This morning I was reflecting on the number of tail females left at the Stud of Ali Pasha Sharif after the plague which ravaged his stud around 1875, until his death in 1897. It is surprisingly small: 1) Ghazieh line (Saqlawi Jadran ibn Sudan); mares: Horra, Helwa, Bint Helwa, Johara, Bint Horra, Yemameh (dam of Mesaoud); stallions: Wazir, Amir (Aziz x Horra) offered for sale to Blunts but declined; young stock: Ghazala, Mesaoud, Ibn Johara, Ibn Helwa, Ibn Yemameh Sr, Ghazieh, etc. 2) Nura line (Dahman Najib); mares: Bint Nura Esh-Shakra, various Bint Nura mares (a brown, a bay and a white); stallions: Ibn Nura; Ibn Bint Nura El Hamra (offered for sale to the Blunts March 5 1891 but declined); young stock: (ibn) Mahruss; Abu Khasheb; Kaukab 3) Faras Naqadan line (Dahman Shahwan); mares: Bint ‘Azz (went to Amato the dealer), Mumtaza, Bint Mumtaza (Badiaa); stallions: Aziz, Azz (Aziz x Mumtaza) offered to the Blunt who delined, Nasrat; young stock: Bint Bint Azz; Sahab; 4) Arussa line (Kuhaylan Nawwaq); mares: Noma, Bint Arussa (Harkan x Arussa); 5) Jellabiet Feysul line (Kuhaylan Jallabi); mares: Bint Bint Jellabiet Feysul; Makbula; El Argaa; Yamama; young stock: Khatila; (Bint) Makbula; Kasida; Manokta; Jellabieh; Merzuk; Yatima…
I could not get decent pictures of Jamr (Vice Regent CF x Jadiba), who is not three years old yet, and is going through a growth spurt — a real teen-ager. I was taken aback at first (my eye got used to the Egyptians) but then I took a second look and thought he was promising and had a lot of the right things in the right place. He still needs at least three years before I showing his true promise. What I could already see was that Vice Regent’s Davenport blood shortened the longer back of Jadiba and did not affect the deep girth. It turned Jadiba’s rectangle into a square. The legs are good. The head I could not tell yet (he had a few teeth coming out), I could already see his sire and dam’s big jowls, but it looks like he will be taking a lot after his dam’s sire, Dib.
That’s the best head shot I could get of my DA Ginger Moon, a tail female Rabanna mare, with lots of Blunt and Ali Pasha Sharif blood (and it shows). There is a lot of the Bint Moniet el Nefous in there (Nazeer x Moniet el Nefous), close up, and it shows too. That’s a very different mare from my other horses, all of whom have a majority of Davenport and other early desert blood. She turned out not to be in foal to the Bahraini Mlolshaan stallion. What a disappointment. So much time and resources invested to make it happen, all gone to waste. Oh well.
Last week I saw “Belle” for the first time. Jadah BelloftheBall (I so don’t like that name and I want to change it) is Jeannie Lieb’s gift to me in 2013. I liked the mare, she sent all the right vibes to me. Looking at her, you’d easily forget you are in the woods of Pennsylvania, and you would feel transported in time and space to Arabia in the early twentieth century (one of my favorite time and space combinations, but I don’t think I would have survived more than a few days there and then). She is a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz tracing in tail female to *Nufoud of King Abd al-Aziz Aal Saud, sent to Albert Harris in 1932. She is only five generations removed from the desert (from both *Nufoud and *Turfa), and she looks like she came straight out of there. The mare is not without defects, I would have especially liked to see a deeper girth and a longer croup, but I don’t mind her just the way she is; I appreciate the big bone, the short and thick cannons, the large hocks and hooves, the high wither, the highly set tail, and above everything else, that overall look…
A photo of the Davenport foundation mare Portia (Tripoli x Dhalana) I had not seen before.
