On two desert-bred stallions from the 1930s
This evening I was chatting with Hammad Jaddu’ al-Jaz’ah (Abu Tamer). We chat regularly about the horses about the horses of the Syrian Jazirah more generally and the horses of his family in particular. They have been breeding a well established (mathbut) strain of Saqlawi Jadran since the 1920s. At around 85 years old, Abu Tamer has an excellent memory. This evening he told me a few things about his horses which I did not know before.
First, the original mare his father acquired was a daughter of Dahman Amer the horse of al-Ajarrash.
This seems to have been a notable desert-bred stallion, present in the back of the pedigrees of many Syrian desert horses (beyond the number of generations registered in the studbook). The Dahman Amer of al-Ajarrash is the sire of the Hamdani Simri stallion al-Malkhukh, who is present in most Syrian horses today through his great-grandson Krush Juhayyim (son of the Ubayyan Suhayli of Abd al-Aziz al-Maslat, the son of a daughter of al-Malkhukh), but also in the tail male of the Saqlawi Ibn Zubayni stallion Abjar (son of Ghuzayyil, son of Hamdani al-Jhini, son of al-Malkhukh son of al-Ajarrash). Most notably, the Dahman Amer of Sattam al-Ajarrash (“Douhaymane al-Ajarrache” to use the spelling Henri Pharaon provided Judi Forbis) also sired the Egyptian RAS stallion El Nasser, which means that his lines also survive in modern Egyptian pedigrees as well (one of the few document links between modern Egyptian and modern Syrian horses, but I am sure there are many others).
The second thing Abu Tamer told me is that “the first horse of Ebbo”, another famous desert-bred stallion that is in the back of the pedigree of many of the better Syrian blooodlines, went to Beirut for racing, then went to Egypt, before being bought by the French. Whether he went to France itself or to its North African colonies is not remembered. The first horse of Ebbo (Ebbo al-Hmayyid of the Tai) sired many winning horses in the Beirut racetrack in the 1940s and 1950s, including the Jilfan Sattam al-Bulad stallion ‘Ataba. ‘Ataba’s daughter *Bint Attebe went to the USA and won the 1959 Championship at Estes Park, Colorado, where *Ansata Bint Mabrouka came second.
Several of the mares of Abu Tamer and his brothers trace to the first horse of Ebbo, a Saqlawi Jadran of the strain of Dari Ibn Mahmud.
If the first horse of Ebbo indeed went to French or Algeria or Tunisia, then I should be able to trace him.
Gone fishing..
Oh, how interesting! El Nasser is on the distaff side of The Minstril’s pedigree, so he’s pretty well represented mid-pedigree in Egyptian breeding, I would think. Can Ghuzayyil also be spelled Ghuzeil? I think I’ve seen a Ghuzeil in some Syrian pedigrees, so am curious.
Good hunting for the horse of Ebbo!
Yes same horse
Thank you!
So there is a mistake in allbreed and the syrian studbook in regards the father of al-Malkhukh as being a keheilan nawaki instead of
Douhayman El Ajarrache db ?
Yes the Nawwaq sire of al-Malkhoukh seems to be a mistake. My source is an old pedigree in the draft Lebanese Studbook submitted to WAHO in 1974, written under the supervision of Henri Pharaon, who owned and raced several of the offpsring of Douhaymane al-Ajarrache.