The desert-bred Kuhaylah Hayfiyah mare *Reshan, imported by Homer Davenport to the USA in 1906 has two surviving asil tail females, and we are lucky to have them both. The first is through her grand-daughter Antarah (Antez x Hasiker, by Hamrah x *Reshan), and that line bred on thanks to the efforts of Charles and Jeanne Craver. Several horses regularly featured on this blog, such as Sir, Brimstone, Prince Hal, Pirouette and my own Wisteria are all from this line. These horses and others, known as the “Kuhaylan Haifi Davenports”, now form a cohesive group, exclusively tracing to the horses imported by Homer Davenport from the Syrian desert, and from the horses sent by the Ottoman Hamidie Society from Syria to the Chicago World Fair of 1893. This group has about 100-150 live mares of breeding age in the USA [confirmation, correction anyone], so it’s fairly safe. The other tail female to *Reshan, through another grand-daughter, Medina (Fartak x Hasiker, by Hamrah x *Reshan) is barely surviving today. The line mainly survives through Dihkenna (Gharis x Komet by *Sunshine), a bay mare foaled in 1946. This mare’s pedigree is a perfect illustration of what later came to called “Early American Foundation” Arabian horses, or as the late Billy Sheets…
This video by C. Mingst shows several of the stallions at Craver Farms: Regency (Hamdani), Triermain (K. Haifi), Zacharia (Haifi), Regatta (Hamdani), Brassband (Haifi), Badawi (Hamdani), and a group of mares, some of which are identified. Javera Thadrian is not there. If anyone has a video of this horse that they’d like to share, can they please send it to me and I will publish it here with due credits.
I have decided to start a new series called “barely surviving lines”. In doing so, I was inspired by both the latest issue of the Khamsat magazine, which focuses on rare asil lines in the USA, and by Anne McGaughey’s excellent website “Rare Al-Khamsa Strains“. These “barely surviving lines” are still in existence, or likely to be in existence, but we don’t know for sure. They are included on the basis of the existence of an horses 25 years (in 2009) or younger that trace to these lines. Featured “barely surviving lines” are mainly through the tail female (because of my bias of tracking down horses according to their strains, which are transmitted through the tail females), but I also include tail males, and some lines from the middle of the pedigrees. For those of you who may wonder about the worthiness of preserving these lines, I refer you to the discussion in the latest Khamsat. Opinions on the value of preserving these lines vary. On one end of the spectrum, some people will say that every endangered line is worth preserving, because of its intrinsic uniqueness, but also because it contribues to maintaining a broader gene pool. On the other end, others will maintain that lines…
As the 2009 Al Khamsa Convention in Oregon approaches (and this time, I plan to be there), here’s a video by Carol Mingst of the 1994 Oregon CMK Symposium, showing asil stallions of Davenport breeeding Mandarin CF (Regency x Lotus), Sportin Life and SA Apogee, among others. A good chunk of the video features Mandarin showing off. Can anyone tell me who the unidentified light grey horse is? He is striking.
This is a great tool for breeders of asil horses in the USA.
If any one is interested in the (very) early history of nomadic Arab tribes, then they ought to read Israel Eph’al’s book: “The Ancient Arabs: Nomads on the Borders of the Fertile Crescent: 9th-5th centuries BC. Google Books has a integral copy online. The books discusses the deeds of the little0known “Queen of the Arabs” Zabiba, Shamsi, Yatie, and others who fought the Assyrian empire more or less successfully. Think about naming your filly foal after them.
Before I move to discussing the two stallions just imported from Syria to France, and following the posting of Shahm’s photos a couple days ago, I want to share with you a couple pictures of the second stallion, Mahboob Halab, a 4 year old Shuwayman Sabbah from the marbat of the Jarbah leading family of the Shammar tribe. Both photos are courtesy of Jean-Claude Rajot, who owns Mahboob. The above one was just taken in France, and the one below in Syria, about 6 months ago, before the horse’s importation. Desert bred horses heavy on the blood of al-Aawar, the Hamdani ibn Ghurab stallion, are very slow to mature, according to Radwan Shabareq, al-Aawar’s last owner. They typically reach full maturity at 8 years old.
