Jeanne Craver sent me these fresh pictures of my little Wadd (Triermain CF x Wisteria CF by Triermain CF), which Nancy Becker photographed last week. I like the broad, muscled chest. The white around the eyes seems characteristic of Wisteria’s progeny (see Tantris CF as a foal, here, scroll down to the end).
I also saw many nice horses at the Al Khamsa Convention. One of my favorites was the 24 year old mare Ebonys Doyle LHF (Ebony Nefous RSI x Larkin DE by Greggan), bred by Vincent Melzac, from two of his favorite horses, and now owned by Lesley Detweiler. She traces twice to the grand Rabanna (Rasik x Banna by Nasr), and her dam is a Doyle mare of 100% old Crabbet breeding. In my opinion, and regardless of the petty politics of what is “Straight Egyptian” and what isn’t, the more Rabanna blood in a horse, the better the horse. Also, Carl Raswan and Richard Pritzlaff did not save Rabanna in the 1950s, so that we waste her blood away in 2010. We cannot pay continuous lip service to their legacy, and do nothing about it in practice. Not sure how many horses with Rabanna blood remain today (someone needs to do a headcount), but something really needs to do something about that. And by the way, I don’t believe that the head of an Arabian horse needs to be more “extreme” than that. Anything beyond that becomes distortion.
Monday mornings are rough. This one was all the rougher because the weekend that preceded it was so good. Yesterday afternoon, I came back from the Al Khamsa Convention in Pennsylvania, where I saw old friends and made new ones. Many important things took place at this Convention, including the unanimous acceptance by Al Khamsa’s Board and General Assembly of the three Tahawi mares (Folla, Futna, and Bint Barakat) and their otherwise Al Khamsa eligible descendants as Al Khamsa Arabians Horses. All three mares trace their origins to horses imported by the Tahawi clan of Egypt from the Northern Arabian desert (to which the Tahawis had many connections, all documented) and more specifically from the ‘Anazah tribes of Sba’ah (mainly), Fad’aan, Hssinha, Wuld ‘Ali, Sawalimah and Ruwalah.
Darlene Summers and I are the proud new co-owners of the 2001 bay stallion Monologue CF (Riposte CF x Soliloquy CF by Regency CF), a Hamdani Simri tracing to *Galfia from the Bani Sakhr Bedouins. Monologue came as a generous gift from Pamela Klein (who maintains one of the largest and best herds of Davenport Arabians in the US today) to Darlene, who then kindly agreed to share him with me. He is now standing at stud at Craver Farms in Winchester, IL, and is available to Al Khamsa mares. Darlene and I plan to freeze his semen to make it available to future generations of asil breeders.
Here is a rare photo of the Moroccan bred 1972 stallion Breek (Burhan x Pascaline by Agres), imported to France by Jean Deleau. Morocco has a relatively small number of Arabians, and the original nucleus comes from four countries: Egypt, France, Algeria and Tunisia. Breek is no exception: his sire is the Egyptian Burhan (Morafic x Mouna by Sid Abouhom), gift of Pres. Nasser to the King of Morocco; his maternal grandsire Agres (Sumeyr x Altise by Abel) came from Pompadour in France; his great-grandsire Ras (Kriss II x Ambria by Nasr) came from Tunisia, his great-great-grandsire Aiglon (Othello III x Kasbah II) was a race horse from France , and his great-great-granddam Naaoura was the offspring of the desert bred Kuhaylan al-Nawwaq stallion Muslimie, who had come from Syria to Morocco through Algeria, and of a Shuwaymah mare, Nafa, who was bed by the French in Algeria.
Fall foals have arrived, and this one was born last month at Janelle Wilde’s in Washington state Jackson Hensley’s in New Mexico, and is by Monologue (Riposte x Soliloquy by Regency) out of HH Noura Krush (Bayou CF x Topaz by Sportin Life). I am a big fan of Monologue.