I am in the USA for a few days, for the first time in two years. I am here for work reasons, but you can imagine I took advantage of the weekend to go see my horses. So Saturday, Darlene Summers and Jenny Krieg drove up with me to Pennsylvania to see the 7 (well, 6.5) I have there, and had a wonderful time talking horse on the way. As usual, my camera died on me half-way through the visit, and I have to rely on my friends’ photos. Here is a photo of my Wadd, which Darlene too. He will be 4 years old this September. He is a slow grower, and Charles Craver told me today that the inbred ones are even slower growers than the others. He had just rolled in the mud, and still had a lot of his winter coat. I still think highly of him, and hopefully he will keep improving and taking more after his sire, the glorious Triermain CF (whom I also saw today — what a privilege).
The long-held hypothesis that Prince Ahmad Pasha Kamal had two grey Dahman stallions at the same time, developed by Pearson and Mol in a seminal footnote of their Arabian Horse Families of Egypt gets a boost when one carefully reads this passage of Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals, March 9th, 1904, where she first describes the stallions she saw (numbering mine): To Ahmed Pasha’s stud. Of the horses, there was first (#1) the old bay like Mabruka, in color shape and mark on nose, blind of near eye, a Keyhilan A. of the Tanviri [actually, Tamiri] strain, his sire the old chestnut Seglawi of Ibn Sbeyni, (#2) then a white Dahman Shahwan, dam the Dahmeh that belonged to Ahmed Bey Sennari, sire the Keh. A. of Mesenneh strain brought to A.B. Sennari from the desert, a handsome and very strong horse but wanting in something of quality (#3) and also the white with still some dark on the legs and mane; (#4) Managhi Ibn Sbeyel (sire of our filly Jamila) his dam the Managhieh Sbeylieh brought from Arabia to the Tihawis (from whom Ahmed Pasha took her) his sire the old Seglawi Jedran from Ali Pasha Sherif belonging to Ahmed…
Historian Mohamed Saud al-Tahawy is digging into what appears to have been a privileged and deep relationship between the Tahawi leaders of the house of Saud al-Tahawi and the French engineers who dug the Suez Canals and the French managers who operated it afterwards, including Ferdinand de Lesseps; he has some correspondence between de Lesseps’ successor Jules Guichard, who operated the Suez Canal company from 1892 t o1896, and Saud al-Tahawi. Meanwhile, I was able to find the following in Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals, Feb. 19, 1887 entry: “Arrived at Tihawi camp at 1.30: it is as it were a sand oasis in the midst of cultivations; all the surrounding country belongs to Haj Sa’oud and his family. They must be good sort of people among themselves, though hating all fellahin, for they seem to be all very happy together […]. In the evening two black agas arrived from Cairo, they belong to the ladies of the late Abbas Pasha. There was also a French engineer stationed at Salahieh.” I wonder who he was.
In my opinion, the 1984 Saqlawiyah mare Tohama (Akhtal x Ibdaa by Ikhnatoon x Ibtisam by Nazeer x Mouna by Sid Abouhom) was one of the nicest mares at the EAO in the 1980s. Photo by Judi Parks.
This photo of the lovely 1979 Hamdaniyah Simriyah mare Virginia Deyr (Tristram x LR Double Bubble by Ar-Raad) in old age appeared in one of the Khamsat magazine issues and is courtesy of Jeanne Craver. This Hamdani strain, going back to the mare Sobha (Wazir x Selma) is one of the handful strains handed down from the Abbas Pasha collection in asil form. Owing to this fact only, Sobha’s Hamdani Simri strain ought to receive so much more attention within an outside Al Khamsa’s realm. The credit for saving this line in Al Khamsa/asil form goes to Charles Craver who acquired the mare Arabesque (Rouf x Koreish by Alcazar out of the Crabbet/Blunt mare Simawa). The other Abbas strains still in existence in tail female today, within Al Khamsa, are: El Dahma’s (Dahman Shahwan); Ghazieh’s (Saglawi Jadran); and Roga’s (Saglawi Jadran); other Abbas Pasha strains such as Jellabiet Feysul’s (Kuhaylan Jellabi), Noma’s (Kuhaylan Nawwaq), Nura’s (Dahman Najib), and Samha’s (Saglawi ibn Zubaynah) died out early on. Jellabiet Feysul’s still exist, but outside Al Khamsa. By the way, Virginia Deyr carries two lines to the Davenport Second Foundation stallion Tripoli: she is by a Tripoli son out of a Tripoli grand-daughter.
