramaut and the city of Shibam: the cause for this was that the warships of Salem son of Idris al-Habudhi…
Anyone knows how much it costs to export horses from America to Europe by plane?
I finally have the answer to a lingering question about the leadership of the Shammar Bedouins in North Arabia. Some twenty years ago, when asking about the ownership of a number of lines of desert bred Arabians, I was confused by references to at least four contemporary “Sheykhs of the Shammar” within the leading Jarba family. The Kuhaylan Krush were the horses of Mayzar Abd al-Mushin al-Jarba, Sheykh of the Shammar; the Shuwayman Sabbah were the horses of Mashaal Pasha son of Faris al-Jarba, also Sheykh of the Shammar; and the Hadban Enzahi were the horses of Dham al-Hadi, also Sheykh of the Shammar; the Saqlawi Jadran adn the Dahman Amer were the horses of Ajil al-Yawir al-Jarba, also Sheykh of the Shammar. All four had lived around the same time. What was going on? Later I came to understand that this had to do with political splits within the leading family, which were caused or at least encouraged by the Ottoman Turks, then the British and the French, but I never had the full picture. Here it is now, in the clarity of intelligence report such as this one published by the French army in 1943: “Autrefois, lors de leur unite, les Chammar ont beaucoup…
Jackson Hensley sent my this recent photo of his 2002 Kuhaylan Hayfi stallion (Davenport lines) Pulcher Ibn Reshan (Triermain CF x Aniq el Bedu by Iliad). There is something of the look of a wild desert animal in his eyes, that same look you see in old photos of desert birds, gazelles and young camels.
gleaned today from L’Orientaliste library in Cairo, all foundational French ethnographic studies from the 1930s: — Victor Muller’s “En Syrie avec les Bedouins: les tribus du desert” (1931) — Albert de Boucheman’s “Une petite cite caravaniere: Sukhne” (a little gem) — Albert de Boucheman’s “Materiel de la vie Bedouine recueilli chez les Arabes Seba’a” — and the sweetest surprise of all (because they could not find it in their vaults last time dropped by): Robert Montagne’s “Contes poetiques Bedouins recueillis chez les Shammar de Gezire”. This one is a lucky find. I feel so blessed.
One of the most interesting passages of Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals and Correspondence is her visit to the Bedouin Tarabin tribe of the Sinai peninsula and the Negev desert, during her and Wilfrid Blunt’s crossing from Cairo to Jerusalem in February 1881, and her account of their camel and horse-related traditions; here is on the camels, to set the stage for what will be more than one blog entry, and I will have to say more on the horses and legends associated to them: “A delul [female camel] or hajin [male camel] becomes asil like the English thoroughbred. Five generations of a thoroughbred sire are considered sufficient among Ayeydeh, Shuaga, Terabin, Naazeh [in reality Maazeh] and perhaps Howeytat, though as the last touch on the confines of [Arabian Peninsula Bedouin tribes of] Harb and Sherarat they ma others notions”. [February 11th, 1881] A lot of the tribes mentioned above appear in this map of the area in 1908: The Tarabin today number around half a million, spread across Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Jordan. In Egypt, they are mostly present in the Sinai, of which they are the largest Bedouin group, but also the Suez Canal cities and the…
During the Blunt’s visit to Jeddah around Christmas of 1880, “Wilfrid has met a man who came from Sana and told him that at some distance from Sana in the interior there are the Beni Husayn, Mohammed Bedouins who catch wild horses. They live in the district called Jofr [correction: it’s actually Jof] el Yemen and are very ‘adroit’ in riding….” [Lady Anne Blunt Journals and Correspondence, December 24, 1880] I am in Sana (San’aa) the capital of Yemen for two weeks, and although I am locked up in my work’s office and adjoining guest house for security reasons, it is the occasion for me too tell you about these Bedouins of Yemen: As Lady Anne wrote, these are the Dhu Husayn, an offshoot of the Dhu Mohammed, who hail from the large Yemeni tribal confederation of Bakil. Their tribal area is in Jawf/Jof el Yaman (the reference to Yemen is to differentiate it from the other Jawf/Jof of North, which is in Northern Saudi Arabia, just to the South of Jordan), to the north east of Sana. My colleague (a Senior Water Specialist at the World Bank office in Sana), Naif Abu Luhoum, is the from the chieftain family of the Dhu…
From Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals, December 15th, 1880, during her trip to Jeddah: “In the afternoon we called first on Omar Nasif. The chestnut mare still stands outside the little yard near the house…” Here are modern images of the Naseef house, one of the very few buildings still standing from the old down-town of Jeddah, which has all been razed to the ground, to give way to modern building in the 1960s (yet another beautiful Arab city destroyed…) For an inside tour of the Naseef house, and a view of the yard where that mare in Lady Anne’s Journals, see this blog entry here. The house as in other old Jeddah houses in apparently made of coral (yes, the stuff in the reefs) and of wood imported from what is today Indonesia, a legacy of the glorious (and little known) history of Jeddah as a cross-roads of trade between Egypt, East Africa and South East Asia (like Mukalla in Yemen, like Mocha, like Aden after that).