I am thrilled! At 1.00 am this morning, Wisteria foaled a handsome colt, by her own sire Triermain. Jeanne Craver, who brought him to the world, with Charles, wrote: At 11 she was starting to think about it; at 1 she had a nose and one leg out and was lying on her back up against the wall. The hardest part was rolling her down off the wall, and then the other front foot was bent back at the pastern, and once I straightened that out, out he came with Wisteria doing most of the work. At one hour, he is up and walking on his own, he has had a bottle of mom’s best, and the mare has almost finished cleaning, I took a few iPhone photos in the dark. He is a handsome boy, withers at about my waist, legs straight, close coupling, nice neck…. everything looking good! Oh, and he’s grey. Surprise! In keeping with the W pattern of his dam, his granddam HB Wadduda, and his two sisters Walladah and Wadhah, he shall be named Wadd, the name of the ancient (before Islam) Arab god of love, whose sanctuary was located in the oasis town of Dumat al-Jandal…
I recently found out that Trad al-Milhim al-Mizyad (below), the leader of the Hsinah Bedouins of the Syrian desert, was a frequent visitor of my maternal grandfather’s house, in Hims, Syria. My grandfather, Salim Yazigi (1902-1989), was a Syrian police (“gendarmerie”) officer who retired with the rank of general, and his relationship with Trad al-Milhim, whose Hsinah Bedouins had their summer quarters in the close vicinity of Hims, must be attributed to frequent dealings with the authorities of Hims to address various tribal matters. The Hsinah are a branch of the ‘Anazah and had a very highly reputed marbat of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak, from what the late Azmi Bey al-‘Uthman al-Miri’bi, an Arabian horse authority in Lebanon, told me, back in the 1990s.
The more I am reading through the materials recently posted on the Tahawi website, the more I realize that the people within WAHO and the EAO who have denied registration to the asil Tahawi horses in the 1980s must have a lot on their conscience — nothing less than the destruction of one of the most authenticated group of horses in the Arabian breed.
Recently, Mohammad Mohammad Uthman al-Tahawi, who maintains the very rich Tahawi tribe website, uploaded an important document, which is like a Abbas Pasha Manuscript in miniature. It is the herd book of his great grandfather, and leader of the Tahawi clan, Shaykh ‘Abdallah Saoud al-Tahawi. Mohammad found it among the horse related documents of his grandfather Uthman, and was told that the book was started by Shaykh ‘Abdallah, and kept up by the latter’s son Shaykh Faysal. When the sons of Shaykh ‘Abdallah divided their father’s horses between them upon his death, they passed book to each other to keep it updated. Mohammad copied it by hand in 1980, and has now uploaded it online. Rather than tell you about it, I will translate some of its parts, with Mohammad’s permission: In the name of God, the Most Merciful and Compassionate, blessings upon God [follows a string of religious invocations…] This is a record of the history of the origin of the horses of the Kuhaylat origin, the Tamriyah branch, established by the glorified Shaykh of the Arabs Sa’ud [son of] Yunis al-Shafi’i of the Arabs of [the tribe of ] al-Hanadi may God rest his soul and welcome him…
I found this family tree of the Shammar Bedouin clans from the section of the tribe known as Zawba’ (Zoba). It can be found online on an Arabic genealogy website. Most Shammar genealogies were put together by Western travelers, often basing themselves on more or less reliable Bedouin informants. This one was compiled by a Syrian ‘traveler’ in the years between 1963 and 1971 across three countries Iraq, Syria and Kuwait ( to where many Shammar Bedouins from Syria emigrated in the 1960s). It is special in that it references its sources, the tribal elders who were used as sources when compiling the information. The document says it will be published [was it already?] in an upcoming book about the Shammar Bedouins in three volumes. I have been trying to compile such a list for many years, and was facing three challenges — other than the logistical challenge of locating and reaching the sources, which were getting increasingly scarce as time was passing by: 1) first, the difficulty of reconciling tribal genealogies, as they was always a point were the elders’ versions differed, like in all oral histories; one would claim his clan is related to another clan; the elder from…
I need help identifying several horses in photos I took in my June 2002 visit to Carol and Diane Lyons. They are all beautiful horses, but I failed to remember the names as I was taking the photos. I have several more. The stallion in the first photo looks like he has some Monsoon not to far in the pedigree, judging from his hindquarter. Maybe SA Apogee? The mare in the middle I have no clue. The last one is Dulcet? or Lustre? Carol was very proud of her.
