H.R.P. Dickson on the ‘Ubayyan strain of Ibn Jalawi

I have writtten about the Ubayyan strain specific of Ibn Jalawi several times before, mainly here, here and here. It is the strain of my mare Madinas Miracle, and my stallion AAS Nelyo, which trace back to the Ubayyah mare *Mahraa, a gift from Saud Ibn Jalawi, governor of the Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia to Esther Ames, an ARAMCO woman doctor.

Recently, Kate pointed me to a quote about the Ubayyan strain of Ibn Jalawi in the 1949 book of H.R.P. Dickson, “The Arab of the Desert: A glimpse into Badawin life in Kuwait and Sau’di Arabia”. Dickson, who was the British political representative in Kuwait, reportedly began collecting material for his book in 1929 and finished research for it in 1936. He wrote:

Every Shaikh of standing is supposed to always keep his rabat, i.e. a mare or mares from which he breeds a certain particular strain. He gets name and prestige by doing this. […] I will only mention one more instance, and that is the ’Ubaiyan strain of the late ’Abdullah bin Jiluwi, the Governor of Hasa. He was a great horse fancier like all the family of the Al Sa’ud, and had many famous mares in his stable, but he specialised in the ’Ubaiyan breed, and anyone in Arabia can tell you all about the time and money he spent on his hobby. His son Saud is carrying on his father’s good work.

One reason I particularly like the two Ibn Jalawi lines of *Mahraa (Ubayyan strain) and *Al Hamdaniah (Hamdani strain) is that their living descendants are very close to the original desert-bred mares, which were were born at a time when the traditional Bedouin way of life had not yet been overcome by the oil-induced modernization of Arabia. Madinas Miracle (b. 2003), for instance, is a direct great-great-granddaughter of *Mahraa (b. 1943), while the Hamdani mare Luinil TOS (b. 2004) which I am currently leasing is a great-great-granddaughter of *Al Hamdaniah (b. 1943). Oil was first discovered in commercial quantities in Eastern Saudi Arabia in 1938 at the Dammam No. 7 well. The pace of modernization that ensued right after this discovery was the fastest a human society had ever experienced before.