Daughters of the Wind

This article appeared in the Khamsat Magazine issue in tribute to Charles Craver. I first met Charles (and Jeanne) in December 2000, when I took the train from Chicago where I was studying. It was a memorable visit, and we spent hours talking in their kitchen and looking at horses and old documents. Upon my return, Charles told a person whose identity escapes me now that “I had liked a very different set of horses than the ones other visitors typically liked.” This was true for the most part, because in addition to perennial favorites Pirouette CF and Wisteria CF, several Davenport broodmares with straighter profiles, less classical heads, and less round, more sloped hindquarters had caught my eye, and I had commented favorably about them. They were built like tanks, with deep girths, broad rib cages and high withers. I cannot recall their names today, but all were very reminiscent of mares of desert-bred stock I had known and liked in Syria and Lebanon while growing up there in the 1980s. These Davenport mares were “diamonds in the rough”, and it’s that unadulterated, un-sculpted, pristine quality that attracted me to them. The overwhelming majority of desert-bred mares and mares…

Through Pienaar Du Plessis in South Africa come these photos of the asil 1994 Kuhaylan Mimrah stallion Kibriya Nishkur (Sidi Abu Khai x Sidi Mabruka by Raafek), a sire of endurance winners in this country, with an improbable nine crosses to Morafic, and two close crosses to the 1955 Bahraini stallion Tuwaisaan of Valerie Noli-Marais. This horse is a case study in the change a small infusion of desert blood can do to Egyptian lines. Notice the big flat bone, and the muscle neck, the high withers and muscular croup characteristic of the Bahraini horses and of the old Kuhaylan Mimrah line of Barakah from Manial stables. Most Egyptian horses with nine crosses to Morafic don’t look so masculine.        

Together with Aleppo, Sanaa in Yemen and Fes in Morocco, my favorite ancient city. Then come Florence, Budapest, Rome, Paris, Vienna. Here the suq of Midhat Pasha. Photos from the Library of Congress.

Photo gleaned on an online discussion where Lyman Doyle was asking about feedback on his Tamaam’s straight profile. Call this creature whatever you want, a snake, a seahorse, a mutant, “living art”, but not an Arab horse. This has gone too far.  

Ginger — with Bev Davison in Idaho — was bred to Bev’s stallion Subanet Jabbar SDA (photo below), a Saqlawi with a high percentage Crabbet and Abbas Pasha blood, with close crosses to personal favorites like the Doyle stallions Parnell and Subani, and the dark bay Babson stallion Saafaddan. That was close to three weeks ago. Time for a pregnancy check. Below: Saafaddan, with Walter Shimanski.  

Wadha was bred last week to the Bahraini stallion Shuwaiman Al Rais (photo below), from the breeding of Jenny Lees in the UK. I am looking forward to this cold outcross, the first ever of a Bahraini horse to a mare of old Syria (i.e. Davenport) lines. I hope it works, because Wadha was still showing fluid in her uterus as of yesterday.

Today Rosemary Doyle bred for me the Managhi mare Daughter of the Pharaohs (aka “Pippa”), which I leased from DeWayne Brown, to the Doyle stallion Tamaam DE (photo below, by Carver DE out of Maloof Habiba), who of 100% old Crabbet lines. Fingers crossed for a healthy foal in 2019.

Finally, Jamr Al Arab (Vice Regent CF x Jadiba) who is now under saddle with Sue Moss riding. Last photo while collecting is by Darlene. He traces to *Wadduda, the war mare of the leader of the Fad’aan Bedouins, imported by Homer Davenport in 1906. (I like repeating these things).

And this Wadha Al Arab before a trip to the vet clinic for AI breeding. Top photo by Darlene.

This is Jadah BelloftheBall (“Belle”), a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz from the strain imported by Albert Harris through Amin Rihani to the USA from the Saudi Royal Stables in 1932.                                 