Last week, I wrote about the quest of Robert Mauy’s friends, Jean-Claude Rajot and Louis Bauduin of France, to regenerate the bloodlines of their Arabian horses with the importation of stallions from the Arabian desert, or North Africa. Jean-Claude and Louis’ quest first took them to Tunisian and Algeria in the late 1980s. They saw many horses at the government studs of Tiaret (Algeria) and Sidi Thabet (Tunisia, where Louis took the photo of the mare below), as well as with private breeders. They also took many photos. However, the horses they liked were either too old or not for sale. In the 1990s and 200s, as Syria was slowly opening up to the western world, Jean-Claude and Louis undertook several trips to the Syrian desert, the first of which took place with Jens Sannek and Bernd Loewenherz. A great book by Sannek and Loewenherz resulted from this memorable trip. in 2008, Jean-Claude and Louis visited several marabet (Bedouin studs) of the Shammar Bedouins, including Ibn Jlaidan’s (Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz, a Najd marbat), Ibn Ghurab’s (Hamdani Simri), Ibn ‘Ufaytan (Ma’naghi Hadraji), and al-Ghishm (Kuhaylan al-Wati); with an eye towards learning about the desert horse in its natural milieu, and perhaps buying a young stallion or…
Anita Westfall has asked me to post this photo of Sir (Tripoli x Dharebah) at age 4, which was taken by Miss Ott at Craver Farms in 1962. Charles is in the photo. She wanted to use the photo to illustrate a comment in a comment she recently posted, which I quote below: “My very favorite photo of the perfect foreleg is one taken of Sir as a youngster. Perhaps Jeanne has a copy handy?? Long forearms, broad flat knees, and short cannons with broad, flat bone. Anyway, long legs on Arabians are usually the result of long cannons (combined with ‘normal’ forearms), while those sturdy horses with short legs often have short forearms.”
*Aziza (Gamil Manial x Negma) was *Roda’s half sister. *Roda was mentioned in a recent post. In 1996, RJ Cadranell wrote an article on the two sisters in Arabian Visions, which you read here. Like *Roda, *Aziza was imported to the USA by W.R. Brown in 1932. All this I knew from before. Having read F. Klynstra’s book “Nobility of the Desert”, which has lovely pictures of the mare Faziza (Fa-Turf x Azyya by Kenur x Aziza), who went to G. Olms in Germany, and her son Tufail (by Kaisoon, photo of Tufail below), I also knew that Aziza had left some asil descendents in Europe, rich in the blood of desert horses from Saudi Arabia imported to the USA (*Turfa, *Sunshine, *Nufoud, *Tairah). What I didn’t know is that the line might have persisted in the USA. The mare Sharziyya, a 1963 full sister to Faziza, has left a small number of descendants in this country. The youngest mare from this line is Shar Fazima (Hafid Faserr x Shar Azima) a 1986 mare bred by the Krausnicks’ of Shar Char Farms. She looks like the last (in the tail female, that is)asil from that line in the USA now and if alive,…
My daughter Samarcande (Edouard x Delphine), a 2008 part-bred Arab, is now 18 months, and claps her hands when she sees a horse’s picture on the laptop. Not a good sign for the future..
Also from “The Authentic Arab Horse”, but from Lady Wentworth, this time.. “Ears: these are all-important. A stallion’s ears should be small, exquisitely shaped, sharply cut, and thin at the edges. They should be also of marvelously delicate modeling, beautifully chiseled, the tip delicately turned inwards, the points being very sharply defined. Hearing is very acute and sensitive, lop ears are unknown and slack ears are a very bad fault. A good head can be discounted by badly carried ears.”
This is from a handwritten note which I copied from Lady Wentworth’s “The Authentic Arabian Horse”. I don’t have the book with me (it’s in Lebanon in my father’s library), but I vaguely recall that it is an excerpt from Lady Anne Blunt’s manuscript, which she was working on before her death in 1917, and which her daughter Lady Wentworth later ‘integrated’ (plagiarized?) in her book “The Authentic Arabian Horse”. “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”. Below is a headshot of Reema, a desert bred Hamdaniyat Ibn Ghurab, bred by the Aqaydat tribe of the Middle Euphrates region (the marbat originally belongs to the Shammar). Reema’s head is a good illustration of the above quote, although her eyes could be placed a tad lower.
