Mameluke (GSB)
I am irked that we still know so little about this horse. We know his color (chestnut), his name and his date of birth (1885). I also read somewhere that he was thought be a “high caste Arabian”.
Probably a race horse, or an army horse. Probably exported from Basrah, or Kuwait to Bombay. Bombay/Mumbai may have kept customs documents. The British army too, perhaps.
We know a lot more about Lord Herbrand Russell, 11th Duke of Bedford, who brought him from India to England in 1892. He served in Egypt in 1882, which is probably why he gave the horse this name.
Mameluke sired the mare *Shabaka for another important Englishman, Lord Arthur Cecil. Shabaka was imported to the USA by Spencer Borden, who bred her influential son Segario.
My 2013 mare Mayassah Al Arab is the last living Al Khamsa horse tracing to him. If a stallion is ever to rise from Mayassa’s line, I better start finding more information about Mameluke. India is the right place to start, but where in India?
Arabians from India make me scream sometimes – I have been trying to track down more particulars on a mare Nightingale (Silver Thrush x Amsha), bred at Ahmednagar, bought by Robert Stirling Clarke, shipped to England and then to South Africa, where she was bred to the stallion Jiddan, and produced Orange Valley Night Star (1944). She also produced two colts by Indian Red, Orange Valley Indian Prince, and Orange Valley Indian Pride, and four full siblings by Shagya XXV-12. I have tried to track down more information on Nightingale and her parents, but there is nothing on her dam Amsha, and very little on Silver Thrush – he was a grey, 14.3 hh, foaled in the desert in 1921, raced in India and won nine times, and was used by the Ahmednagar Stud. And that is it. I have written to a library holding Stirling Clark’s papers, and they have found nothing on Nightingale, and to a library in India, as well, but no reply. Maddening dead ends everywhere.
Last year, Moira wrote a letter to the current Duke of Bedford about Mameluke (I think it was Mameluke, but I also recall that there was a mare she enquired about as well), but I don’t think she’s received any reply.
Yes, it’s been about a year now with no reply. I believe I also enquired about Halfa (spelled Halpha in the article I read about her in The Windsor Magazine, Vol. 1, 1895.) I believe she is a Crabbet mare, Kars x Hagar. Reportedly she was the Duchess of Bedford’s favorite mare.
https://www.siv.archives-nationales.culture.gouv.fr/siv/rechercheconsultation/consultation/ir/pdfIR.action?irId=FRAN_IR_003491
There is some letters of the above mentionned Lord Russel in the French Archives Edouard 😉
Maybe a chance !
I seem to recall a contributor from Pakistan writing about a database of remount horses from that country, but since I can’t find the comment anymore, maybe I am mis-remembering.
You are correct Jenny. Just search “Pakistan” on the DOW search engine and it will come up
Edouard, I think you have linked to the wrong Arthur Cecil. Probably the breeder of *Shabaka was the Lord Arthur Cecil who lived 3 July 1851– 16 July 1913, son of Lord Salisbury.
You have linked to an actor, Arthur Cecil Blunt (1 June 1843 – 16 April 1896).
Thank you for catching it. I was wondering about that.
Thanks, Edouard.
For whatever reason, the DOTW search didn’t (and hadn’t earlier) found those comments, but a Google site search did.
Unfortunately, I had mis-remembered and the comments were about a studbook and not a database. Rats.
Getting back to Halfa, she was an 1881 chestnut mare, bred at Crabbet in Crabbet’s very early days, by Kars and out of Hagar.
Halfa is mentioned twice in Lady Anne Blunt, Journals & Correspondence. On Aug. 8, 1884, Lady Anne made a note that Wilfrid had ridden Halfa. On Aug 27, 1887, she made a note about a gig pulled by Halfa taking Miss Dillon apparently to the train station.
Halfa was sold at the 4th Crabbet sale, July 28, 1888, to Lord Herbrand Russell, for £80. She was “quiet to ride and drive.”
The name Robert Sterling Clark rang a bell. The Crabbet mare *Nasrima #3065 is registered as having been imported to the U.S. in 1935 by R. Sterling Clark of Upperville, Virginia. The Arab Horse Society stud book, volume 5, page 161, lists Nasrima’s owner as Robert Stirling [sic] Clark of New York. This must be the same Robert Sterling Clark as the one who imported Nightingale?
I believe it is, yes; I contacted the Sterling and Francine Clark Art Institute Library back in 2018, to see if there was any chance they might have information on Nightingale, but no luck. Relevant part of the correspondence copied below:
“Our library Director, who is very familiar with the Sterling Clark archive, has skimmed his horse-breeding charts and diaries entries for this period and found no reference to Nightingale. The horse-breeding charts are most difficult to understand but they don’t seem to include information about the horses you mention, and the diary entries mostly refer to horses that were in his American farms.”
So there may be information on Nasrima there, given she was imported to the U.S..