O’Bajan, Jussuf I, and 81 Kohaila
Below are photos of three Bábolna horses, from the 1896 Berättelse till Landtbruksstyrelsen öfver en år 1893-94 med statsunderstöd företagen resa i utlandet för studier i husdjursafvel.
O’Bajan, above, was one of the four stallions acquired for Bábolna by General Fadlallah Mikhail el-Haddad in 1885. Erika Schiele, The Arab Horse in Europe, says of him:
[He was] one of the most valuable stallions ever to come to Hungary. He covered mares at Bábolna for twenty-five years, until his death in 1910. Of his 312 foals, 112 stood at stud, and fifty-six became brood mares. At the World Exhibition in Paris of 1900, one of his sons won a first prize for pure-bred Arabs against competition from Russia, England, Constantinople, and even Aleppo. He lies buried under a two-hundred-year-old acacia tree in the stable-yard.
In the photos below, the black stallion Jussuf is actually Jussuf I, the 1890 son of Jussuf and Bent-El-Arab, making him a full brother to the 1888 mare 46-Jussuf. Bent-El-Arab, imported on the same expedition as O’Bajan by Fadlallah el-Haddad, has died out in tail female descent at Bábolna, but still survives in Polish breeding, as the mares 233 Kuhailan Zaid-13 and 22 Kuhailan Zaid-1 were rescued from a serum factory by the Poles after the war. Renamed Bona (233 Kuhailan Zaid-13) and Balia (22 Kuhailan Zaid-1), Balia went on to establish a female family in Polish breeding, through her Witraz daughter Celia. Bona’s daughters, however, proved unsatisfactory, and were eliminated from the Polish breeding program, and the Bona line to Bent-El-Arab is found instead through her son Como, also by Witraz.
81 Kohaila was another of the foundation mares for Båbolna as well as one of the 20+ remaining foundation mare lines found in Shagya Arabians, and another one of Fadlallah el-Haddad’s 1885 imports. She is found in the pedigree of 3 Siglavy Bagdady VI.
One of O’bajans’ line bred descendants Bajar established a line of jumpers in the Holsteiner warmblood breed. Also another, the half shagya half Trakhener White girl took olympic three day eventing medals under Igrid Klimke.
Babolna still stands a line bred Bajar stallion. I wonder how you would go about ordering frozem semen?
best
Bruce Peek
Oh, that’s very interesting to learn! Thanks for sharing the info on the Holsteiners and on Windfall – I didn’t realise he traced to O’Bajan.
Bábolna’s webpage mentions that the stud fees for their stallions include the cost of semen collection, so I imagine you could just drop them an email.
Robert Mauvy’s lifelong passion for Arabian horses can be traced to his seeing that son of Obajan in Paris at the World Exhibition.
By the way, the original Obajan was a Ma’naqi, by an Ubayyan (hence the name) out of a Ma’naqiyah, from the breeding of the Dandashi clan in Tal Kalakh, Syria.