Last week I visited Mrs. Barbary at her Shams El Asil Farm outside Cairo. It was a lovely moment, and I enjoyed seeing her and her horses; I was especially struck by the stallions from the Bilal (Morafic x Mona) sire line, who have a very desert look about them, and are very correct and well built. The grey 1998 stallion SEA Halawat Zaman (SEA Shams El Asil by Sabah El Noor by Bilal, out of SEA Set El Hosn by Lokman/Ibn Adaweya) stood out, and so did his bay son and otherwise lookalike, SEA Zay El Kamar. That said, one interesting part of the conversation was about the stallion Sharkasi; Mrs. Barbary is the custodian of the most credible story about him, a story apparently obtained first hand from one of the protagonists. I recall reading a short version of this story in an investigative report WAHO commissioned in 1976. In essence, Mrs. Barbary told me that there was a sandy open area near the present location of the El Zahraa farm, where horse merchants from al-Sham (Syria, I asked if traders from other areas like Najd came there too, but no, these were apparently only horse traders from Syria) used to bring horses for…
A photo of Saudi Arabian King Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud with King Faruk during the former’s official visit to Egypt in 1946. Taken on board of the train from Suez to Cairo (King Ibn Saud had come to Egypt by sea from Jeddah to Suez). The year before, several Saudi desert mares had been presented to King Faruk.
This is Kalthoom (Farazdac x Nahed by Sid Abouhom x Zaafarana by Balance), tail female to Ghazieh through Radia, a mare born in 1974 at the EAO. Talk about a racing pedigree, and an athletic conformation that reflects it. Not a flattering photo, as she sticks her tongue out, but what a mare! I specifically love the black skin from the eyes all the way down to the muzzle. It is a mark of asalah/authenticity, for the Bedouins at least.
A verse from pre-islamic [Bedouin] Arabian poet Tufail b. ‘Awf al-Ghanawi (died ca. 610), know as Tufail al-Khail [Tufail of the horses] for the emphasis on horses in his poetry, from Abu Ubaida’s “Book of Horses” [translation mine]: Horses the likes of wolves, so well-protected, for they are the pick of what’s left of [the bloodlines] of al-Ghurab and Mudh-hab Al-Ghurab and Mudh-had are two famous steeds from these ancient times. Their offspring had become rare, at least within Tufail’s tribe, and they were treasured and well-guarded for that reason.
I am looking for a template with placeholders for the names of the parents, the grandparents, the great-grandparents, etc. which can be printed later. I am tired of doing all that stuff by hand.
Another beautiful photo from the Dandashi landlords of Tall Kalakh, those master breeders of Asil Arabian horses; they were the equivalent of the Tahawis in Syria, really. Photo courtesy of Mukarram Abd al-Karim Othman al-Dandashi.
If you are on Facebook, I really recommend this page of wonderful old photos of Egypt in the XIXth and early century. https://www.facebook.com/Ahl.Misr.Zamaaan?fref=nf
A specimen from the collection of Muhammad Saoud al-Tahawi, who is looking for a catalog of Mamluk bits, if you know which Museum has published one.
You get a window into Lady Anne Blunt’s selection criteria when purchasing new horses when reading this passage of her Journals, March 15, 1887: “He [Zeyd, who was sent on a purchasing trip in the desert] is to be very particular about plenty of bone, height of wither, length, of course everything else perfect and origin mazbut. Everything else perfect, but three points stand out in this concise statement. Where is the bone, and where are the high withers today? Check the withers of DA Ginger Moon, my Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah (back to Basilisk) of overwhelmingly Blunt/Crabbet lines.
Mukarram al-Dandashi, grandson of Abd al-Karim Osman al-Dandashi, one of most prominent leaders of the Dandashi clan of Tell Kalakh — the breeders of the best horses in Syria and Lebanon historically — sent a number of historical photos of his family on horses, which I will publish in his name. A whole book could be written about the Dandashis and Arabian horses. Barazi barely scratched the surface in his book.