Check it out here. By the way, the Homer Davenport collection is there too. Sample below, taken in the Cairo souk.
One never stops learning. A read of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript section of the Saqlawi al-‘Abd strain teaches you that the strain is actually a branch of Saqlawi Jadran: It turns out that a man from the Shammar tribe was once taken prisoner by an Ibn Sha’lan (the leading clan of the Ruwalah tribe). The Shammari gave up his Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah to the Sha’lan man in exchange for his freedom. Later the Sha’lan man was somehow involved in the murder of a fellow tribesman (from the clan of al-Mani’ of the Qa’aqi’ah of the Ruwalah) and had to surrender the Saqlawiyah to this man’s family as blood money. The family’s caretaker was a slave (‘Abd in Arabic) who once rode the mare in battle against the Bani Sakhr tribe, and was unhorsed from her. From there the strain spread to the tribes, including back to the Ruwalah. In that specific case, the Bedouin traditional judges decided that the right to claim any mare of that strain under trover — that’s a Bedouin practice allowing the strain’s first owner within a certain tribe to claim any horse from that strain that enters the tribe — remained with the family of the deceased Ruwalah…
Shafi Ibn Sha’ban, the leader of the sub-tribe of Bani Hajar of Qahtan in the mid-XIXth century, is the one who led his tribe from the valleys of Najd to the shores of Eastern Arabia (al-Ihsa) in 1248 H, which is equivalent to 1832. The Bani Hajar, separated from the bulk of their Qahtan brethen, eventually broke away, and became a separate, self-standing tribe (singular al-Hajri). Source: Mohammad Saud al-Hajri, who is a reliable historian. Shafi Ibn Sha’ban is all over the Abbas Pasha Manuscript section on Dahman Najib (also in the extracts published at the end of Lady Anne’s Journals with her annotations), and appears in connection with the Dahmah Najiba of Ibn Aweyde. Lady Anne, in her notes, wondered about his identity. It makes sense: as the head of the tribe, he did not need to be introduced. She also mentions the Bani Hajar as living in East Arabia, most of them being pearl divers.
Lady Anne’s Journals and Correspondence, edited by Rosemary Archer and James Fleming, and published by Alexander Heriot & Co. Ltd Booksellers and Publishers in 1986, is, together with the Abbas Pasha Manuscript (Forbis and Sherif), the most important publication on the Arabian horse in recent memory. I have read it time and again, and I keep marveling at its editors’ skill and effort in transcribing hundreds of handwritten letters and journal entries, and putting them in their proper historical context. That said, neither editor is an Arabist, to my knowledge, and, in light of Lady Anne’s lifelong relationship with the Arab world and the large number of Arabic proper and common names in her Journals, this seems to have prevented them from properly transcribing many of these Arabic names; in some cases, lady Anne may have been the source of the mis-trancsription. So I have ventured to makes notes of these corrections in a separate page of this blog, and substantiate these annotations and corrections with evidence, in the hope that further editions could take them into account, or at least be aware of them. This ongoing effort will be found at daughterofthewind.org/labjournals
Yesterday, I spent some time reading the story of al-Kuhaylah al-Harqah in the Abbas Pascha Manuscript (not the English version of Forbis and Sherif, but rather the large excerpts in Hamad al-Jassir’s Usul al-Khayl al-Arabiyyah al-Hadithah). The story of al-Harqah is remarkable for its simplicity (it’s not hard to follow), its conciseness (relative to other strains’ long-winded accounts in the Manuscript), its consistency (most witnesses interviewed relate the same story) and its comprehensiveness (from the originating Kuhaylat ‘Ajuz down to the mares that went to Abbas Pasha). For all these reasons it could serve as a case study of how strains changed hands and moved from tribe to tribe in Bedouin Arabia. The story is also remarkable as an account of how strains names are formed, an account of several Bedouin customs and traditions, and it can also be used to reconstruct a rough chronology. I would like to document all this at some point. Here’s a summary of how the strain got its name: A Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz mare was part of the ransom the Shammar (then all staying in the Jabal Shammar) asked the captured Sharif of Mecca to pay in return for his freedom; a descendant of this mare (still a Kuhaylat…
Now that I have read the Abbas Pasha Manuscript — the equivalent of the Bible for Arabian horses — from cover to cover a fair number of times, I have learned that all Kuhaylan ‘Ajuz horses originate from two wellsprings: the Sharif of Mecca in the Hijaz, and the major tribe of Qahtan, and more specifically the Qahtan sub-tribe of ‘Abidah in Wadi Tathlith (SW Saudi Arabia). I don’t know yet what the connections between these two sources are. The story of al-Harqah (originally a Kuhaylat ‘Ajuz) is illustrative of the horses that came out of the Sharif of Mecca.