Jenny Krieg, referring to a discussion on straightegyptians.com in 2007, tells me that it seemed that the late Lady Anne Lytton apparently told Carol Mulder, who told someone else (who was writing on se.com under the username “BasilisBelka”) that the famously ugly photo of Mrs. Dillon’s imported Arabian stallion El Emir (below) was not of him, nor of an other Arabian horse but rather that of an English Lord’s carriage horse. Can this be confirmed?
The other day I was looking at foundation horses (i.e., original Arabian horses imported to the USA and the UK from the Arabian desert) in the pedigree of my new mare Jadiba, trying to gauge how “comfortable” I felt about the information currently available to us in terms of their ‘asalah’ or authenticity. “Comfort” is an particularly subjective notion, by my own admission, partly because I am setting the bar, and I tend to set it very high, and partly because of the relativity of the very notion of ‘asalah’. Of course, my level of ‘comfort’ is a function of the amount and quality of information available on these horses, and here a relative classification is possible by growing level of ‘comfort’. I for instance feel very ‘comfortable’ about most of the information on most of the Davenport horses in Jadiba’s pedigree, because many of them have surviving hujaj, or original authentication documents, especially *Wadduda, *Urfah, *Hamrah, *Muson, and *Jedah. I also feel similarly comfortable about many of the Blunt horses in her pedigree, especially those who were bought directly from Bedouins like Rodania, Hadban, Pharaoh, Azrek, and Queen of Sheba. The ones like Kars, Basilisk, and Dajania who were bought…
This nice picture of the mare Fairfax KH (Atticus x Fair Naomi UF), bred and owned by RJ Cadranell in Washington state is from the DAHC website.
Yesterday, Jeanne Craver sent me this picture of my other mare Wisteria CF, and her 2010 daughter Wadha by Javera Thadrian (his last offspring). Wisteria is in foal to her sire Triermain for a September 2011 foal. Judith Franklin, who was visiting, took the picture.
The 1988 black Kuhaylah Haifiyah mare Fa Bahim Pharra (Bahim Hisan x ASF Diane, by Dhahran x Dihkenna) is the youngest Al Khamsa tail female descendant of the mare Dihkenna, a mare of especially valuables bloodlines. She is last recorded as being owned by Alma Cizek in 1988, with no progeny. Anyone knows how Mrs. Cizek can be reached?
Both Mohammad al-Tahawi and Yasir Ghanim have sent me a new link to the website on the Tahawi Bedouins where they have uploaded many, many more documents about the original Tahawi horses, including the herd-book of their leader Shaykh Abdallah Saoud al-Tahawi, which contains hundreds of entries documenting purchases of horses from the desert, dates of breedings, foal productions, sale records, etc. It is a treasure trove of information like no other, and it establishes the asil credentials of the Tahawi horses beyond any doubt. I will even go further to point of saying that many Tahawi horses are by now more authenticated than the majority of desert-breds from the RAS (e.g., Halabia, Nafaa al-Saghira, Badaouia, Eid, etc), and Inshass (e.g., El Samraa, El Shahbaa, Badria, Beshier El Achkar, Bint Karima). It’s a paradise of primary sources for those who love the original Bedouin horses. This is of course related to the great work Bernd Radtke is doing with his upcoming book, about which those of you went to the EE (Extreme and Exotic) already heard. I will be slowly working on the translation of these documents over the next several weeks. I think I need to find a replacement at…
Following yesterday’s last blog, Jeanne Craver sent me these rare pictures of the 1949 Saqlawi al-‘Abd (back to *Urfah) mare Shasinada (Hanad x Shasi by Asil) and her 1942 dam Shasi (Asil x Sherah by *Hamrah), courtesy of Nyla Eshelman. Both mother and daughter are of the old Bedouin type that was prevalent in the USA in the 1930s and 1940s but has all but disappeared in modern Arabian breeding. Note the resemblance between Shasinada and the 1993 Davenport mare WDA Hyapatia Lee (Bon Jour CF X Sarsaparilla by Dharanad) that was recently posted on the Davenport Arabian Horse Conservancy website (and below).
