On the book of Ali al-Barazi “The Arab Horse”

Syrian racehorse owner Ali al-Barazi was an authority on the horses of Homs and Hama in Central Syria. He was also a primary source of information about the horses of the Sba’ah Bedouin tribe, whose summer encampments were near these two cities. His family acquired many horses from the Sba’ah. His information about the racehorses of Egypt and Lebanon could be relied upon. His book “the Arab Horse” (in Arabic) is a lot less reliable when it comes to horses from other parts of Arabia.

It also seems that Barazi had access to the English translation of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript, which Judith Forbis and Gulsun Sherif were working on in the 1960s and 1970s. His book features many photos from the Judith Forbis article “Pearls of Great Price” in Arabian Horse World about the horses of Bahrain. He also cites information that appears only in the Abbas Pasha Manuscript. One can tell from the errors in his translations back to Arabic that he was working off excerpts from the English version of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript. This is a minor criticism of what otherwise remains one of the better books to be published in Arabic about Arabian horses over the course of the XXth century (the bar is low).

One instance of Barazi “borrowing” from the Abbas Pasha Manuscript:

1/ On the Kuhaylat Musinnah, Barazi writes: “her marbat is to Talal ibn Rashid [which he translates back to Arabic as Ibn Raashid] of Shammar and she originates from the horses of Bani Hilal”.

By comparison, the Abbas Pasha Manuscript (page 601 of the Gulsun and Sharif translation) indeed features a testimony by Talal Ibn Rasheed about his Kuhaylat al-Musinnah, but says that she was gifted to them by Badr Ibn Haddal (not Hilal), the paramount Shaykh of the ‘Anazah. As as side note, the English version of the Manuscript garbles the spelling of the Kuhaylat al-Musinnah (with the shadda emphasis on the letter sad in the Arabic version) by spelling it “Masnah”. The translation of this section is also fraught with errors that distort the original meening. I think I will retranslate that section on the Musinnat and post it on this blog.

Barazi’s accounts of the Hamdani and Kuhaylan Harqan strains are also summaries of the respective accounts in the Abbas Pasha Manuscript.