This is my not-so-little Barakah Al Arab (Wadd Al Arab x Jadah BelloftheBalll), almost two years old, and a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz tracing to the mare *Nufoud (ca. 1925) of the royal stables of Saudi Arabia. It was hard to get a full body shot because she kept mobbing me.

This past weekend Jeanne Craver flew in and out to say goodbye before I leave for a new assignment in South Africa, and we went to see the horses, together with Jenny Krieg and Darlene Summers. This is my beautiful Ma’naqiyah Sbayliyah mare SS Shadows Aana. Any foals from her seem extremely unlikely at this juncture.

Through Yahya Al-Tahawi in Egypt comes this new picture of El Deree, the desert-bred race horse that became a senior stallion at the Egyptian Royal Stud in Inshass. This photo was never published in the West before.

That is a local “Shami” breed of cows from Southern and Western Syria. They have red coats and produce relatively little milk, that is dense and delicious. It has now all but disappeared, crossed with imported cattle from Europe and elsewhere.

This mare has a fast pace and carries herself with distinction and style. My ten year old girl remarked on this saying: “I like Belle because she walks so proudly”.  She embodies the unique nobility of the breed. Also, she produces better than she is.

My black Ma’naqiyah mare SS Shadows Aana was bred to my Saqlawi al-‘Abd Jamr Al Arab for a 2019 foal last Thursday May 3, and the following Friday, Saturday and Monday. Friday and Saturday’s were good covers. The cross would bring out multiple lines to Gulastra through his three offspring Gulida, Nusi and Julep.

Two days ago Carrie Slayton bred the Hadbah mare RL Zahra Assahara (Portent x Antezzah by Grand Pass) to Ambar Diaz’ Porte CF (Portico x Recherche). Carrie and I now co-own Zahra. If the resulting foal (with three close crosses to Portia) is a filly, she is mine, and any colts and future fillies are Carrie’s.

I am grateful to my friend from Deir El Zor Okba al-Ruwaili for having recently clarified to me the meaning of the expression “Min Hab El Rih and Nabt El Shih”, which occurs in many hujaj (or Arabic authentication certificates). Okba tells me that the expression is used by ‘nabati’ or settled folks from Syria as a metaphor for desert authenticity, not just to refer to desert-bred horses but for all things related to the desert. Of course “nabt” means plant in ‘general’, and Okba tells me “al-shih” is an aromatic and medicinal plant specific to the desert (plural “shih”, singular “shiha”, cf. Lady Anne Blunt’s mare “Shieha”), also used to perfume tents into the present day. It’s English name is Artemisia, and below is a photo of one specimen from Saudi Arabia. As to “hab el rih” it means the “wind that blows” as I have mentioned in previous posts devoted to clarifying the meaning of this expression. The meaning is the same, a metaphor for the desert. Okba sent me the hujjah (the mare it refers to is irrelevant) in the photo below as an illustration, my translation below: I the undersigned, Mr. Hamid Muhammad Ali al-Jassim from…

This season I am planning a larger number of breedings than any year before, in part because many mares are not getting younger, and in part to avoid a situation like last year where too few attempts lead to no offspring in 2017. Years without foals are sad. In the event of five pregnancies, then… well, we’ll see. First, DA Ginger Moon (‘Ginger’), who is 20 this year, will be bred to Bev Davison’s Subanet Jabbar SDA (Summer Sonnet SDA x Bint Bint Subani). Ginger is a Doyle-Pritzlaff Egyptian tail female Rabanna, Jabbar is a Doyle-Babson tail female Gulida, so they should match, with plenty of Abbas Pasha lines all over the resulting foal’s pedigree. Pictures of Jabbar in the Idaho mountains follow. Thank goodness for horses like him, bold movers with high withers, extravagant tail carriage, short backs, naturally arched necks, expressive eyes (not the inflated ‘parrot eye’ of show creatures) and a flawless pedigree. In other news today, my Haykal jumped two fences and bred my two years old Barakah. That was not in the books for this year.