February 8, 1882: “I had a visit from Zeyd of Kasim. He was riding a fleabitten Dahmeh Shahwan, a fine mare with good hocks. He said she belonged to a certain Aga, she came from Ali Pasha Sherif from Abbas Pasha’s horses, is six years old. The Aga is afraid to ride her, she jumps and shies and he asked Zeyd to ride and teach her — break her in, in fact. Her head is remarkably good and she seems good tempered. I like her looks.” Who could that 1876 mare be? Certainly not the dam of *Shahwan, who was apparently still with Ali Pasha Sherif when Shahwan was bred (so in 1886). What about this other one, born in 1881? March 14, 1892, at Ahmed Pasha’s: “There is a little white Dahmeh Shahwanieh, 11 years old which they say has never had a foal and I should like to try getting her… Yanko said there had been no luck with the Pasha with that strain”.
So my beloved old Jadiba (Dib x Jabinta by Jadib) went to her retirement home on Christmas Eve 2014, thanks to Monica Respet’s help and friendship. She was the Christmas gift for a family with small children. I wish her well. My only regret is not to have been able to breed a replacement daughter. I will always regret that September 2011 failed AI breeding attempt to a stallion born in 1979. The semen was dead when it reached the mare, and she never cycled after that.
A photo of my 2011 Wadd Al Arab (Triermain CF x Wisteria CF) from about a year ago. I like the way he is turning out, especially the broad forehead, the small pricked ears, the small muzzle, the good shoulder, the distinct withers, the short back, and the balance in general. I hope to breed him this year or next. Earlier photos at 3.5 months here.
This framed photo from the Cairo Museum of Agricultural Museum was not labeled, and was hanging too high on the wall. I could not identify it.
The splendid Arabian stallion Shahwan, purchased by Lady Anne and Wilfrid Blunt in 1892, was foaled in the possession of Muhammad Sadyk Pasha, who was given his dam in foal by Ali Pasha Sharif. He is the maternal grandsire of Ibn Yashmak, through whom he finds his way into modern Egyptian pedigrees. I found the trace of Muhammad Sadyk Pasha (1832-1902). He was a senior military official — a Lewa, just like Ibrahim Khairi Pasha, owner of Badaouia –, a geographer, an explorer, and a military engineer, graduate of the Ecole Polytechnique of Paris, as well as the president of the Egyptian Geopraphic Society in his later days. He undertook four journeys to Hijaz and Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, which he described in great detail in a book, “al-Rahalat al-Hijaziyah”, translated as “Journeys to Hijaz”. He was reportedly the first person to take photos of the two holy cities, which appeared in Oriental and Western publications. Muhammad Sadyk Pasha was the treasurer of the Pilgrimage (Hajj) caravan on two journeys. Click on this superb Biritish Museum link for a more complete bio, a photo of him, and a selection of his wonderful photographs. Saudi Aramco also has an article about him.
Another photo from the same source, this one has already been published before. [Update: it was published in Lady Wentworth’s Authentic Arabia Horse, courtesy of the Egypt RAS]
This is Bint Radia (Mabrouk Manial x Radia), also from the Agriculture Museum. This photo I have seen in a book before, just don’t ask me where.
Photo of Khair (Ibn Samhan x Badaouia) also from the Agricultural Museum. Has anyone seen this one before? Is it in RAS Volume 1?
Last spring, my wife, who by now knows Cairo’s cultural gems well, took us to the Agriculture Museum, housed in the palace of Fatma, daughter of the Khedive Ismail, in the Doqqi neighborhood. You can click on the links to learn more about the museum and its treasures; here my objective is to share with you this wonderful photo of the RAS stallion Mansour (Gamil Manial x Nafaa Al Saghira), the sire of Nazeer, Sheikh el Arab, Bint Farida, Roda and others, hanging on the wall of a museum room entirely dedicated to RAS photos.I may be wrong but I don’t think this photo (my photo of the framed photo) has been ever published before. You can see the Prince Mohamed Ali blood in the photo (especially Dalal, Mansour’s grand-dam), and you can see why Nazeer and *Roda looked the way they did.
What a balanced, well-built, harmonious desert-looking mare. You can see the influence of both *Hamrah and *Haleb on her. She was by *Hamrah out of *Meleky (*Haleb x *Hadba). Does anyone know where this look can be found in today’s Davenports?
