Category: General

Notice the intelligent eye, large without being oversized, and the dry and bony face, with flat jowls, not meaty. Also note the very delicately chiseled arch of the throat. All these features are hallmarks of the breed.

My lovely Bassma Al Arab (Jamr Al Arab x Jadah BelloftheBall) is turning four this year. She is growing by leaps and bounds. She is on a temporary lease at Monica Respet’s, who took this nice photo.

I am now reading a 2002 French-language edition of Count Waclav S. Rzewuski’s manuscript “Sur les Chevaux Orientaux et Provenants [sic] des Races Orientales“. Rzewuski wrote his book sometime after his stay in Arabia from 1818 to 1821, where he lived among the Arabs and bought up to 100 stallions and 35 mares for European royalty and nobility, including for his own stud. One mare he bought for himself is “Mliha”. Below, in italics are some passages where Mliha is mentioned, followed by my own comments: “Mohammed pacha, surnommé Gensh, emir des Metoualis [sic] avait une jument de la race Koheyl Adjouz surnommée Mliha […] Le soldat fut pris avec sa belle Mliha par les Fédaanes, chez qui je la vis et l’achetai.” Here we learn of the mare’s strain: Kuhaylan ‘Ajuz (or a strain derived from it); her name, “Mliha”, which could also be her strain — Mlihan/Mlayhan/Meleyhan. We also learn that Rzewuski got her from the Fad’aan ‘Anazah tribe. “Mliha est la fameuse jument de Mohammed pacha Gensch, émir des Mewalis”. Here we learn of the mare’s original owner, Muhammad al-Kanj (“Gensh”), Amir of the Mawali Bedouin tribe. Unlike all other tribes, which have Shaykhs as leaders, the…

In French first, then Deepl.com’s translation to English: Le défaut de proportions gracieuses de la tête ne fait naitre aucun dégoût chez les Arabes, qui font surtout attention a l’origine du cheval et a ses autres qualités. La tête est en général plutôt petite et décharnée. Une tête un peu plus allongée ne serait considérée ni comme un défaut, ni comme un inconvénient. J’ai même vu des coursiers très estimés, réservés comme étalons dans les tribus, avoir la tête moins élégante que beaucoup d’autres, et même la ganache forte. C’est faire l’éloge de la beauté de la tête que de dire que le cheval pourrait boire dans une tasse a café. The head’s lack of graceful proportions does not give rise to disgust among Arabs, who pay particular attention to the horse’s origin and other qualities. The head is generally rather small and gaunt. A slightly longer head would be considered neither a defect nor a disadvantage. I have even seen highly esteemed steeds, reserved as stallions in tribes, have heads less elegant than many others, and even strong jowls. To say that a horse could drink from a coffee cup is to praise the beauty of the head.

Google Translate has a very cool feature that allows you to translate text for an image as opposed to a word processing document. I used it to translate the introductory text of George Philippe Tabet’s 1937 booklet “Les Noms de Famille des Chevaux Arabes” — The family names of Arabian Horses. I miniminally edited the output for more clarity. I have been studying the Arabian horse for over twenty-five years, having learned to love it from my early youth. At first, I heard this horse praised as being a Hamdani, that other a Séglawi, etc. I marveled over these titles of nobility, but I understood nothing about them. Later, when I began my first purchases of horses for racing, I was led to delve deeper. I learned, little by little, that some families were more highly regarded than others; but I was most often disappointed when, to learn more, I turned to well-known horse dealers or even illustrious owner friends. Faced with this ignorance, I decided to turn to the very source of Arabian horse breeding; and it was then that I began to understand the reasons for all these names, and what differentiates them from each other. There are…

From Judi Forbis’ Hoofbeats Along the Tigris, her first and in my opinion, best book: The greatest number of horses bred by Arabs [ie, Bedouins] seems to be found in practically a direct line from Mosul to Aleppo and above that area into Turkey along the Turkish-Syrian-Iraq border, where horses are still occasionally used for transportation as well as racing. Among the tribes still inhabiting or migrating in those areas and breeding Arabians are the Northern Shammar, […] Amarat, Fidaan, and others of first and second rank. It was during one of our sojourns in Northern Mesopotamia near the Euphrates River that we located two exceptional stallions bred by the Northern Shammar. We had been traveling in this area while war clouds resulting from the King Feisel II’s and Nuri es Said’s tragic deaths hovered above the borders. After searching for days and finding the usual common animals, we came upon a small well-vegetated village situated amid the hot cheerless waste. Our friend the “Pasha” knew the village and suggested we stop at the local blacksmiths who reputedly owned several good horses. We did, and the animals far exceeded our expectations. The affable mustachioed smithy motioned us to a dimly…

There are a handful breeding programs in the USA that I follow closely, like Carrie Slayton’s in California, and Bev Davison’s in Idaho. They have the same bloodlines as I do, more or less, and we collaborate. Bev now has a few high-percentage Abbas Pasha Saqlawi horses for sale or lease, mostly males and some females. The grey five year colt, SpiritWind AhsahmMoon, is one that caught my eye. The senior stallion Subanet Jabbar SDA is also for sale. He is the sire of my Kinza. He has a nice chestnut 3 year old colt below, SpiritWind Jabani. Jabani is not for sale.