Mohammed Abdel Sattar Tahoon from Egypt did what many Egyptian and other horse breeders and lovers have been dreaming to do since the time of Lady Anne Blunt. He went looking for the fabled ruins of Dar El Beida (in Arabic, the “White House”), the stables Abbas Pasha I built for his collection of Arabian in the middle of the Suez desert. And he had these photos taken. While I was living in Egypt 2013-2015, my friend Ali Shaarawi told me about the ruins of Dar El Beida, which I thought had all but disappeared. No roads lead to it. Abbas Pasha I had caravans of camels supply it in water and fodder. It fell in disrepair after his death, and some half a century later Lady Anne Blunt, who camped near the site, described its ruins as inhabited by owls and jackals. This is the same place Von Hugel described in late 1860 when he attended the dispersal auction Ilhami Pasha held for his father’s collection.

It’s breeding season again, and a number of great matings are being planned and conducted across the country. Porte CF (Portico x Recherche) is in Southern California with Carrie Slayton who bred him to her two Davenport Haifi mares, Brighton TAH (Ascendant x GH Janet) and ADA Skylarking (“Birdie”, Palisades CF x Lustre CF by Javera Thadrian). They are two of my favorite Davenport mares, photos below, with Birdie on the right. Carrie also bred Porte to what is now also her Hadba Enzahi RL Zahra Assahara (Portent x Antezzah). We now co-own Zahra, and if the offspring is a filly, she is mine. See a nice video of Porte below. He is owned by Jean Diaz.  

He was the Master of Horses in Bahrain following Old Fatis, in the 1970s and 1980s, and he has a good book in Arabic about Arabian horses in Bahrain, which I am trying to get my hands on. That photo is likely from that book.

An article about Syria: Home of Horses by Hylke Hettema on her blog, got me to think about other references to horses in ancient times from what today is Syria. The following reference from the Archives Royales de Mari [ARM], with its mention of the chiding of king Zimri-Lim of Mari (1776-1751 BCE) by one of his senior officials for riding a horse is very significant: [My lord] must honor the head of his kingship. [Just as] you are the king of the Hana, you are secondly the king of the Akkadian. [My lord] must not (therefore) ride a horse. My lord must (rather) ride [on] a litter and mules, if he is to honor the head of his kingship.  Source is ARM VI 76, letter to Zimri-Lim from Bahdi Lim, governor of Mari district. The word ‘Hana’ , meaning  ‘tent dwellers’ is a general reference to nomadic tribesmen, as opposed to the Akkadian, the settled urban inhabitants of Mesopotamian cities. Of course, Zimri-Lim himself was from the Bani Sham’al, a nomadic tribal group of ‘Hana’.  Nomads rode horses at that time. More on what this means later. Just noting here that an evaluation of the severe damage brought upon the…

I am thrilled about my leasing the chestnut 2015 Ma’naqiyah Sbayliyah mare Daughter of the Pharaohs from DeWayne Brown. Pippa (her barn name) is by the handsome Doyle stallion Chatham DE (Huntington Doyle x Gulida Tara) and out of De Wayne’s mare SS Lady Guenevere, a close relative of my own Southern Springs black Ma’naqiyah mare SS Shadows Aana. I have been a fan of little Pippa since she was born, even after she injured her leg in a pasture accident. She has both good substance and style, depth of girth and depth of jaws, roundness of barrel, that long Crabbet hip, dark skin around the eyes and muzzle, and proud tail carriage. She is a testimony to the hybrid vigor that closed Doyle breeding adds to other lines. Pippa also represents hope for the Ma’naqi strain, a favorite of mine, but one I have been unlucky with so far. She is indeed the fifth and by far the youngest mare from that strain I have been associated with, and there is a change in tactics here. The four that preceded her were all in their high teens and twenties (Dakhala Sahra and SS Juans Aana were 25 were I…

Finally some decent shots, after a clean up. She will be bred this month, for the first time.

