On the dating of the Ubayyan Suhayli strain

Kate recently asked about how old the strain name of Ubayyan Suhayli was. In other words, when did the specific strain of Ubayyan Sharrak owned by al-Suhayli of the Shammar stopped being referred to as Ubayyan Sharrak and became known as Ubayyan Suhayli after its owners’ name.

The earliest written reference to Ubayyan Suhayli I have come across is in a French Studbook entry (below): a mare born in 1892 and imported by the French to Algeria in 1896 has a dam from the strain of “El-Abie-El-Scheilie”. That dates the strain to the 1880s at least.

That said, the passing of the strain to the Shammar tribe during its war with the Sharif of Mecca is definitely older than that. The war(s) of Shammar with the Sharif predate the publication of the APM (1853) and the visits of Abbas Pasha’s envoys to the tribes (which started in 1848-9), although the APM does not mention the Ubayyan Suhayli strain.

One probable reason for that is that Abbas Pasha’s agents seem to have avoided some encampments of the Jarba Shammar, specifically those of Abd al-Karim and his brother Faris (the one Lady Anne Blunt met in 1878), the sons of Sfug al-Jarba. Sfug was treacherously murdered by the Ottomans in late October 1847 (per Williamson based on Ottoman archives). The Shammar sections led by his son Abd al-Karim entered a state of open rebellion against the Ottomans shortly after that, for a period of twenty five years that culminated with the capture of Abd al-Karim and his hanging on a bridge in Mosul.

With this context in mind, it’s not difficult to understand why the envoys of Abbas Pasha avoided the Jarba Shammar, despite several references in the APM to “the year Sfug al-Jarba was slain” (1847). The only exception to that are a couple mentions of gatherings held in the tent of Farhan al-Jarba, Abd al-Karim’s half brother. Faris was his father’s heir to the leadership of the Jarba Shammar, and was recognized by the minority that didn’t stay loyal to Abd al-Karim. Farhan was already collaborating with the Ottomans and the Egyptians at that time. It is very likely that the Ubayyan Suhayli strain, of the Ubayyan Sharrak strain owned by al-Suhayli, was present among those tribesmen that were with Abd al-Karim al-Jarba and which Abbas Pasha’s envoys did not visit.