Shasinada (Hanad x Shadi by Asil out of Sherah by *Hamrah) was a Hanad daughter (read RJ Cadranell’s article about the legacy of Hanad here) and an asil Saqlawiyat al-‘Abd, whose pedigree primarily (99%) consists of horses imported from the desert by Homer Davenport in 1906, with a touch of Major Upton’s bloodlines. She was very closely related to the Craver stallion Tripoli (Hanad x Poka by *Hamrah). Today, there are probably two mares left tracing to this mare, left alive, and they don’t seem to have registered progeny. ML Ayriana is one (TreffHaven Ruabbas x ML Roushana by Treff-Haven Hotai out of Shamma El Ajzaa by *Sanaad out of Shasinada), and ML Shariaa (TreffHaven Ruabbas x ML Malika by Treff-Haven Hotai out of Shamma El Ajzaa by *Sanaad out of Shasinada) is the other. They were born in 1992 and 1989 respectively. I am going to track them down.
Click here for pictures of a “cute” horse from Saudi Arabia, aptly called Sabeh, “Panther”.
Those of us preservationists who have a mare or two, and can’t afford to breed them every year, always find it harder to choose stallions when the time comes to breed their mare. They have to live with the consequences of their decisions, and this alone tends to make them more risk averse. Of course, the new world of opportunities opened by artificial insemination techniques makes such decisions all the more difficult to make. I am finding myself in this situation now that it is time to breed Jadiba. Even more, I am asking myself a lot of questions, like: — should I just pick the best horse for my mare, the horse who will correct her defects, and emphasize her qualities, and hope for offspring that are “better” (prettier?) than both parents? — or should I pick the horse a Bedouin would have picked, using Bedouin standards of selection (if these could indeed be generalized), because I want to breed the kind of horse Bedouins — as custodians of the breed — wanted? I always thought I should do the latter, which is an intellectual view. Now I am not sure anymore. All I know that I need to…
I saw this quote on the blog of Ralph Suarez, and it’s from Lady Anne Blunt: “An inborn love of the horse is instinctive, quite unreasoning, and one cannot recall any beginning of what seems to have always been there, together with a craving for perfection in the object of interest.”
Check this good article on the CMK website. It was compiled by W.R. Brown and published in the Arabian Stub Book [volume 2] in 1918.
A very interesting discussion started from a question of parentage [Note from Edouard cf. the post on Tabab below] leading to the question of who the bedouin horse is. Do the horses of Abbas Pasha and other Egytian notables belong to the authentic, asil Arabian horse or not? Can You call them bedouin horses the same way You call Davenports or Saudi lines bedouin horses? My answer is : YES. And if I understand Lady Anne right she had the same opinion. Just yesterday I have read in her journals correspondence the part about Davenport (before reading this) and she had questions regarding Davenport´s horses. How could he manage to bring so many pure Arabians home in such a short time? Achmet Hafez has been the key to this. Davenport states he was the head of all Aneze tribes. This is questioned by Lady Anne expressis verbis. My opinion is that Davenport did not understand who Achmet Hafez really was and therefore gave him the wrong title. My suggestion is that he was the Bab el Arab of the Aneze tribes for the pasha of Damascus [Note from Edouard: rather, of Aleppo]. He handled all questions regarding the tribes, but…
Tabab, 1921 stallion, was by *Deyr out of the bay Domow, who was out of the chestnut *Wadduda. Who Domow’s sire really was is not easy to figure out. Her registered sire is the Crabbet stallon *Abu Zeyd (Mesaoud x Rose Diamond), a chestnut but the colors don’t match because two chestnuts can’t produce a bay, and it looks instead like she may have been by *Astraled (Mesaoud x Queen of Sheba), who was bay. [Update: See Michael Bowling’s and RJ Cadranell’s article in Jeanne Craver’s comment on this thread]
The head of this mare illustrates several features to be found in old style (‘atiq), Bedouin-type Arabian horses in their homeland. I have seen these features in Bedouin-bred Arabian mares time and again. Some of them are commonly found in modern Arabian horses, like good distance between the ear and the eye, others less so: — a large deep jowl: while “large” is easily understood, one can get an idea of the “depth” of a jowl by following the curved line of the jowl inwards (ie, towards the muzzle) as deeply into the head as possible. — a lower lip extending slightly beyond the upper lip, like camels’. — the back of the lower lip (towards the jowls) is arched inwards (concave), and the more prominently featured and the deeper that arch is, the better, from a Bedouin-type perspective. — watery eyes: many horses (especially in the Straight Egyptian group) today have big, uniformly black eyes, “full”, which look like the eyes of small birds. It looks as if jet black ink is ready to spill out of the eye, if poked. Bedouin-type eyes are different. Sure, they are blakc, but they look more like humans’ eyes, sometimes even to…
The lovely Kuhaylan Hayfi stallion Porte CF (Portico x Recherche by Prince Hal) is now with Ambar Diaz in California, and is looking very good. Porte CF was owned by Pamela Klein, who gave him to Ambar. He’s pictured here with Michael Bowling.
