General

لاحظ حجم واستدارة الحنك ودقة الخشوم ورقتها وهي من صفات العتق في الخيل ولهذه الصفات تأثير مباشر على شكل الرأس فيصير مثلثًا وهذا مستحب أما الرأس المستطيل فهو مستقبح لما يدل عليه ضمنًا من ضعف الحنك أو غلاظة الخشوم أو الاثنين معًا

This blog entry features a conversation that recently took place on Facebook between two friends of mine, both bold and provovative thinkers (and doers). Yassine Jamali is a farmer and occasional horse and dog breeder who lives in Morocco. He recently authored an important book on the past, present and future of Barb horses. Severine … Read more

I don’t know if these two photos of the desert-bred mare *Ghalia was published before. According to Al Khamsa’s online roster, *Ghalia was a 1956 bay Hamdaniyah bred by the Sa’ud Royal Stud at Khafs Daghrah, Saudi Arabia. She was purchased in 1958 and imported to the USA in 1961 by Donald A. Holm. She … Read more

This blog article quotes the famous and very funny exchange between Lawrence of Arabia and his proofreaders during the process of preparing his Seven Pillars of Wisdom for publication in 1926:

The latest edition of the Swift Runner newsletter has an article by Betty Finke about the Crabbet foundation stallion Mesaoud being the most influential Arabian stallion of all time, an observation I agree with. The article also includes a nod to the new pedigree of Mesaoud on the sire line, which was published in the … Read more

I am awaiting three foals this year, all representing the second generation of my breeding. Kinza Al Arab (to Bashir Al Dirri), Barakah Al Arab (to Monologue CF) are due in April, and Mayassa Al Arab (to Anecdote CF) in the fall. Fingers crossed after Wadha’s filly’s tragedy last year. In my fantasy world, there … Read more

Facebook has these superb photos from the ancient Sabean capital city of Marib in Yemen in 1987. These were likely taken by archaeologists working on excavating the temple of South Arabian god Ilmuqah (known locally as Mahram Balqis, Balqis being the Islamic name for the Queen of Sheba). No credit were given.

Shamsah Al Arab (Cascade DE x SS Lady Guenevere) is the Ma’naqiyah filly I had been planning for several years. She has her dam’s very dark chestnut coat color, strong build, short back, and … short neck. Pictured here with her dam running behind her. Photo DeWayne Brown.

Landrace Belisasius turns one at the end of this month. He is the son of Jamr out of Belle that went to Moira Walker in utero. He is a light bay, the color of his damline ancestor, *Nufoud. I like very much, as to me he exemplifies the permanence of the old type of Arabian … Read more

I thoroughly enjoyed reading — and learned a lot from — the short article presenting the ninth century CE treatise of Ibn Akhi Hizam al-Khuttali’s “Book of Horses and Hippiatry” (Kitab al-Khayl wa al-Baytara, its most commonly used Arabic name). This 2021 article by Jamal Hossaini-Hilali and Abdelkrim El Kasri follows their French translation in … Read more

Over the past couple of years, I have been working on several projects with likeminded friends and preservation breeders from around the world. These projects seek to complete and expand the original mission of DOW, which has always been to raise awareness about the true Arabian horse, its people, history and heritage, in a way … Read more

Laszlo Kiraly’s Hungarian magazine Lovas Nemzet is holding its 2024 photo competition. Participate if you can.

The latest edition of Swift Runners, the refreshing and much welcome monthly newsletter launched by Denise Hearst, Betty Finke, Scott Benjamin and a few others features a reprint of an earlier article by Charles and Jeanne Craver, Wisdom from the Breeding Shed. It deserves to be read and reread far and wide.

Dr. Sandra Olsen published this article in “Arabian Humanities” on “Insight on the Ancient Arabian Horse from North Arabian Petroglyphs”. If you don’t want to read the entire article, skim through it, look at the pictures and compare with your own horses. Stylized depictions of the horse did not begin with the Orientalists.

It is hard to find more balanced and better conformed desert-bred horses than the 1999 Syrian stallion Jurnass (Ghaseeb x Raya) and his close relative Zayn al-Khayl (Ghaseeb x Raghdanah), both Rabdan by strain. Photo of Jurnass from Facebook, not sure who took it originally.

