Kuhaylan Khdili in the Abbas Pasha Manuscript

The strain of the Kuhaylan al-Khdili (alt. spellings Hedili, Khadali, Khadli) is not well known outside Arabia. It is however one of the most esteemed and revered strains of Arabian horses. Connoisseurs speak of its authenticity (asalah) with awe and respect.

Few horses of that strain made it to the West. One such horse is Safita, a red bay desert-bred who according to the French Studbook Volume 21 was by a sire “de race Koheilan en Naouak” and a dam “de race Koheilan El Kedilih”. Safita was imported by the French General Detroyat from Syria to Algeria in 1934. Writes Robert Mauvy who knew him well and loved him:

Safita, bai cerise. Cheval à très grandes lignes dont une encolure exceptionnelle. Sa tête était fine et légère, sculptée, avec des oreilles pointées… à l’excès. L’une d’elles endommagée par un coup de sabre- sa gorge arquée était d’une rare netteté; si le corps était excellent, l’arrière main était d’une puissance exceptionnelle; ses postérieurs, de ce fait, très distants l’un de l’autre, et ses jarrets droits, longs et larges -actions éblouissantes crins tissus d’une grande finesse.

Kuhaylan al-Khdili is a branch of the Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz, owned by the Khdilat clan of the Fad’aan Bedouin tribe, and know after them. As simple as that. In their hujaj, the owners of the strains from the clan of al-Khdili refer to it as Kuhaylan ‘Ajuz. Bedouin owners of particular strains always refers to their strain after the people they got it from.

There is a persistent oral tradition in Syria, which I have heard since the 1990s, that traces back the Kuhaylan Haifi and Kuhaylan Musinn strains of the Fad’aan to a mare of the Kuhaylan al-Khdili strain. That story keep coming back and is accepted today as a fact. Some years ago, I tried to test it with the help of a friend of mine who collected samples from several mares from each of these three strains. The mtDNA haplotypes did not match each other (nor did those of horses from the same strain match). Of course, this may not mean anything. It does however, make sense that the Kuhaylan Haifi strain is an offshoot of the Khdili. More on why this is plausible in another entry.

The Abbas Pasha Manuscript features three stallions from that strain, from all around Arabia:

The first mention is on page 377. In it, a man associated with the Saud family says, of his Hadba mare: “We mated our filly to Kuhaylan al Khadli, the breeding stallion [hasan awlwah] of Saud.” This qualification of hisan ‘ulwah is significant. It means that the sole function of this horse was only that of a breeding horse for Saud ibn ‘Abd al-‘Aziz (so in the early 1800s). This is was no occasional stallion.

The second mention is on page 603. The shaykh of a branch of the Shammar says, of a mare with no strain mentioned: “And as for her father, he is Kuhaylan al Khadli, the horse of Mohamed al Sawadi of al Tauman of Shammar, as Talal ibn Rashid has already said.” This can’t be the same horse as the one before, because of the difference in time. This account was at the time of Faysal Ibn Turki, while the previous one dates from the time of Saud ibn Abd al-‘Aziz (so in the 1830s-40s).

The third mention is on page 617. This is about a Rabda mare: ”Al Dubey’i mated her to Kuhaylan al Khadli of al Khadliyat of al Fid’an which had originally passed to Shammar, and from Shammar to Muteer.” This may well be the previous horse, or a different one. Here you have the mention of the original owners of the marbat (al-Khdilat of the Fad’aan), then intermediate owners (the Shammar), then the owners at the time the account was related (the Mutayr). It’s an illustration of how stallions move.