Daughters of the Wind

  This was taken in 1980 or 1981, near the town of Rayak, in the Biqa’ valley of Lebanon. Rayak, more specifically the village of Hawsh Haala, outside Rayak, was where we put our horses. We had a partnership with the Hindi family over the horses, since the time of my grandfather, Edward Al-Dahdah, in the late 1920s. The young man holding me is Shafiq Hindi, a longtime family friend, who had taken over the partnership after the passing of his uncle Subhi Hindi. The mare, the mare, was my father’s all-time favorite, Zanoubia (III). A mare of great style, refinement and beauty in her heyday, gazelle-like, from an noble, prestigious and storied origin, and a notoriously difficult producer. She was born in 1976, by Ash-hal, a Kbayshan, out of Bint Wazzal, by Wazzal, a Ubayyan, out of Su’ad, by al-Jazzar, a Kuhaylan Nawwaq, out of Umm Mash’al, by Ghazwane, a Kuhaylan al-Kharas out of a ‘Ubayyah, by a Saqlawi al-Aama (the blind), out a ‘Ubayyah by a Kuhaylan Nawwaq out of a ‘Ubayyah Sharrakiyah of the Sarraf family of Ba’albek in the Biqa’ valley, who had obtained the strain from Ibn Thamdan of the Sba’ah ‘Anazah. Another photo of the same mare, ten year after the first…

This Syrian mare bred by Basil Jadaan in 1994 was exported to France at a young age. Photo from owner Chantal Chekroun. Hijab met an untimely death, but leaves behind a son, Manjad Maram Al Baida, by Mokhtar, and a daughter Quokriya Al Shatane, both by Mokhtar, another of Basil’s horses imported to France. Mokhtar if still alive would be 30 today. She was a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah by strain, from the breeding of Ibn Amud of the Shammar. The pedigree of the maternal grand-dam, here, is incorrect. Marwa’s father was a Saqlawi Jadran and her sire’s dam a Ubayyan Suhayli (branch of Ubayyan Sharrak, originally from the horses of the Sharif of Mecca. Below, her daughter Quokriya Al Shatane, by Mokhtar. Photo courtesy of breeder Chantal Chekroun.

When I started this blog, more than eight years ago, it was out of a need to connect American breeders and lovers of desert Arabian horses with facts, stories, and like-minded people from the rest of the world. I believe this task has now largely been fulfilled, not necessarily by this blog, but mostly by the advent of social media tools that connect people across the globe. With the endless loss of life, heritage, culture and horses engulfing the Middle East — Syria, Iraq, Yemen, others maybe soon — I have been feeling the increasing need to switch gears and reach out to those who live in the cradle of the Arabian horses, especially the youth. Amidst these tragedies, those who are normally the reference and the source of the knowledge, expertise, tradition about desert horses, and the original source of the horses themselves, are at risk of losing faith in what they have and in who they are. So pervasive is the influence of Western lifestyles, media, ideas, so overwhelming is the destruction of ancient centers of knowledge, tradition and culture — including about Arabian horses like Aleppo, Homs, Mossul, Sanaa, so large is the flow of refugees who lost everything, that the time has come…

Coat colors in old Arabic treatises on horses pose a big challenge not just because of their sheer number — close to a hundred — but also because they do not follow quite the same pattern as color coat definitions of Arabians in the west: grey, chestnut, bay, and black. I having been trying to look for an internal logic to color classification by the ancient Arabs and Bedouins for some years now. I am now certain of a few color correspondences. One of them is ablaq (feminine balqaa), and its roan. It’s defined in the old Arabic dictionaries as the appearance of white hair in any other coat color which does not fade as the animal ages (ie, grays). It’s also further qualified by the base color: so you have “ashqar ablaq” which is the equivalent of a chestnut roan, or a “kumayt ablaq”, which is a bay roan. Then you have different types of “ablaq”, depending on which part of the body the roaning occurs.

I had never seen this photo of Beteyen Ibn Mirshid of the Sbaa Bedouins before. It is apparently featured in Von Oppenheim’s book. Can anyone confirm? He was the owner of Queen of Sheba, of the Blunts.  