Badia Al Arab (Monologue CF x Barakah Al Arab by Wadd Al Arab), now a yearling, is slowly growing into an excellent filly. Thrilled about her, and sad about her half sister out of Wadha, which I lost a day after birth to an infection. The traditional Arab way of presenting Badia would be: Grey Kuhaylat al-Ajuz filly from the strain that was in the stud of King Abd al-Aziz Aal Saud. Her sire is al-Hamdani, her dam’s sire is al-Haifi, her grandsire is Krushan, her great-grandsire is al-Haifi. Implicitly, all stallions listed are in the maternal line, and all are authentic, so there is no need to delve into their own ancestry, and identification by strain is enough. The fact that they were chosen to reproduce should suffice to authenticate them.

A rare photo bringing together the King of Saudi Arabia, Abd al-Aziz Aal Saud and the ruler of Bahrain, Sh. Salman bin Hamad Aal Khalifa, around 1950. You wonder if Arabian horses were ever discussed at encounters like these.

It is with our deepest sadness that we inform you of the death of our beloved the founder of Bahrain Kennel club Mrs. Dana Sehested Preetzman on the 5th of July 2021. Mrs. Dana Sehested is the widow of the late His Excellency Sheikh Isa bin Abdullah bin Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa. The late descendant of the Danish royal family was educated in Sweden and briefly attended the Stockholm Military Equestrian School there at a young age. After she studied in college in the USA, she met and married to the late Sheikh Isa whilst he completed his degree at University of Southern California in 1955. Dana was appointed the manager of the Bahrain Royal Equestrian Stables to maintain the Royal Bahraini horses. Dana was instrumental in registering horses with the World Organization for Arabian Horses (WAHO) and issued the first Stud Book which invited them to register horses in the kingdom. In 1974 she was Royally tasked with forming the FCI recognized Bahrain Kennel Club to register pure bred canines and she collaborated on the Saluki Book. She wrote two books Living treasures of Bahrain and the Arabian Saluki. She died peacefully of natural causes in Jasra village…

Dafuq, who is now 10 years old, has three close crosses to Sitah D1 for a total of 37.5 percent of his pedigree. He is the most like her of the three stallions, more so than Daneer and Darak. Photos by Marion Wassilewski. He also has two close crosses to Mlolshaan Almarshoosh M37, photo below from Volume 2 of the Amiri Arabian Horse Studbook of Bahrain, and a less flattering screenshot from the video of Anton Tucek. Dafuq’s coat will likely have the same heavy fleabites as he ages.

Bogdan von Zientarski (1884-958) — photo below by Carl Raswan — was the manager of the Gumniska stud farm for Prince Roman Sanguszko from 1927 to 1944. In 1931, Sanguszko sent him and Carl Raswan on a shopping trip to Arabia to buy original Arabian horses. They came back with four mares and four stallions. The stallions — Kuhailan Haifi, Kuhailan Zaid, Kuhailan Kruszan, and Kuhailan Afas left a strong imprint on Arabian horse breeding in Poland, and from there on, Europe and the rest of the world. The mares disappeared in the mayhem of World War II, leaving little or no trace. In the course of their Arabian trip, Zientarski and Raswan visited Bahrain and saw the stud of the ruler, Sh. Hamad Isa bin Ali Al Khalifa (ruled 1925-1942). They liked and bought a colt, the future Kuhailan Afas (photo below as a yearling), the pedigree of which I translated here. They also saw the colt’s sire, a herd stallion about which Zientarski wrote: “We went out in the courtyard to look at the horses. There were 43 of them. In general, beautiful, noble animals of great lines, mainly beautiful heads … I learn that the colts are…

A beautiful photo of Danah Alkhalifa with her salukis “Princy” and “Flicka”, taken in Bahrain in August of 1972 and published in Arabiana magazine 1975. Thank you Laura for the scan.

Hamdaany Daneer (Jellaby Radad x Danika) is the one of three Bahraini horses from Danah Stud that Lyman Doyle will be taking to the USA this summer. Of the four Bahraini stallions that Lyman and I acquired, Daneer is certainly the showiest and the best mover. He does not trot, he floats. He does not canter, he flies. More on his strain and lineage later.