I just stumbled this AK PTF update from 2013. The early 2010s were a critical time for many of lines, as many breeders/owners were reeling from the impact of the 2008 financial crisis. However, most of these horses went to good breeding homes, and now have descendants. Ten years later, the results are encouraging.

Gleaned off Facebook. By the way, in case I haven’t written this before, I don’t believe these was yet such a thing as an “Arab horse breed” — the term ‘breed’ is a socio-cultural construct — at that early time, but there clearly was an oriental horse, some descendants of which eventually came to form … Read more

Finally I feel confident about sharing a photo of Madinas Miracle, who arrived last year in poor shape, and has taken a long time to recover. I will try a breeding to Jamr in the spring, after treating her uterine infection. There are a lot of things to like about this mare. First, her origins: … Read more

I went up to Pennsylvania with Jenny Krieg to see the horses this past Sunday. Monica Respet and Linda Uhrich met us there. We spent a nice afternoon catching up. All the horses looked great. Jamr in particular looked drop dead gorgeous, muddy winter coat and all. He was let loose in the upper riding … Read more

I love it! Check out Mayassah’s entry for example. You can even hover over the photo icon and see the photos of the ancestors without having to click on each ancestor.

An interesting trend common to both Syrian and Bahraini Arabian horses is the disappearing of the old Bedouin concept of “Shubuw” or “Yishabby”. The concept means “fit for breeding” or “good for breeding”. Before the 1980s in Bahrain, and the 2000s in Syria, there was a distinction between the strains that were considered “fit for … Read more

The British Arab Horse Society (AHS) celebrated its centennary in 2018. For this occasion, it curated an exhibition in Newmarket, England, where it showcased three hujaj of desert-bred mares imported to the UK, among other original documents. Kina Murray, who was then WAHO Secretary, had asked me to translate these for AHS. Below is the … Read more

I have been reading a passage in the Arabic original version of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript on the testimony of an elderly man of the Ruwalah Bedouins about a certain Kuhaylah mare. Here is my translation into English: “Some say that she is Kuhaylah, and other people say that she is ‘Ubayyah, and we don’t … Read more

The authentication document — in Arabic, hujjah — of the Blunt desert-bred import Meshura is not done yielding more information. One year after having published its translation and commentary into English in the book The Arabian Horses of Abbas Pasha, I keep learning new things about it. As background, Meshura great-grand-dam, “The Mare of Daghir”, … Read more

The Abbas Pasha Manuscript was completed in 1853 and is a compilation of accounts dating ca. 1850. Its Kuhaylan section has three short but interesting accounts about the “Five, the Mares of the [Prophet’s] Companions [al-Sahabah]. Account of ‘Arar Ibn Hunaydi, an elderly man, in a Ruwalah majliss of more than thirty people: “one Ma’naqiyah … Read more

In my earlier dives into the Abbas Pasha Manuscript, I had somehow missed this statement on the origin of the Saqlawi Jadran strain: Talal Ibn Ramal [a Shammar Bedouin notable from Najd] was asked: from whom did the Jadraniyah originally reach Ibn Jadran? The aforementioned stated before the gathering that these were ancient utterances [qaalaat … Read more

Today I took — yet another — deep dive into the Saqlawi Marighi section in the Arabic version of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript as published by the KAPL from the original of Gulsun Sherif. What I like the most in the book are the snippets where Bedouins share their views on breeding and conformation. These … Read more

From Rehan Ud Din Baber’s page, quoting King Abdul Aziz ibn Saud in the book ‘Ibn Sa?oud of Arabia, his people and his land’ by Ameen Rihani: “The Arabs of the North,’ he said, ‘ are heavy of foot and stolid; the people of Najd are quick, light, wiry. They snap and break not. Like … Read more

I am happy to introduce Silvia Bacci as a guest blogger from Argentina on Daughters of the Wind ab horse in the way it came to us, when they were taken away from their cradle land. From Silvia: I have loved horses since I was born. And that love hasn’t diminished with age but on … Read more

In the British Museum lies this wall panel relief believed to represent queen Shamsi of the Arabs following her defeat at the hands of Tiglath-Pileser III’s Assyrian armies in 732 BCE. The four camels and the vase she holds in her hand are a representation of the tribute her Arab tribes had to pay to … Read more