Clarion (Regency x Chinoiserie by Dharanad), a 1991 Hamdani Simri is another candidate for Jadiba.
He is with Debbie Jessen in Illinois, and a good horse, with a good pedigree. A 2003 Regency son, out of a Plantagenet daughter, out of a Sir Marchen grand-daughter, adding a line to the handsome Ibn Hanad (last headshot in black and white). The first photo shows Chancery as a five years old, and the second and third as a growthy four year old. Asil Arabians of Davenport bloodlines are slow growers, and do no fully mature before 7 or 8 years old. Note the very short back, the deep girth, and the free shoulder movement. In the last photo with Charles Craver, note the width between the eyes, the broad forehead, the protruding eye sockets, the length of the distance between the eye and the base of the ear, the small muzzle, the wide and delicate nostrils, and the prominent facial bones. Note the resemblance with the Ibn Hanad cropped headshot, too. He is one of the three or four horses in my shortlist for breeding Jadiba to.
I really liked the yellow one in the middle, he should have won, but the judges thought the green one looked more ‘extreme’ and ‘exotic’… but it certainly was a tough call. Maybe next year, with green eye-makeup instead of the red..
This is a photo of Jadiba’s dam, Jabinta (Jadib x Bint Malakah by Subani), also courtesy of Jeanne Craver. As you can see, she has none of her daughter’s conformational defects: longer neck (or is it picture?), shorter back, longer ears. I like this mare better than I do her daughter.
An old photo of Jadiba taken by her previous owner Annette Pattishall, from Joe Ferriss’ Khamsat article, courtesy of Jeanne Craver.
El Alamein (Dhareb out of Antarah by Antez), a 1943 Kuhaylan Haifi, and one of four full siblings, who were at the heart of the rebirth of Davenport breeding. Shown here in old age, and blind from an infection (hence the swollen eye). Charles Craver handling.
I was re-reading the Cravers’ “Annotated Quest” the other day, and came upon this description of *Wadduda by Homer Davenport, which had marked me the first time I read years ago: “The war mare, the present from the Supreme Ruler, was the chestnut. She seemed to be fretting to get out of the only town she had ever been in. In her highly carried tail, I saw some blue beads tied gracefully in her hair. I knew they were to keep off the ‘Evil Eye’ […]. Her names they told me was “Wadduda”, meaning “love”; that she was a Seglawie Al Abed, seven years old and had been the favorite war mare of Hashem Bey for four years. She didn’t like the town, she wanted to go — and those who told me pointed to the desert.”
Monika Luft writes: A sensational discovery: Unknown letters of Bogdan Ziętarski and Carl Raswan from their expedition to Arabia! Polskiearaby.com have unearthed documents which cast a new light on the famous horse-buying expedition for the stud of Prince Roman Sanguszko in Gumniska near Tarnów. Several letters, discovered 80 years after being written, bring surprising details on one of the most extraordinary expeditions of the 20th century. More here: http://www.polskiearaby.com/?page=ludzie_i_konie&lang=en&id=52 See Edouard’s previous quote from Bogdan Ziętarski.