Egyptian diplomat Mahmoud Samy Pacha appears as the owner of the 1924 chestnut mare *Exochorda (Aiglon x Leila II) in her export document from Egypt to the USA, on file with the Arabian Horse Association. That document was attested to by Dr. Branch, the Director of the Royal Agricultural Society of Egypt, and by the US vice-consul in Cairo. The photo below from the Library of Congress website, dated June 1925, shows him with his wife Bassma Hanem upon their arrival to New York aboard the liner Majestic, following his appointment as envoy extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary for Egypt. [Footnote: Hanem (Khanem/Khanum, “Lady”) is a title for upper-class women in pre-1952 Egypt]. The next photo shows him at his desk in Washington, DC. There is no other record of Mahmoud Samy Pasha as a breeder or owner of Arabian horses. Perphaps he appears as *Exochorda’s owner on paper because he facilitated her importation to the USA in his official capacity. The same pattern of putting a senior foreign service official as the breeder or owner on a horse’s importation papers can be observed with desert-bred Arabian stallion *Sunshine, imported by Albert Harris to the US in 1932. *Sunshine was born…

A 1947 picture of one of the world’s wonders (at least in my books): Shibam, the “Manhattan of the Desert”, by Wilfried Thesiger.

I have never been to a more magical place. Photograph by Pascal and Maria Maréchaux of a fortified house in Wadi Markha (top), the village of Shaharah (middle) and the village of Jebel Bura (bottom).

Above, one pole tent of a regular Bedouin. In the middle, three pole tent of a minor shaykh. Below, seven pole tent of an important tribal leader (e.g., Fawaz al-Shaalan of the Ruwalah, or Rakan ibn Mirshid of the Sba’ah). Photos by Louis Delseny (1906-1997), a French army officer and amateur photographer who served in Syrian desert starting in 1928 and through the 1930s. His unit was in charge of guarding the road from Damascus to Bagdad. Sources: Archives of the French Ministry of Defense.

وضعت هذه الحجة عام ١٢٨٤ هجري الموافق ١٨٦٧-١٨٦٨ ميلادي لحصان عربي عمره سنة لونه ازرق ماوردي رسنه معنقي ابوه كحيلان نواق مصدر الحجة أرشيف رئاسة وزراء السلطنة العثمانية بالاستانة عبر صفحة الدار السلطانية ومتصفح الوثائق العثمانية ويظهر فيها واحد من ختمين وصلانا من جدعان ابن مهيد عقيد عشيرة الفدعان من عنزه في ذاك الوقت كما يظهر فيها ختم فرج ابن حريميس شيخ العقاقرة من الفدعان واليكم نص الحجة بالكامل وجه تحريره انه نقول نحن الواضعين اسمانا وأختامنا ادناه ان الحصان الماوردي الحولي حصان منادي الأزمع من عشيرة السبعة انه معنكي أمه المعنكية وأبوه النواق أصفى من الحليب وللبيان حررنا هذه الشهادة جرى ذلك وحرر شهد بما فيه جدعان بن امهيد [ختم جدعان بن امهيد] شهد بما فيه فرج الحريميس [ختم فرج الحريميس] [الشهر غير مقروء] ١٢٨٤ [امضاء الكاتب غير مقروء] This short hujjah from 1867-68 for a “rose water” (mawardi) grey yearling colt of the Ma’naqi strain comes from the archives of the Ottoman Grand Vizirate in Istanbul. The horse was probably a gift to the Ottoman Grand Vizir or someone associated with him. Here is my translation: This is a very simple North Arabian Bedouin hujjah, without any of the religious references or flowery language of the documents produced…

Someone recently posted on social media one the nicest historical videos of desert Arabian horses I have ever seen on the internet. The video feature, among other scenes, a French horse-buying mission to Syria in the 1930s-40s: My attempts to locate the location of the filming yielded the following: The section of the video with the water wheel looks like it was filmed on the Orontes river near the city of Hama in Central Syria. The cows with the olive grove background are typical of the costal mountain of Western Syria. The soil in the section with the Bedouin and the pretty grey mare looks like it could be the steppe area between Homs and Palmyra, while the brick houses in the section with the stallions are typical of the alluvial Euphrates valley towards Raqqa and Der el Zor. من اروع المقاطع المصورة عن خيل البدو في سوريا لربما تم تصوير مقطع نواعير الماء على ضفاف نهر العاصي بالقرب من مدينة حماة في وسط سوريا. أما الأبقار في بساتين الزيتون فلعل جرى تصويرها في المنطقة الجبلية الساحلية غرب سوريا. أما الأرض الصخرية في المقطع الذي يظهر فيه البدوي صاحب الفرس الزرقاء فهي تشبه أرض البادية بين حمص وتدمر، بينما بيوت…

Anecdote CF (Triermain x Aniq El Bedu), a.k.a. Pulcher Ibn Reshan, photo by the late Jackson Hensley, ten years ago.

Today, modern buildings extend all the way to the mountain range of Mt. Noqm.

