New discovery regarding the hujjah of the Davenport mare *Jedah

Early this afternoon during lunch break I was looking at some lists of Fad’aan Bedouin clans on a ‘Anazah tribal website, and while searching for something else, I stumbled on this remarkable piece of information in relation to the hujjah (original document) of the Davenport mare *Jedah imported by Homer Davenport to the USA in 1906.

The hujjah of *Jedah, as I translated it to English for Al Khamsa Arabians III in 2005, is as follows (with minor edits in 2014):

“In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, [blessings and religious statements follow]

After [the blessings], I declare that the entirely chestnut [ie, no white marks] mare which I sold to Ahmad al-Hafedh from the people of Aleppo that she is Hamdania to be mated, [she is] protected, [she is] purer than milk / and she came to me from the tribe of al-Jad’ah and the tribe of al-Jad’ah it came to them from the tribe of Shammar from the breed of Ibn Ghurab and I bear witness upon the owners of this breed [ie, Ibn Ghurab] that their testimony is acceptable and I bear witness to their testimony / And we only bear witness to what we know and we do not keep [information] about the unknown.  [He who] admits to this,  Sharay’ah Aba Hasan [his seal]

I swear by God [that] the witness Sharay’ah Aba Husayn from the tribe of Al-Agagirah from the tribal section of Hakim Beg ibn Mhayd is just and [that] his testimony is acceptable. Ahmad al-Hafez [seal]”

In a nutshell, *Jedah was owned by a Sharay’ah Aba Husayn of the Agagirah (the correct spelling is ‘Aqaqirah and the pronounciation in Bedouin Arabic is ‘Agagirah) sub-tribe of the Fad’aan, and he got her from the Jad’ah tribe (otherwise well known breeders of the Hamdani Simri strain) also of Fad’aan, and the Jad’ah in turn got the line from Ibn Ghurab, the wellspring for the Hamdani Simri strain in the Northern Arabian desert. The same Sharay’ah Aba Hussayn is the signatory of the hujjah, which adds credence to the document.

Now here is what I found on this ‘Anazah tribal website (my translation, my comments in brackets):

“The second component of the Dhana Furaydh [a major sub-section of the Fad’aan] are the ‘Aqaqirah […] and their Sheykh is Ibn Huraymis [who by the way was the last Bedouin owner of the Kuhaylat al-Mimrah mare Freiha imported for Ahmad Pasha Kamal in Egypt, tail female to Mabrouk Manial, etc.] and their war cry is “the horse rider of al-‘Ashwa is a ‘Uqayri” [‘Uqayri is the singular Aqaqirah is plural], and they are the sons of Furaydh and they were nicknamed ‘Aqaqirah [which means “those who severe/cut limbs”] because their ancestors Khamis and Muqrin cut the limbs of some horses and there is a story about that;

And within al-‘Aqaqirah there are [two subgroups] al-Khamis and al-Muqrin […] and within al-Khamis there are four sub-groups: (i) al-Mayyis; (ii) al-Hdabi; (iii) al-Sulayman and they are [the same as] al-Dhawi; and (iv) al-Hazim […]

[So] the third group of al-Khamis is al-Dhawi and they are the sons of Sulayman, and their elder is Ibn Sharay’ah Aba Husayn

And within al-Sulayman there are three subgroups: (i) al-Dhawi; (ii) al-Dahi; (iii) al-Mud-hi […]

And the third sub-group of al-Sulayman is al-Mud-hi, and within al-Mudhi, there is [the subgroup of] al-Hudayri, and from al-Hudayri comes Aba Husayn and al-Rashed and al-Salbukh, and from Aba Husayn comes al-Sharay’ah and al-Gargab”

And that’s the same person as in the hujjah.

What amazes most in this list of cascading clans, sub-clans, sub-clans of sub-clans of the Aqaqirah section of the Fad’aan all the way down to the individual Bedouin is how dynamic it is. In 1906, Sharay’ah Aba Husayn was one single man, owner of *Jedah, and one hundred years later, as the list of clans was uploaded on the Internet, he appears as the ancestor of a clan who bears his name: the Shara’yah, now a family among others of the larger Aba Husayn clan.

So we are now in a position to confirm that Sharay’ah Aba Husayn (that’s the correct spelling and it’s reflected in the hujjah text above) is the leader/elder of the clan of al-Sulayman (also known as al-Dhawi, after one of its sub-clans), and is himself from al-Hudayri family of the al-Mud-hi sub-clan of al-Sulayman clan, which is itself part of the al-Khamis larger clan which is one of two sub-sections of the ‘Aqaqirah section of the Fad’aan tribe. Along the way, we also learned how the Aqaqirah/Ajajirah section got its name.

Another observation is that Ahmad al-Hafez is mentioned (under the spelling al-Hafedh) as the buyer of the mare in the hujjah and I had not realized that before. I had rendered it as Ahmad al-Madi by mistake (now corrected, the original Arabic was not easy to decipher). The text above is the most accurate translation of the hujjah of *Jedah thus far.