Wendy Clark has taken up the torch on the preservation of the American asil Arabian horses that trace in tail female to the outstanding *Turfa, a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz from the stables of Saudi Arabia’s King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Aal Saud, and imported to the USA in 1941 by Henri Babson.These tail female *Turfa’s and other precious asil Arabians with lines to this mare are now critically endangered, after having been very popular with many breeders up to the 1980s. Recently, Wendy obtained the 1995 mare Bint Ibn Hilweh (Ibn Muhandis x Alah Al Abayyah), a tail female *Turfa, and added her to her *Turfa preservation breeding program. The mare seems to have been neglected by her previous owners, and is now recovering slowly at Wendy’s. The photo below is from before that time, when she was still with her breeder Susan Whitman. I first saw this photo on Susan’s website ten years ago, and this was one of two of my favorite mares.
Not sure if I have linked to this article by Pat Payne on the horses of F.E. Lewis, an early breeder of asil Arabians of Davenport bloodlines in California, and mostly known as the breeder of Antez (Harara x Moliah by Hamrah). It’s posted on the website of the Davenport Arabian Horse Conservancy (DAHC), which is worth checking regularly for other historical articles.
Reader Amirhosein Ghasemi from Iran is the administrator of the online Persian Horse Forum, and a breeder of asil Araiban horses, and turkmen and Kurdish horses too. He sent me these breathtaking photos of one of his asil stallions, Nasman. I am completely taken with this horse. His strain, also Nasman, is now only found in Iran, and traces back to the old Arab tribe of Bani Lam (so do the Hadban, Shuwayman and Wadnan strains).
This is the well balanced and very correct stallion Saqlawi Jadran stallion Jadib (Ghadaf x Gulida by Gulastra), bred in 1954 by Ellen Doyle, with young Barbara Baird up. He carries ten close crosses to the Blunt’s Mesaoud (through his sons Seyal, Harb, Astraled, Abu Zeyd and Daoud, and his daughter Risala), and it shows.
just very busy with unfolding events in the Middle East.. I will resume writing soon.
I recently received some fresh news from Muhammad al-Tahawy who maintains the fascinating website of the Tahawi tribe with a large section dedicated to their horses. Muhammad directs me to one of the sections of the website, where he is regularly uploading photos and documents of original horses purchased by the Tahawi from Syria, mainly from the central city of Hama, a major horsebreeding center near the pastures of the Sba’ah Bedouins. Here is one such photo, reproduced with his permission. This is the legend on the back of the photo, and my translation follows: “This mare, a Kuhaylat al-Mimrah, now in Hama at the Iskafi [‘the shoemaker’, not clear whether it’s a reference to the owner’s surname or his profession], and she is the daughter of the grand old mare, whose owner was offered 800 gold pounds and refused to sell her, and she [i.e., the dam] is currently with him.” The information on the back of the photo does not tell us who the owner of the dam was, but we know this from another source: in his book “the Arab horse”, Hama native and racehorse owner Ali al-Barazi talks about the Kuhaylat al-Mimrah mare of Mukhtar [Mumtaz,…
Daughters of the Wind is now on both Facebook and Twitter.
The cause of the asil Arabian horse in the USA just gained a major boost last week, with the coming of Hazaim Alwair to this country. Hazaim, a heart surgeon, and a native of Hims in Syria, is now settled in Greenville, NC, and is more knowledgeable and passionate bout the Syrian asil Arabian horse than anyone I know. Wait till you meet him, and you’ll understand what I mean.
In this photo, Bill Cody (Buffalo Bill) on *Muson, and Said Abdallah on *Wadduda, face off in a the Wild West show in 1907. Both *Muson and *Wadduda were imported from the Arabian desert by Homer Davenport in 1906; Said Abdallah, one of the slaves of Bedouin leader Hakim Ibn Mhayd came to the USA with *Wadduda, which he did not want to leave.