Mlolshaan Mutab (Mlolshaan Hilal x Mlolesh Dhabiya), 1999 Bahraini stallion in South Africa. Bred by HH Sh. Mohamed Bin Salman Aal Khalifah of Bahrain. At Saruk stud with Pauline Du Plessis. He is full of the Mlolshaan blood.  

Yesterday. Left to right: Michael Bowling, Jeanne Craver, me and Joe Ferriss. RJ Cadranell, we missed you.

There was an article in the Khamsat magazine about the Centennial of Lady Anne Blunt. Yesterday, Greg Olson sent me these two images he took of her grave in the Italian Catholic cemetery of Abbassia in Cairo, three days ago. I visited it in 2015, and was so awed that I could not get myself to take a picture. It seems it was recently cleared of the plants and shrubs that had grown around it.

Yasser Al Tahawi has this excellent overview of  the history of the Tahawi horses on his social media page: • Early 19th century: the great Egyptian conquests in the Middle East (Syria, Arabia, Sudan) … the Tahawies played a major role. Strong connections were developed between the Tahawies and the big tribes of Arabia including Anazah and Shammar. • Mid 19th century: the Tahawies are granted vast territories on the eastern borders of the Nile Delta … the Bedouin Tahawies are now settling for their first time in history. • Fall of the 19th century: the Tahawi Sheikhs were busy establishing vast studs and competing in importing the most prestigious strains form the Arabian desert. • Early 20th century: the Tahawies are the most important breeder in Egypt and its main provider of asil desert-bred horses. • Fall 19th century to mid 20th century: the Egyptian Royal family and aristocrats, Royal Agricultural Society, Lady Anne Blunt…etc. were all among the Tahawi clients. • 1940s/50s: around 3,000 heads of the finest Arabians of the time, all with distinguished race records. The peak of the Tahawi glory and their flourishing vast studs. • 1960s: the Egyptian revolution crackdown on the aristocratic elite and…

From Mohammed al-Matrooshi’s social media accounts come these photos of the very masculine 1986 Bahraini stallion Jellaby Kher M45, by Rabdaan Alwasmy (M19) {Maanagy Al Ahmar X Rabda (M16) } out of Jellabieh Al Khar’aa (M3) {Hamdany Riyadh X Jellabieh (M1)}, bred and owned by Sheikh Mohammad Bin Salman Al Khalifa. I am not sure who took the photo, but it seems to date from the first WAHO conference in Bahrain, in 1998.

The most interesting feature of this article by Hylke Hettema on her blog is the observation that Assyrian reliefs featuring horses displayed what seems to be bead necklaces similar to those used on horses today to keep the evil eye away, such as the one on this stallion of the late Dani El Barbary’s below with her beautiful stallion Wali El Ahd “Crown Prince”. Photo taken by Gudrun Waiditschka in 2003. The reliefs also feature another necklace below it, with three tassels similar to breast collars still used today, some two thousand seven hundred years later (!) The continuity of artifacts in the Middle East is sometimes mind-numbing. Below is a similar breast collar with tassels on the desert import *Wadduda from ca. 1906, just to make the point that the modern artifacts above were not copied by someone who took a tour of the Assyrian gallery at the British Museum.

Arabian horse strains have a way of surviving and turning out in unpredictable places outside their countries of origin. When the Bahrain Royal Studs first lost their precious Kuhaylan al-Kray strain, they turned to Jenny Lees in the UK, who had received the mare Kray Mohammadia (Jellabi Alahmar Montasir  x Kray Manifa) from Bahrain as a gift some years before, and was blessed with fillies from her. Now the Kray horses are back to Bahrain thanks to Jenny, who tells the story here. Today I learned from Mohammad al-Matrooshi that another branch of the same strain has actually survived in the UAE. This is awesome news. Mohammad is a passionate and knowledgeable Emirati preservation breeder, who now owns Kray Edah M171 (Jellabi Saad [by Mlolshaan Al Marshoosh M37 out of Jellabieh M6] x Kray Manifah), the 1996 bay sister of Kray Mohammedia. She was a gift of HH Shaykh Muhammad Bin Salman Aal Khalifah to a friend of his in the UAE. Her photos are below. She is so beautiful and deserty. Mohammad bred the 22 year old mare to the 1999 stallion Rabdan Kehram (Jellaby Nader x Rabda Farha) also from Bahrain (below, grey at liberty), and was blessed with…