This is with respect to the discussion on the color “yellow” in Arabian horses in the preceding entry. This mare (Pirouette CF) would qualify as “yellow” in Bedouin parlance. This is confirmed in old Arabic dictionaries (“Lesan al-Arab” which dates back to the 14th century AD), and also by  Tweedie and Raswan.

There are only four mares and filles from the *Nufoud tail female accounted and all are in PA. Linda Uhrich owns AB Dafinah (HHA Manabi x LD Rubic), and Monica Respet owns her daughter, Niina Nufoud. Then there is “Belle” and her daughter Barakah, with me. Jadah Necessity, 1997 gm, is unaccounted for, last with Randal and Mary-Sue Harris in IL. MSF Rubie, 1993 cm (EA Salute x LD Rubic) is I think still with Pam Baker in SC, but she has never had a foal, and is now 23.

Kim Davis bred his superb Kuhaylat al-Krush yearling filly of Davenport bloodlines. She is by by HH Tantalus Krush (Quantum LD x Kashmir Krush LD) out of HH Nadira Krush (RC Janub Krush x Naufali Al Krush). She has 14 crosses to the original desert import Kuhaylat al-Krush *Werdi, and 10 out of 16 ancestors at the fourth generation. If she looks that great at this growthy stage, I wonder how she will look like when she matures fully. I had already written about her when she was born.

From the same Billy Sheets photo collection as the ones in the entry below. I don’t think these had ever been published before.

These are from the photo collection Billy Sheets gave me. For more on this 1960 stallion, click here. Maybe someone can find more about Khalid Hamid al-Dawsari who was living and working in al-Khobar in the 1960s.

I am very proud of this 16 year old mare, which I acquired about a year ago. She is having some trouble conceiving but we will be working on that over the coming year.

I have been trying to get a photo of him. He was Miqhim Ibn Mhayd’s slave and one of his most trusted men. Following the relocation (exile?) of Miqhim from Syria to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in the late 1950s, he acted as Miqhim’s agent to acquire several hundreds of desert bred horses, mostly mares, and mostly from the ‘Anazah but also from other Bedouin tribes, as gifts to Saudi royals and other senior officials. As distressed ‘Anazah Bedouins from Syria gradually moved south to Saudi Arabia, they sought public sector and military jobs, registration and immigration documents, and various social and resettlement benefits in their new home country. They were eager to obtain the support and good will of Saudi officials and members of the royal family, and through Miqhim and his sons, presented them with their best mares. This explains the influx of hundreds of Bedouin mares in the Saudi royal studs in the 1960s. Several dozens of these mares found their way to the Saudi Arabian Studbook, where they were registered as “desert bred”. Back in Syria, Farhan al-Olayyan gained increasing influence with the ‘Anazah who had not left yet, to the point of speaking in the name of Miqhim and his sons.…

One of my favorite Davenport mares, based on photos I have seen, and on liking her two brothers: Pomp Charbonneau and Firebolt CF. Photo Christine Emmert.    

The handsome 2005 stallion Chatham DE (Huntington Doyle x Gulida Tara DE by Maloof Najid), photo from DeWayne Brown.  

The sweet Juans Aana (El Reata Juan x Suuds Juli Aana), a Ma’naqiyah Sbayliyah from the line of Haidee, 26 years old this year, left to what seems to be a good retirement home yesterday. I kept her 16 year old daughter which I still hope to breed this year. If it’s a colt, I will keep him as a stallion. There is nothing better than a Ma’naqi stallion for breeding. I say this, but Hakim ibn Mhayd also said it and wrote it to Davenport, and he knew what he was talking about.  

Here you really see the Crabbet influence from his dam blending with the blood of his paternal grandsire Regency CF.

Pedigree here. She is six generations removed from the original desert import *Nufoud from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

I am in absolute awe of DeWayne Brown’s young Ma’naqiyah filly, DaughterofthePharaohs, a.k.a. “Pippa” (Chatham DE x SS Lady Guenevere by SS Dark Prince), photo below by DeWayne. She is a throwback to the old Crabbet type of a hundred years ago. She has crosses to three of the four Gulastra descendents in Al Khamsa, namely Julep, Gulida, and Nusi.