An exciting collaborative project that brings together Jeanne Craver, Radwan Shabareq, Joe Ferriss and your favorite Arab blogger is in the works, which will hopefully find its way on the equine section of your bookshelves as of this coming June. I foresee its impact on the scholarship on Arabian horses to be nothing short of transformational. More in the coming weeks…
Take a look at the descendants of the 1920 stallion Ribal (Berk x Rijma by Rijm), one of the foundation sires of old American (asil) Arabian horse breeding: he has 11 progeny that bred on within Al Khamsa (asil) lines; I am re-listing them below: 1. Baribeh, out of Babirah (who is from 100% Blunt lines) 2. Ghadaf, out of Gulnare (who is from 100% Blunt lines) 3. Ghanighat, out of Guemura (who is from Blunt and other Old English lines) 4. Ghawi, out of Gulnare (100 % of Blunt lines) 5. Sahalli, out of Sherah (who is from 100% Davenport lines) 6. Curfa, out of Nardina (who is from 100% Blunt lines) 7. Pareta, out of Zenee (who is mostly from Davenport lines) 8. Borkaan, out of Babe Azab (who is from 100% Davenport lines) 9. Caravan, out of Fasal (who is from 100% Davenport lines) 10. Royal Amber, out of Babe Azab (see above) 11. Yakouta, out of Ferdika (who is from 100% Blunt lines) All of these 11 offspring of Ribal are otherwise foundation horses of early American breeding and have bred on successfully outside the asil realm. Of these 11 lines, no less than five lines…
I am taking a break from writing about asil horses to support my Egyptian and Yemeni friends as they fight for democracy against the oppressive regimes of Hosni Mubarak and Ali Abdallah Saleh. Arab horses and heritage are important, but Arab freedom and dignity are more important. By the same occasion, you get are rare glimpse into my political views. 😉
This is Mayzar al-‘Abd al-Muhsin al-Jarba, a leader of the Shammar in Syria and an MP in the Syrian House of Representatives in the 1940s. He was the owner (sahib or ra’i) of the marbat of the Kuhaylan Krush strain as Krush al-Baida, or Krush al-‘Abd al-Muhsin. The desert-bred stallion Mokhtar, now in France and often featured on this blog, is from his marbat.
I just emerged from three days without power because of a heavy snowstorm in the Mid-Atlantic region. It’s good to be back.
Ralph just nominated Daughters of the Wind for the Bloggers Choice Award under the “best animal blogger” category (sometimes, I forget that Arabian horses are animals, but that was a useful reminder). I am not sure what this entails, but if you like this blog more than other animal blogs, click here and vote for it by clicking on the yellow “vote” button. Thanks, Ralph, how thoughtful of you.
Check out this compelling article, by W. Michael Briggs Jr., on the website of the Davenport Arabian Horse Conservancy. It is graced with the picture of the beautiful Kuhaylan Hayfi stallion Audobon LD (Iliad x Audacity by Lysander), ridden by owner Marge Smith, and by the Hamdani Simri stallion Personic LF (Ibn Don Carlos x Persephone by Regency CF), photo below by Christine Emmert.
Radwan Shabareq of Aleppo told me the fascinating story of what is believed to be Thomas Darley’s rifle. Thomas Darley was Her Majesty’s Consul to the Levant, based in Aleppo, during the reign of British Queen Anne. In 1702, Thomas Darley acquired a young colt from the Fad’aan ‘Anazah Bedouins, which became the most prepotent of three foundation stallions of the English Thoroughbred horse breed. This was the “Darley Arabian”. Radwan told me that he had heard the story of Darley’s rifle from Raymond Juwayyid, an elderly Alepine collector, many years ago. According to Juwayyid, an ‘Anazeh Bedouin came to an Armenian jeweler in downtown Aleppo in the early XXth century to sell a long rifle intricately ornated with silver. Upon being asked for its provenance, the Bedouin admitted that he stolen it from his Shaykh, who had had it in his family for several generation. He reportedly claimed that his Shaykh would refer to the rifle as “Darley’s rifle”, and it was treasured family heirloom. The Armenian jeweler bought the rifle, and later sold it to Nu’man al-Dali’ (see the entry on *Mirage’s strain below, which is how I learned of this story), who gave it to his heirs, who gave it to Raymond…