Linda Cottle from New Zealand shared this treasure of a photo on the page of Rehan Ud Din Baber on Facebook. The photo was taken by her grandfather, a soldier from New Zealand who visited the Sheykh Obeyd Stud of Lady Anne Blunt during World War One. The photo shows Lady Anne Blunt and a mare Cecil Covey told Linda Cottle was Fasiha. History comes alive.

This colt is growing into superb young stallion. He was bred by Jenny Krieg, with help from the Doyle family and their stallion Tamaam DE, out of a mare from the single rarest lines in Al Khamsa Arabians: the blood of *Euphrates, *Al-Mashoor, and *Mirage flows through his veins. Bashir Al Dirri, 2014 Stallion Bashir Al Dirri, 2014 Stallion?????? ????? ??? ???Tamaam DE x Sarita Bint Raj Posted by Doyle Arabians on Wednesday, January 31, 2018    

Kirby Drennan and Jeanne Craver shared this beautiful photo of two Craver Farms mares, the 1986 Hamdani Simri Chinoiserie CF (Dharanad x Levant), on the left, who died in the stampede that followed the 1993 Illinois River flood at Craver Farms, and the 1984 Kuhaylah Krush Minaret CF (Heir Apparent x O-Henrietta), on the right.

From Rehan Ud Din Baber’s beautiful Facebook page. From Gertrude Bell’s archives at the British Library?

Some eight years ago, Louis Bauduin wrote a wonderful article about riding the Tunisian Asil Arabians of Mrs. Bergmann in the Sahara desert. Of these were Mrs. Bergmann’s stallions Jehol Sahraoui and Marzouk. Yesterday, Severine Vesco posted this photo of Marzouk, a stout little stallion of Jiflan bloodlines, ahead of this ride.

Hurrian Hymn N.6, also called the “Hymn to Nikkal” is the most ancient piece of music in the world to have reached us, dating from 3,400 years ago. Nikkal was a Canaanite goddess of fertility (of the soil and of humans). French archaeologists discovered the melody in 1955 on a clay tablet in the ancient Canaanite site of Ugarit, on Syria’s Mediterranean coast (not far from my mother’s town). I was reminded of it yesterday while listening to Ibrahim Maalouf’s “Levantine Symphony N.1” (extract here).  

Una CF (Saranad x Femina by Ibn Alamein) is the rarest mare in Davenport breeding. She has no lines to Tripoli, no lines to Schilla, and is of the Kuhaylan Haifi strain. Here with her owner’s daughter, who is very proud of her. The mare looked thin in that photo taken last July and had just arrived from Oregon a couple months before. Una CF is in foal to Gilad Ibn Dubloon and due in April 2018. They are wishing for a colt.

From his new owner Jessie Heinrick. He has never looked better.

I have been working on a translation of Abu ‘Ubaydah al-Taymi’s (died 822-823 AD in Basra) masterful “Book of the Horse” for close to eight years now, on and off. I am doing for my friend Radwan Shabareq, on my free time — meaning some nights and some weekends, with Jeanne Craver as editor and Joe Ferriss as designer. All of us believe its publication will be a big deal. Yassine raised the issue of the mysterious, hidden signs of purity by which Bedouins determined the purity of the Arabian horse. I have heard some of these from XXth century Bedouins, and written about them before (here), and ‘Ubayd al-Hafi al-‘Utaybi has also written about them on this blog (here), a few years back, and a fascinating conversation ensued. Here is on one of these signs, by Abu ‘Ubaydah, some twelve hundred years ago. Translation mine (as part of the upcoming book). Arabs like the forelocks [al-nasiyah] and the downy hair [al-zaghab] circling their root [al-shakir] to be soft, and the place from which the forelocks grow [al-’usfur] to subside; all this is for beauty. The softness of the forelocks and the softness of the downy hair at their root…

