Johara and Kaukab from Ali Pasha Sharif

As I continue perusing Lady Anne’s Journals and Correspondence and what was published of her Sheykh Obeyd Studbook looking for information on those horses of Ali Pasha Sharif breeding she did not own, I came across this conclusion, which others might have already reached before.

Excerpts from the Sheykh Obeyd Studbook published in Pearson and Mol (1988) list an entry for the mare Bint Helwa Es Shakra (Johara), which was purchased from Ibrahim Bey Sherif, son of Ali Pasha Sherif, on April 19, 1897, and sent to England the same year, after having been covered by “Ibn Bint Nura Es Shakra (white about 7 years) by Ibn Sherara in Cairo and barren“.

I was wondering who that stallion could be. He obviously was not one of Lady Anne’s horses. He stood in Cairo, not in its outskirts where the studs of Prince Ahmed (in Matarieh) and of the Khedive Abbas Hilmi (in Qubbeh) lied. Downtown Cairo was the location of one or more of the palaces of Ali Pasha Sherif — who had died earlier in the same year. Could this stallion have been of the few horses that remained with Ali Pasha Sherif’s sons, for riding purposes, when the stud was dispersed?

One of the horses that are known to have remained with the family was the stallion Kaukab, with Yusuf Bey Sherif.  On dec. 13, 1907, in a letter to Wilfrid Blunt, Lady Anne writes: “Up to last year Yusuf Bey was the only one of the sons owning a stallion from that Stud — a beautiful white horse about 15 years old. But its name was ‘Kaukab’.  On February 19th, 1914, she has the opportunity to see Kaukab again: “Visit of Ibrahim Bey Sherif. Interesting. He is now again a neighbor… Also he says he has ‘taken’ Kaukab (sire of Sahab) from his brother (Yusef) and will bring that beautiful old horse to show me tomorrow…“. The next day, “Ibrahim Bey Sherif… appeared on Kaukab… That horse is indeed beautiful… what style, the quarter splendid… Kaukab is son of B. Nura, and there is in him much to recall her — a perfect head… Kaukab is Dahman Nejib.”

As is noted in the Al Khamsa Online Roster entry for Kaukab, the personal recollection implies that Kaukab is a son of Lady Anne’s Bint Nura (Bint Nura El Shakra), not one of the several other “Bint Nura” of Ali Pasha Sherif from a generation earlier, which Lady Anne saw in 1880, 1882, etc. The Al Khamsa Online Roster adds that “the 1932 certified pedigree for *Bint Serra I from the stud of Prince Kamal al-Din describes Kaukab as a grey stallion by Ibn Sherara out of “Bint Nura.” Colin Pearson shows the same information about Kaukab’s sire being Ibn Sherara in the Foundation Tables of his “Arabian Horse Families of Egypt” (1988, xxiv), probably using the Sheykh Obeyd Studbook as a reference, but he mistakes the dam for one of other Bint Nuras.

I think there is a great likelihood that the “Ibn Bint Nura Es Shakra (white about 7 years) by Ibn Sherara in Cairo ” that covered Johara in 1897 and Kaukab are actually one and the same horse. There are several arguments in favor of this:

1. The ownership of both Johara and Kaukab by the Sherif family, at the time Johara was bred to this Ibn Bint Nura Es Shakra (white about 7 years) by Ibn Sherara in Cairo”.  

2. The date of birth: Kaukab was “around 15 years” in 1907, so born around 1892, and the Ibn Bint Nura Es Shakra by Ibn Sherara was “about 7” in 1897, so born around 1891.

3. The sire and dam: Both by Ibn Sherara out of Bint Nura Es Shakra.

4. The color: Both white.