That’s a recent shot Darlene Summers took of my CSA Baroness Lady (Sab El Dine x Takelma Rosanna by Prince Charmming), a 1999 Ma’naqiyah Sbayliyah of overwhelmingly Egyptian lines, with 6 generations of Egyptian sires on top of the old Crabbet female line. She is in foal to Monologue CF, a stallion of Davenport lines, due in August 2015. She is one of six asil younger (17 years old and less) mares of that Ma’naqi Sbaili line in existence in North America. Her sister and a maternal cousin of hers are with Jacquie Glasscoe Choate in Texas, and three other mares, all daughters and grand-daughters of this mare, can be last traced to Janice Park’s South Springs (SS) program, which line-breeds to El Reata Juan (Julyan X Mist Aana by Hallany Mistanny), and produces mostly blacks. She will need to go to a good preservation home, to make space for the new foals coming in the summer. If you know someone who is interested, let me know.
From Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals, January 9th, 1908, at Prince Yusuf Kamal’s sale of the horses of his father, Prince Ahmad Kamal who had died the year before: “Besides my three and Ghazala, a handsome but very slight of bone Keh. Memrieh was sold to somebody Bey”. Lady Anne bought three bay mares/fillies at this sale; the Journal entry mentions that this Ghazala was a Kuhaylah Mimrihiyah bought for one of the Egyptian royals, Omar Bey Sultan, by his racing associate Jacques Valensin. No other horses were sold at this sale. The herdbook of Prince Mohammed Ali, dating from after 1912, lists the mare Donia: “Origine, Prince Ahmed, achetee par Mohamed Pasha Abou Naffi; Cadeau; rentre a Manial 10 Dec. 1912.” I wonder whether that “handsome but very slight of bone Keh. Memrieh” is Donia, and whether this “somebody Bey” is “Mohamed Pasha Abou Naffi”, then only a Bey. Here’s a hypothesis: Mohamed Pasha Abou Naffi bought this mare at the above sale, either in foal to a stallion from Prince Ahmad’s or later bred to a stallion of Prince Yusuf, his son; four years later, he gifted the mare to Prince Mohamed Ali, but retained the resulting filly known as Nafaa after him.
The seventh anniversary of this website, which coincides with the birthday anniversary of my elder daughter Samarcande, was on January 18th. Like other years before, I like to publish a photo of Samarcande on this day, and looking back at the January entries of the past seven years, you can see how much she’s grown. This year, her two year old younger sister makes her debut on the site. She too is a fan of “hossezz”.
This fascinating article (in Arabic) reveals that King Abd al-Aziz Aal Saud, upon founding the Kingdom of Najd, Hijaz and its dependencies (which in 1932 became the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) entrusted the responsibility of representing his Kingdom before other Arab countries to members of the Agheylat corporation (see below about them). This makes a lot of sense since the Agheylat had developed deep commercial ties with many of these countries, including Iraq, Syria, Egypt and Lebanon, where they maintained trading offices. Sheykh Fawzan al-Sabiq, the King’s first ambassador to Egypt (in 1926), appears as the most famous of these early Agheylat diplomats, according to the article. His brother Abd al-Aziz was indeed a horse merchant established in Egypt. Other early Saudi diplomats from the Agheylat include Mansur al-Rumayh, Hamoud al-Barrak, al-Rabdi and al-‘Usaymi. The most pleasant surprise, and one that will enable us to shed further light on the history of several desert-bred Arabians imported to the USA, is the inclusion of the name of Muhammad Eid al-Rawwaf among these diplomats hailing from Agheylat families. He appears as the governor of Jeddah in the 1930s, before being appointed as the Saudi representative to Baghdad. He belonged to an influential family of Agheylat from Buraydah.…
Unpublished excerpts from Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals for the early part of the year 1889, obtained from the Wentworth Bequest at the British Library courtesy of Bill Cooke at the International Museum of the Horse include several references to a “Fahad Abdallah, the Agheyleh Sheykh”; he is identified as a merchant who supplied Prince Ahmad Pasha Kamal, Ahmed Bey Sennari and others with desert-bred Arabian horses, on at least one occasion, in 1889, when Lady Anne saw and liked some of these horses. Fahad is also the one who obtained the stallion Koheilan El Mossen for Sennari, perhaps as part of that same batch of horses in 1889. A Journal entry from that period mentions Fahad Abdallah as being from the Qassim town of Buraydah, the center of the Agheylat caravan trade network. The Agheylat were a corporation of camel, horse, sheep, ghee, cloth and food staples merchants from Central Arabia, who operated a dense and active network of caravan trading spanning Central Arabia, Kuwait, Syria, Iraq and Egypt, with hubs in Baghdad, Damascus, Kuwait, and even Bombay. They were from settled families from the Central Arabian area of Qassim, most of them being from either Buraydah or ‘Unayzah, and many tracing their roots to…
I enjoy going back to old article from Arabian Visions which Michael Bowling and RJ Cadranell wrote in the 1990s. Here is such an article by RJ Cadranell on a look back at Richard Pritzlaff’s Rancho San Ignacio program of Egyptian Arabians.