A lot has been said about “secret” signs, which Bedouins used to recognize and evaluate the purity of a horse. Rszewuski mentioned them, claiming that he possessed an empirical knowledge of these signs, shared by his Bedouin friends. Nothing about these was found in  his personal archives after his death. Was he boasting ? Is this all a matter of tradition and superstition without any scientific basis? Or do we have lost an irreplaceable treasure thousands years old? Can we find and collect some of this knowledge, if not all of it , and use it to select and improve the asil Arabian and perhaps other horse breeds ? There is very little I can bring to that topic, and most of it is about the sloughi, the North African sighthound. A lot of signs exist in this breed, constituting a real and valid standard. For example, the prominent occipital bulge, the terminal ring of the tail, the marks on the metatarsal bones, the amount of fur in some places of the face … Some of these signs are very useful clues aboupt stamina, speed and the general quality of the sighthound. Back to horses, I met a renowned horseman in…

Two rare photos of Egyptian stallion El Sud El Aaly (Nazeer x Lateefa), born in 1957 at the Egyptian Agricultural Organization and gifted to the King Mohamed V of Morocco in 1960. Original post from the Facebook group Straight Egyptian Arabian horses in Morocco through Sheila Cone and Olivier Wibihal. A full brother to Hansi’s Serenity Ibn Nazeer (aka Lateef).  

My favorite city in the entire world: Shibam, in Yemen, the “Manhattan of the desert”, and it’s six-centuries old mud skyscrapers. One day, I will go back there, and give back to Yemen and its wonderful civilization and people a sliver of what it has given me.

“And a crest like a tall frankincense tree set on fire by an offender” (“wa-saalifatun ka-sahuuqi al-Labaani adrama fihi al-ghawiyyu al-su’uru”) The vision of a blazing frankincense tree is fitting for a chestnut horse.   Below, a frankincense tree:

To the upper right is Bab Tuma, one of Damascus’ Christian neighborhoods, with the Armenian Catholic church standing out. In the upper left is the neighborhood of al-‘Amarah. In the lower right is the Jewish quarter, ‘hayy al-Yahud’. Note the inner courtyards of many of the houses. In the center, the Mariamite church; in the center left is the prestigious Maktab ‘Anbar, which at the time the photo was taken was school for the Damascus elite, and before that the house of one of the city’s Jewish notables, ‘Anbar. Below, the women’s courtyard of Maktab Anbar as it stands today.

The striking difference of the two stallions Dhahmaan Hoobeishi and Montasar demonstrate the large range of heads of the Arabian breed. The “modern” “dished” face with a pronounced jibha stands in opposistion with the more konvex profile of a “desert bred” stallion. There are many statements that the Bedouins did not favour horses with a dished profile, because it hinders air flow and results in horses not fit for speed and endurance. In order to investigate this further, I made an x-ray of Montasar´s head, that clearly shows, that this kind of profile of the head does not interfere with airflow at all. Montasar, by the way, was a fast and never tiring riding horse. There are also descriptions of the head of the Arabian by Upton and Raswan, indicating that a head with pronounced jibha was favoured for by the Bedouins. More on this topic can be found in the following PDF (an excerpt from my book BEDOUIN HERITAGE – The World of the Arabian Horse) The Arabian´s Head

In order to start a discussion on the controversial topic of the Arabian´s head two photos of very different stallions of the Dahman Shahwan strain follow: the dark bay Dhahmaan Hoobeishi (Kuheilaan Umm Zorayr Al Dheleem X Dhahma Umm Wajnah) 1998 from the Royal Stud of Bahrain: Grey straight Egyptian stallion Montasar (Madkour X Maymoonah) 1981 – 2009, breeder and owner the Seidlitz family, Germany:  

This spring Wadha’s mate will be the Bahraini stallion Shuwaiman Al Rais, thanks to Jenny Lees. He is seen here competing in endurance at Windsor, UK. Other recent photos that show the breadth of his chest, the length of his neck and that of his forelocks, the depth of his ribcage, the length of his hip, and his good disposition.