Today, Daughters of the Wind turned three. I recall starting this blog on January 11, 2008, towards the last days of my wife’s pregnancy, to keep in touch with a small circle of likeminded friends and breeders of asil Arabians. I had become aware that the duties of a soon-to-be-father were going to make it harder for me to see these friends and enjoy the horses and the horse talk as often as I would have liked, and I felt I had to find a way to remain in touch online. This small circle of breeders and horse enthusiasts had been exchanging regular group emails about preservations issues, and I thought a blog would provide an appropriate platform. I never thought it would become what it is now: a truly global community of enthusiasts dedicated to the preservation of the original qualities and heritage of the asil Arabian horse. Neither did I ever think it would achieve its current status as the number 1 most visited website on Arabian horses at large. Indeed, a quick look at traffic ranking websites this morning puts Daughters of the Wind among the 75,000 most visited websites in the USA on any subject, up from 12 millions when it started. This…
The Egyptian foundation mare Venus is the tail female for one of Egypt’s most successful lines. The stallions Nazeer, Aswan, Khofo, and the mares Yosreia, Samha, Kamla, all come from this line, and so do countless others. Page 63 of Egypt’s Royal Agricultural Society’s Volume I Studbook, also known as the RAS History, has Venus as a chestnut Hadbah Inzihiyah imported in 1893 to Egypt by Hassan Abu Amin Agha, later in the stud of Khedive (Egypt’s Viceroy) Abbas II Hilmi. There is no recorded information as to her tribal provenance in the RAS History. The only tribal information on Venus comes from Carl Raswan. Venus, like other horses owned by the Western educated Abbas II (he was still studying in Vienna when he was called to assume the throne upon the sudden death of his father), had a Western name. She was called Venus after the Roman goddess of love. Another Egyptian foundation mare from the same stud, and probably from the same provenance, was known as the “Halabia mare”, or the ‘mare from Aleppo’ (Halab in Arabic), but she had a Western name, Carmen, after the opera of Bizet. Carl Raswan, who had a habit of conflating Arabian horses’…
Joe Achcar passed away this morning, from a heart attack. I will miss him sorely. This place will not be the same without him.
Recently, I wrote here about the little-known group of horses from the Hadban strain tracing to the desert-bred mare *Hadba, imported by Homer Davenport from Arabia in 1906. The hujjah (Arabic authentication certificate) of that mare is available, and I did a new translation of it, which appeared in the reference book Al Khamsa Arabians III (2008). I am reproducing an updated, revised version of this translation here: We, who put our names and seals below, based on our honor, say that the bay mare whose has a stocking on her left hind leg and a star on her face, that her dam is a Hadbah to be mated and her sire is Shuwayman Sabbah, and the sire of her filly is Ma’naqi Sbayli; Abd al-Sakam Azraq took this mare from Hajj Ismail the Shaykh of Sfireh, and Hajj Ismail took her from ‘Ajil ibn Zaydan the Shaykh of Shammar, and for the sake of clarity, we have put our names and seals [below]. Written by: Abdessalam Azraq [seal] From the people of [the town of] Sfireh: Muhammad Nur [or Nadar or Thawr, unclear] [finger print] Ahmad al-Muhammad [seal] Mustapha al-Bdeiwi [seal] Hajj Ahmad al-Abdallah from the tribe of al-Fardun [seal] Ahmad Sarraj [seal] I swear by God…
Yesterday, Lisa from the UK asked about the meaning of the word “Kuhaylan” and its feminine “Kuhaylah”, as applied to Arabian horses; I won’t tell you anything that most of you don’t know already, I only want to give a sense of its etymology. If you want to understand the meaning of a concept in Arabic, you need to keep a couple things in mind: first, that the Arabic language was developed and enriched by poets — famously, at such venues as the Arabian market of Okaz, which by the way has recently been revived; indeed, the oldest evidence of Arabic language ever comes from an inscription found in 1979 at Ein Avdat in the Negev desert. The inscription dates from the 1st century of our era (0-100 AD) and consists of six lines, two of which are in Arabic, and they are in verse. So, in a nutshell, not only is poetry a central feature of Arab culture in general, and Bedouin culture in particular, but it is also central to its genesis, too. Second, Bedouins are born poets, and like most poets and people who enjoy poetry, they make heavy use of metaphors to express themselves. Here’s Wikipedia (sorry) on the meaning of the word ‘metaphor’: Metaphor…