If you are interested in weaving and textiles, as well as in Bedouins, then this is apparently the definite book on the subject. I just bought a copy.
Happy holidays to all the friends and readers of Daughters of the Wind around the world. May the new year bring you good health, happiness and peace of mind.
I mentioned earlier that Shahwan of Dahman Shahwan fame was an historical character. I am now happy to report that I found a solid, dated historical reference to this Shahwan in a book by Mamluk-era chronicler Abu al-Mahasin Taj al-Din Abd al-Baqi ibn Abd al-Majid al-Yamani (born in Mecca in 1281 AD — died in Damascus in 1343 AD). The book is called “Bajhat al-Zaman fi Tarikh al-Yaman“, in short, “History of Yemen”. It is a chronicle of historical events in Yemen before and during the time of the author, who appears to have lived at the same time as Shahwan. The mention of Shahwan of ‘Abidah (of Qahtan) occurs in page 95 of the book, under the events of the year 678 Hijri (1279 AD), under the title of “Account of Muzaffar’s takeover of Dhofar, Hadramaut and the city of Shibam“. This Muzaffar is King al-Muzaffar Abu al-Mansur Shams al-Din Yusuf, second king of the Rasulid dynasty of Yemen. Muzaffar ruled Yemen and its dependencies from 1249 to 1295 AD. The account is as follows (my translation from Arabic): “Account of Muzaffar’s takeover of Dhofar, Hadramaut and the city of Shibam: the cause for this was that the warships of Salem son of Idris al-Habudhi…
During her February 1881 visit to the Tarabin Bedouins of the Sinai and Negev/Naqab deserts on the North Western fringes of Arabia, on her way from Cairo to Jerusalem, Lady Anne Blunt reported this very interesting Bedouin tale: ” Story of the horse that came out of the sea. Its son from a Dahmeh Kehileh mare Meshur belonged to Arar and from him 5 mares, the originals of the strains of (1) Kebeyshan, (2) Seglawi, (3) Makludi [?], (4) Jaythani (Jeytani) (5) Tueyfi. Dahman Shahwan is better than Em Amr of Ranat el Awaj he spoke as of awaj el araqib (crooked hooks) whence ‘Om Argub’ — he never heard of Doheymeh Nejib. […] Maneqy and Jilfan are by themselves.” The account is partial and confused, either because Lady Anne did not understand all what she was being told, or because she did not write down the entire story in her Journals. It is also possible these are only excerpts of a longer journal entry that was not published in full. Be it what it may, it is possible, with some effort, to disentangle the various elements of that story from each other, and try to make sense of each one. There are…
Basil Jadaan recently postly this beautiful photo of Mokhtar, the desert bred Kuhaylan al-Krush stallion from Syria, which Basil owned for several years before sending him to France.
Anyone knows how much it costs to export horses from America to Europe by plane?
This stallion, Treff Haven Sabeel is, in my opinion, a ray of hope for US-based Egyptian breeding. I was saying on Facebook that such strong couplings, short backs, high, prominent withers and exceptionally strong shoulders have all but disappeared from New Egyptian horses. That’s because the halter shows for which most of these horses or their recent ancestors were bred do not take these primary qualities into consideration. That these qualities should still be found in Sabeel is reassuring. He happens to have no lines to Nazeer. Not that Nazeer was a bad horse, on the contrary; it’s just that the use that was made of Nazeer sons, grandsons and great-grandsons was not conducive to the perpetuation of the above-mentioned qualities. Just look at the Serenity horses. There is plenty of Nazeer in there, but the horses were bred differently and used for different purposes. Photo by owner Kate from Van Alma Arabians.