This spring will be the time to breed my Ginger, who is now at Bev Davison’s in Idaho. A strong contender is Bev’s junior stallion, Subanet Jabbar SDA (Summer Sonnet SDA x Bint Bint Subani by Ibn Saafaddan), a tail female Gulida, and an even blend of old Doyle and Babson bloodlines. I find it almost miraculous that this female line of Saqlawis to Ghazieh has more survived 170 years outside the desert first in Egypt, then in England then in the United States, uninterrupted, in asil form.

The first picture features Dixie Cup (Prince Hal x Dixie), which must have had one of the nicest set of ears on an Arabian of Davenport bloodlines. Abu ‘Ubaydah’s “Book of Horses”, written ca. 803 AD, has more than eighteen description of horses’ ears, and of features Arabs appreciated in them, long, upright, pricked, finally shaped, with soft fur inside, like Dixie Cup’s. The second photo is of Viola (Prince Hal x Cressida), and shows her beautiful flowing forelocks. Forelocks were really important to Arabs, and Abu ‘Ubaydah’s “Book of Horses” has no less than twelve descriptions for them. Ancient Arabs composed and recited poetry about forelocks, which they liked to be long, smooth, abundant and covering horse’s foreheads and even eyes, like Viola’s.  

These 1929 photo depict the entrance gate of the royal palace of Guzana (modern Tall-Halaf, in Northeastern Syria), capital of the Aramaean kingdom of Bit Bahiani. King Gabara of Guzana built the palace in the Xth century BC (so three thousand years ago). The palace was discovered by Max Von Oppenheim (of “Die Beduinen” fame, for Arabian horse enthusiasts) in 1911, who dismantled it and took it to Berlin with other artifcats (below) where they was displayed in a museum especially dedicated to Tell Halaf. In 1943, a British warplane dropped a phosphorus bomb on the museum, which burnt down to the ground. The royal gate and all the other artifacts were smashed into dozens of thousands of pieces, some of which were stored away, awaiting their reconstitution. Before leaving Syria, Oppenheim had casts made of the entrance gate of the palace (and some of its sculptures), which now form the entrance of the Aleppo Museum. I saw it there several times (below). The casts are a poor, plain copy of the originals. Between 2001 and 2010, some 30 sculptures were painstakingly reconstructed from 27,000 fragments. The reconstruction of the palace gate will be completed in 2025. That’s 92 years after…

For several years, Hansi ran the same ad about Serenity Arabian Farms in the Khamsat magazine, featuring some of the several hundred horses she and her first and second husbands Bradford Heck and William Melnyk bred over the course of more than four decades. I recall being in awe of three stallions in particular (photos from this ad below): Serenity Sharaf, with a depth of girth like no other stallion; his brother Serenity Lamir, who was an ode to balance, and above all, racehorse champion Serenity Mamlouk, whose photo below exudes power, balance, perfection of conformation, nobility and … these staring sparkling eyes. Hansi was indeed a master breeder (and master breeders in this country can be counted on the fingers of one hand), with an eye to functional conformation like no one else’s. As a race horse trainer and an owner of horses that have excelled in halter, flat racing and endurance alike, she knew what makes a superior, athletic performance horse, and even more so, she knew how to breed one, working with a closed pool of Egyptian lines. I am particularly worried about the fate of her immense and immensely precious collection of photos, letters, documents and books,…