Belle (top) looks the most deserty of all my horses by far, and has the longest ears, Jamr (middle) has the crested neck of his Crabbet ancestors, and Wadha has the most “classic” head and largest eyes of the three. And there is only so much a smartphone camera can do.

This serves mostly as a note to myself: I found an intriguing reference to Farhan al-‘Olayyan in a Syrian hujjah of a horse born in the mid 1980s. I had long thought that Farhan al-‘Olayyan, a former black slave who had acted as an agent of the Saudi royal family for the purchase of hundreds of desert horses from Syria, was active in the 1960s and the 1970s, but this reference extends his activity up until the 1980s. It is from the hand of ‘Aissa al-Sallal, a stallion owner (in Arabic “hassan”, in french “etalonnier”), and in it he mentions that his main stallion, a Kuhaylan al-Khdili bred by Omar al-Huwaydi al-Mishlib, of the ‘Afadilah tribal Shaykhs, was bought by Farhan al-‘Olayyan for expert to Saudi Arabia, but had already sired a Ma’naqi Sbayli stallion in 1984. This is really interesting, and potentially establishes a connection with the horses registered in the Saudi Studbook and know to be coming from “the north”. Worth digging further.

My Syrian friend Radwan — one of the persons from whom I keep learning — told me that desert mares from the Ma’naqi strain were characterizeda, among other features by long ears, large and long mouths that ran deeper into the muzzle than horses from other strains, and horizontally placed eyes, more so than horses from other strains whose eyes were parallel to the axis of the head. This was in connection with a discussion of the precious desert Ma’naqi Sbayli strain known as “Ma’aaniq al-Tanf” (after their location at the Tanf desert border crossing between Syria and Iraq) or “Ma’aaniq Abu Jarn” and its tracing to the Black Marzaqani (al-Marzaqani al-Adham), the famous Saqlawi stallion of the Maraziq of Shammar later owned by Alaa al-Din al-Jabri in the 1960s. These are the horses of ‘Affaat al-Dbeissi of the Fad’aan, a precious marbat which Jean-Claude Rajot and other French and German purists visited in the 1990s in the Syrian Desert (Jens Sennek has stories about that visit to them in his awesome book), but the Syrian Studbook does not show that the line actually traces to the Black Marzaqani. The old chestnut Ma’naqiyah mare which Ibrahim Khamis of Hama owned in the early 1990s…

Ahmad Saffar from Bahrain told me the other day that wealthier Bahrainis from the ahali — the population, so not royals — kept marabet of Shawafan and Wadhnan until the 1970s, when they turned to Thoroughbreds and part bred Arabs for racing. They had obtained these strains from Southern Iraq — presumably the area around Basra and al-Zubayr.

I never believed straight profiles were a defect. Most of the desert Arabian horses I grew up with in Lebanon and Syria had straight profiles. Very early on, I found that quote in Lady Wentworth’s “Authentic Arabian Horse”, perhaps taken from Lady Anne Blunt’s unpublished manuscript; it echoed what I was seeing and learning about around me: “A straight profile should not be a defect if the forehead is very broad, the eyes placed low and very large, and the muzzle small” I would add deep round jowls and prominent facial bones to this description. Together, a deep jowl, a small muzzle and a broad forehead form a head with a triangular shape in both the profile and the face. I am actually striving to breed an Arabian horse with all these characteristics, to make the point that the resulting outcome is an attractive, even “classic” head. Jamr’s head, below, approaches this description. The jowl is unbelievably large, and the muzzle is small. The eyes are placed low, but they are not large (a legacy of his maternal grandsire Dib). The facial bones are somewhat apparent but the face will be drier with age. The overall shape of the head…

This young filly is the happy outcome of a sustained preservation effort of the Kuhaylan ‘Ajz line of *Nufoud, and of the small number of Arabian horses without Crabbet bloodlines. Her name means “divine blessing”. May she be blessed and continue this precious line of royal horses. Her dam Jadah BelloftheBall (“Belle”) was rescued several years ago by Jeannie Lieb, who drove to Colorado to pick her up after the previous owner had fallen on hard times. Upon seeing her, my father, who was here visiting, told her she reminded him of the daughters of the great asil Lebanese stallion Machaal. He was very fond of these. I will breed her to a stallion from Saudi lines next time.