I finally have the answer to a lingering question about the leadership of the Shammar Bedouins in North Arabia. Some twenty years ago, when asking about the ownership of a number of lines of desert bred Arabians, I was confused by references to at least four contemporary “Sheykhs of the Shammar” within the leading Jarba family. The Kuhaylan Krush were the horses of Mayzar Abd al-Mushin al-Jarba, Sheykh of the Shammar; the Shuwayman Sabbah were the horses of Mashaal Pasha son of Faris al-Jarba, also Sheykh of the Shammar; and the Hadban Enzahi were the horses of Dham al-Hadi, also Sheykh of the Shammar; the Saqlawi Jadran adn the Dahman Amer were the horses of Ajil al-Yawir al-Jarba, also Sheykh of the Shammar. All four had lived around the same time. What was going on? Later I came to understand that this had to do with political splits within the leading family, which were caused or at least encouraged by the Ottoman Turks, then the British and the French, but I never had the full picture. Here it is now, in the clarity of intelligence report such as this one published by the French army in 1943: “Autrefois, lors de leur unite, les Chammar ont beaucoup…
Jackson Hensley sent my this recent photo of his 2002 Kuhaylan Hayfi stallion (Davenport lines) Pulcher Ibn Reshan (Triermain CF x Aniq el Bedu by Iliad). There is something of the look of a wild desert animal in his eyes, that same look you see in old photos of desert birds, gazelles and young camels.
Bill Biel just sent me these two older photos of his Bahraini stallion Mlolshaan Hager Solomon, which I thought I’d share with you.
I am happy to report that Chris and Kara Yost of Bar Lazy Y Ranch are the new owners of my DA Ginger Moon’s young black colt by Serr Serabaar. The colt, who will be named “Twin Turbo” will be entered in endurance racing, and you will hopefully see him competing in the Tevis Cup in the coming years. Chris is a three times Tevis Cup finisher with three different horses, including on the colt’s full sister, DA Ebony Moon. By the way, his dam DA Ginger Moon is in foal to Mlolshaan Hager Solomon for a mid 2015 colt.
gleaned today from L’Orientaliste library in Cairo, all foundational French ethnographic studies from the 1930s: — Victor Muller’s “En Syrie avec les Bedouins: les tribus du desert” (1931) — Albert de Boucheman’s “Une petite cite caravaniere: Sukhne” (a little gem) — Albert de Boucheman’s “Materiel de la vie Bedouine recueilli chez les Arabes Seba’a” — and the sweetest surprise of all (because they could not find it in their vaults last time dropped by): Robert Montagne’s “Contes poetiques Bedouins recueillis chez les Shammar de Gezire”. This one is a lucky find. I feel so blessed.
One of the most interesting passages of Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals and Correspondence is her visit to the Bedouin Tarabin tribe of the Sinai peninsula and the Negev desert, during her and Wilfrid Blunt’s crossing from Cairo to Jerusalem in February 1881, and her account of their camel and horse-related traditions; here is on the camels, to set the stage for what will be more than one blog entry, and I will have to say more on the horses and legends associated to them: “A delul [female camel] or hajin [male camel] becomes asil like the English thoroughbred. Five generations of a thoroughbred sire are considered sufficient among Ayeydeh, Shuaga, Terabin, Naazeh [in reality Maazeh] and perhaps Howeytat, though as the last touch on the confines of [Arabian Peninsula Bedouin tribes of] Harb and Sherarat they ma others notions”. [February 11th, 1881] A lot of the tribes mentioned above appear in this map of the area in 1908: The Tarabin today number around half a million, spread across Egypt, Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Jordan. In Egypt, they are mostly present in the Sinai, of which they are the largest Bedouin group, but also the Suez Canal cities and the…
