*Nejdme according to Dolbony’s letters

This is a follow on to a previous message about the horses of the Hamidie Society, some of which survive in modern Arabian horse pedigrees (including *Nejdme, *Obeyran, *Mannaky, *Galfia, and the elusive *Pride). The same letter by J.R. Dolbony I discussed in a previous blog post about the stallion *Mannaky is also relevant to the mare *Nejdme. *Nejdme is registered as a Kuhaylah ‘Ajuz, by a Saqlawi Jadran. An article from that time, has the reverse, by a Kuhaylan ‘Ajuz, out of a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah. I personally see the attribution of these two strains to *Nejdme as suspicious, for two reasons:

First, these are the run-of-the-mill Arabian horse strains or “brands”. Just like tissue paper is generally associated with “Kleenex”, and photocopy machines with “Xerox”, Arabian horse strains in the late nineteenth century were readily associated with “Saqlawi Jadran” and “Kuhaylan Ajuz”.

Second, and that’s personal speculation on my part, I believe the officers of the Hamidie Society were under some expectation to send to the Chicago World Fair horses representative of the five main strains of the Al Khamsa legend, a bit like a car maker would showcase a full array of car types at a car salon: SUVs, coupes, sedans, hybrids, trucks, etc. Hence the representation of the five main Al Khamsa strains: Hamdani (*Galfia), Ma’naqi (*Mannaky), Saqlawi (*Obeyran), Kuhaylan (*Nejdme), and Obayyan (Abeyan).

The 1909 letters of Dolbony to Davenport add fodder to my speculation. In the letters, Dolbony (again, “apparently a performer with the Hamidie Society”, and I want to know more about that) mentions that *Nejdme’s dam was a Saqlawiyah Jidraniyah mare named “Sada el Toga”, which he claims to have leased, and bred to a Kuhaylan ‘Ajuz stallion named “Nakashy,” resulting in *Nejdme.

This is extremely interesting in many ways. First of all, “Sada el Toga”, which is ‘Sa’dah al-Tuqan’ is a strain, not a name. So is “Nakashy”, which is ‘Nakhayshi’, a strain now extinct. We can speculate endlessly about why *Nedjme’s strain as given by Dolbony is different from her registration strain, but my take is this: *Nedjme’s actual strain was not recognizable enough to an American audience, and Dolbony who knew his strains, and was certainly aware that “Sadad el Toga” and “Nakashy” were not names, was encouraged to stick to the official Hamidie story about the strain of *Nejdme.

Second, the association of these rare strains (so rare one really cannot have made them up, or has to be really wicked to have done it) with the particular area of the Middle East Dolbony hailed from. Fifteen miles south of the city of Baalbeck which Dolbony came from, there lied the largest, longest-standing, and most famous stud of Sa’dan Tuqan in the Middle East, that of the Hindi family in Rayak. That stud started in the late nineteenth century. It is not unreasonable to speculate that Dolbony could have leased a mare from this stud, or from someone who had that mare from this stud, or had a mare on shares. In 1949, two mares and a stallion from the Hindi stud of the Sa’adan Tuqan strain, came to the USA. Doing an mtDNA comparison between the *Nejdme line and the *Bint Attebe and *Dalal Hindi lines would be interesting.

Third, look at the resemblance between known photos of *Nejdme and her descendants (Onrust, Dahura, etc) and the Sa’da Tuqan mare *Bint Attebe (a grand mare, of the first class, and superior to anything ever imported to the USA in my opinion)

Even more so, back in the very early days of the Beirut racetrack in the late 1800s, when only a few horses were racing every week, there was a racehorse of the Nakhayshi strain. I forget who he belonged to, and who bred him other than the horse did hail from the Biqaa valley where Baalbeck the city of Dolbony lies, and that he did figure in Ali Barazi’s book under the entry on the Nakhayshi strain. This is the only time in thirty years I heard of this strain, and I never saw a representative of it.