Fresh information on the Davenport mare *Hadba

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 [that] the witnesses referred to are just and [that] their testimony is acceptable: Ahmad al-Hafez [seal]

I will leave the comments on this hujjah for another time. For now, I want to share with you a piece of information I just found, which sheds light on *Hadba’s background:

The hujjah above mentions a certain ” ‘Ajil Ibn Zaydan, the Shaykh of Shammar” as the original owner of *Hadba. I have always been intrigued by who he was, but never looked into it further. Today, I did a quick search online, just for heck of it, and the outcome of it was more fruitful that I could have hoped:

The search led me to a discussion thread on the Shammar tribal website, where a member posted a short story about a ‘Ajil Ibn Zaydan al-Jarbah of the ruling clan of the Shammar. The story is about how a large detachment of Ottoman soldiers surrounded a group of Shammar Bedouins, and asked that the Shammar surrender ‘Ajil ibn Zaydan to them, or else the whole group of Shammar would be taken into custody.  The Shammar asked ‘Ajil to flee, and told him they would ask for God’s help to deal with the Ottomans, but ‘Ajil refused, citing a poetry verse that was relevant to the situations, and surrended to the Ottomans, who then executed him. The story is one of self-sacrifice for own’s group, and is a nice one.

Yet the point of this article is not the story, but rather the tracing of the mare *Hadba to ‘Ajil Ibn Zaydan al-Jarbah. *Hadba then becomes the second mare Davenport imported to be traced to a leader of the Shammar Bedouins, after *Abeyah who was the mare of Mit’ab al-Hadb.

This piece of information is all the more significant in that the Hadban strain is still owned by the leader of the Shammar Bedouins in Syria. Indeed Hamidi al-Dham al-Hadi al-‘Asi al-Farhan al-Sfouq al-Jarbah is the owner of the last Hadban mares remaining in Syria. Time to ask for a DNA sample for comparison..

More on this ‘Ajil Ibn Zaydan soon now that his Jarbah affiliation has come to light.