During the Blunt’s visit to Jeddah around Christmas of 1880, “Wilfrid has met a man who came from Sana and told him that at some distance from Sana in the interior there are the Beni Husayn, Mohammed Bedouins who catch wild horses. They live in the district called Jofr [correction: it’s actually Jof] el Yemen and are very ‘adroit’ in riding….” [Lady Anne Blunt Journals and Correspondence, December 24, 1880] I am in Sana (San’aa) the capital of Yemen for two weeks, and although I am locked up in my work’s office and adjoining guest house for security reasons, it is the occasion for me too tell you about these Bedouins of Yemen: As Lady Anne wrote, these are the Dhu Husayn, an offshoot of the Dhu Mohammed, who hail from the large Yemeni tribal confederation of Bakil. Their tribal area is in Jawf/Jof el Yaman (the reference to Yemen is to differentiate it from the other Jawf/Jof of North, which is in Northern Saudi Arabia, just to the South of Jordan), to the north east of Sana. My colleague (a Senior Water Specialist at the World Bank office in Sana), Naif Abu Luhoum, is the from the chieftain family of the Dhu…
From Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals, December 15th, 1880, during her trip to Jeddah: “In the afternoon we called first on Omar Nasif. The chestnut mare still stands outside the little yard near the house…” Here are modern images of the Naseef house, one of the very few buildings still standing from the old down-town of Jeddah, which has all been razed to the ground, to give way to modern building in the 1960s (yet another beautiful Arab city destroyed…) For an inside tour of the Naseef house, and a view of the yard where that mare in Lady Anne’s Journals, see this blog entry here. The house as in other old Jeddah houses in apparently made of coral (yes, the stuff in the reefs) and of wood imported from what is today Indonesia, a legacy of the glorious (and little known) history of Jeddah as a cross-roads of trade between Egypt, East Africa and South East Asia (like Mukalla in Yemen, like Mocha, like Aden after that).
French equine librarian, collector and breeder, Philippe Deblaise just published the book “Tiaret, le reve Algerien” that will add tremendous value to the literature on Arabian horses, by pulling together the knowledge available about the glorious breeding program of the Arabian horse Stud of Tiaret, in Algeria. This stud was founded by the French in the 1870s, when France was the colonial power in Algeria, and relied exclusively on stallions and mares imported from desert-bred Arabians from Arabia. This stud is unique in the world as no stallion born outside desert Arabian was ever used at stud until Algerian independence in the 1960s. Click on the flyer (in French) to enlarge it.
It was in early 1928 according to French army officer Victor Muller in his book “En Syrie avec les Bedouins”. Hakim was the leader of the Fad’aan Bedouins when Davenport visited in 1906. Muller is a most reliable source since he was the military and intelligence commander of the “Bedouin country” (the part of Syria inhabited by Bedouins, from Jordan to Turkey and eastwards to Iraq) for several years. Among his feats was the peace treaty between the Fad’aan and the Shammar and the Bedouin conferences of Palmyra and Bu Kamal in the mid-1920s. Muller’s headquarters were in Deyr el-Zor.
Check it out here. By the way, the Homer Davenport collection is there too. Sample below, taken in the Cairo souk.
Today was one of those days when you receive a bottle you threw in the oceans of your memories ten years ago. Back in 2004, I made a note about a rare book I have long wanted to read or get a hold of. It’s French Army Commandant Victor Muller’s “En Syrie avec les Bedouins: les Tribus du Desert” (Paris, 1931). It’s a complete account of nomadic life in Syria in the early 30s, with references to horse-breeding, strains, and histories of battles during which horses were acquired. In my 2004 note, I was saying that only two copies of that book could be found for sale: one at a bookshop in Nice, France (which turned out to have closed); and another at L’Orientaliste bookshop in Cairo. I left it at that. Yesterday, I found this note, and this morning I entered L’Orientaliste, and asked them where they still had it. They did. I bought it and sent it for binding, as it’s in pretty bad shape. I still can’t believe I bought it, and that I will be able to read it soon (and share it with you). What a treasure.
Yesterday, Lee Oelllerich sent me these photos of the 1967 ‘Ubayyan stallion El-Haml (El Hamdan x Al Fellujah by Al Felluje) at 3 years old. What a horse, and what a combination of good horses. These BLUE STARs can surely improve any stock, Arabian or not, Al Khamsa or not. Click on the photos to enlarge them. Lee tells me El-Haml was a successful Race and Endurance horse who left for Germany in 1980, and ran his last flat race two weeks before exportation at age thirteen.