I gleaned off this awesome photo of a Bedouin palanquin in the area of Tadmor/Palmyra in 1937, for what looks like a marriage or a ceremony of some sort. As is usually the case for these photos from “nostalgia influencer” social media accounts, there is no source for the photo.

I ordered this book on the epic of the migration of the Bani Hilal, in one of its Tunisian versions. The author interviewed one of the last oral reciters of this grand epic, an old Tunisian herder, and translated it into French. I The epic of the Bani Hilal is the Arabs’ equivalent to Homer’s Iliad. It is based off a historical event: the mass migration of the Bedouin tribe of Bani Hilal out of Arabia and into North Africa over the course of the eleventh century CE. Of course, like any epic, it consists of several cycles, each one with its heroes, vilains, love stories, betrayals, feats of courage, etc.

Nino Van Reisen of Gothenburg University has this audio recording of a section of the Epic of the Dayaghim as narrated by members of the al-Madhi leading clan of the tribe of Aal Issa in Northern Jordan. The recording features a story about Arar ibn Shahwan’s stallion Mashhur. As Arabic listeners will gather, the pedigree of Mashhur as well as his offspring are of central importance to this Northern Najdi version of the epic which Nino believes to very close to the original epic. It was recorded in 1982.

A very nice photo of Moira Walker’s Landrace Bellara (Pulcher Ibn Reshan x Jadah BelloftheBall), the youngest Kuhaylat al-Ajuz from the line of the Saudi royal mare *Nufoud.

I was happy to find a mention of this important manuscript in Major Roger Upton’s “Gleanings from the Desert of Arabia” (London, 1881). It is a short manuscript by a member of the Jabiri family of Aleppo who lived in 19th century and listed many strains of Arabian horses known to him. Here is Upton’s mention of it: Let me repeat, moreover, that some incline to the opinion—among them Djabery Zadah MohammedAli (Effendi) — that all the families and strains given in the foregoing race are descended from Keheilet Ajuz and I must state that Djabery Zadah Mohammed Ali, who published in Arabia a short account of the Arabian horse, with a chart, gives a longer roll of names than I have shown, some of which I have not included because I had great doubt of their authenticity or correctness. I saw this manuscript, or a copy of it, in the office of the late Mustafa al-Jabiri in Aleppo around 1990-92. I don’t know what became of it. I should ask around.

Kate found an interesting document the other day, which this entry reproduces and comments on. The document was published in the “Bulletin de la Societe Imperiale Zoologique D’Acclimatation“, a French scientific society founded in 1854 during the French Second Empire, under Napoleon III. Th document concerns the grey Arabian stallion “Bawab”, also known as “Aneze”, gifted in 1855 by the Viceroy of Egypt and his presumptive heir to French entrepreneur Ferdinand de Lesseps. De Lesseps, of Suez Canal fame, imported the stallion to France along with a mare and another stallion, also gifts from the Viceroy and his heir. A third stallion joined them from Syria, a gift from De Lessep’s brother Edmond, then France’s Consul General in Beirut. The Viceroy of Egypt at the time was Said, under whose tenure work on the Suez Canal begun. His presumptive heir was Prince Ahmed Rifaat Pasha, who died drowning in 1858 and was replaced by Ismail Pasha as Said’s heir. The description the bulletin gives of Bawab is unenthusiastic: Le deuxième étalon, du nom arabe Bawab dit Anézé, gris clair comme le précédent. Sa taille est de 1 mètre 48 centimètres . Il est âgé de douze ans . Ce Cheval…

This morning Lyman Doyle broke the good news that Kinza Al Arab had foaled a filly by Bashir Al Dirri at the Doyle farm in Oregon. She will obviously be chestnut like both parents. She is Saqlawi Ibn Dirri to Basilisk on both sides of the pedigree, to Bushra (Azrek x Bozra) on the sire line, and Bukra (Ahmar x Bozra). Also, she carries “Code Red” (heck, code purple) Al Khamsa lines to *Mirage, *Euphrates, and *Al Mashoor one more generation forward, after her sire. Her name will be Karma Al Arab. Karma in Arabic means vine. Here’s a pedigree link while waiting for pictures.

From Lady Anne Blunt’s “A Pilgrimage to Najd” (1881): “To the present day in the North, the Anazeh distinguish the descendants of the mares brought with them from Nejd as “Nejdi” while they call the descendants of the mares captured from the tribes of the North, “Shimali” or Northerners.” and: “The Anazeh have disappeared from Nejd. They began to move northwards about two hundred years ago, and have ever since continued moving by successive migrations till all have abandoned their original homes. It may ben that the great name which Nejd horses undoubtedly have in the East, was due mainly to these very Anazeh, with whose horses they are now contrasted.” I had noted these two passages in comments on an earlier thread from 2019, but I thought they were worth bringing back.