There have been interesting discussions along many of this blog’s topics over the past two weeks, and I am having a hard time catching up with all of these. I owe readers a number of new entries on these topics, and I will get to these in the next week. Jaspre, a son of Roda Still, how many of you knew that there was still a thin tail female to *Roda out there? I vaguely remember reading somewhere that Margaret Shuey bred a daughter from her, Sunny Acres Fantasy, by the very handsome stallion Ibn Hanad, but did not know that this line was carried on until now. Check out the pedigree of this young (2005) mare, for instance. True, the line is now diluted in a sea of new Egyptian breeding, but if that’s the only way to keep these old lines alive, why not… (you’re getting an insight on some of my biases here) Anyway, isn’t it amazing to see that line managed to survive? I wonder if this was by chance, or if there was a concerted effort to preserve it.. There is even a chance of a nicer, more diverse female line to *Roda having survived,…
These an interesting dicussion currently going on on this blog, about whether this horse here is indeed Siglavy Bagdady VI (Siglavy Bagdady V x 250 Kuhailan Haifi I). In this context, here two more pictures of that asil Babolna stallion from Laszlo Kiraly of Hungary. The picture above distinctly shows the pink lips on the right side of the horse’s muzzle. In the photo below, there is much less pink on the left side of the lips, from what I can distinguish.
Arab general al-Hajjaj ibn Yusuf al-Thaqafi asked a man of the ancient Bedouin tribe of Hilal by the name of Ayub ibn Zayd ibn Qays about the characteristics of a good horse, the latter replied: “Three short ones; three long ones; three broad ones amd three clear ones; when asked to decribe these features, the man from Bani Hilal replied: Short back; short thighs [Correction: cannon bones, in arabic “saq”, for “legs”]; short coccyx (the bones of the tail) Long ears; long neck; long arms [Update: above the knees, in both the front and back]; Broad foreheads; broad nostrils; broad chest; Clear skin [Update: around the nostrils and the eyes]; clear eyes; clear hooves.
One of the signs of ‘asalah‘ (purity, authenticity) in Arabian horses is the prominence of the lateral facial bones (see the two arrows in the photo below); this is a sign of authenticity (asalah) and ancient (‘itq) breeding. These bones are prominent and protruding only in Arabian horses. In Arabia, horses with these bones are chosen to become breeding stallions; the more protruding these bones, the more this is a clear indication that a horse is asil. This is even an essential condition of asalah. This is why I like this horse’s picture better than other one [i.e., Siglavy Bagdady VI]. Written by Pure Man and translated by Edouard
My friends Jean-Claude Rajot and Louis Bauduin have been breeding Arabian horses for a long time. They are the students and friends of the late Robert Mauvy. Robert Mauvy is, simply put, the Westerner who came the closest to understanding the Arabian horse and to breeding it as its original custodians, the Bedouins of Arabia, bred it. Forget Carl Raswan, forget Abd al-Qadir al-Jazairi of Algeria, forget Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfik of Egypt. Only Anne Blunt, in the later years of her life, equalled Mauvy’s ‘art of breeding’. While Mauvy is little-known outside of France and North Africa– despite his longtime connections with some of the fathers of the Asil Club movement in Europe, such as Foppe Klynstra, I am certain that his fame will skyrocket when an English translation of his small yet gigantic book “Le Cheval Arabe” will become available. This masterpiece was my Arabian Horse Bible, from age 10 until today. One of the key teachings of Mauvy, as laid out in his book, is that the Arabian horse, like all things living (plants, animals, and even humans) is the outcome of the environment in which it is bred. If you take it out of its original environment, it will live certainly live…
Just felt like posting this photo of the stallion Dhahran (Sirecho x Turfara) when he was at the Sheets’ Arabian Stud Farms (ASF). The photo is from the collection of pictures the late Billy Sheets gave me. Dhahran’s tail female goes back to the mare *Turfa, a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz from the horses of the House of Saud, stationed at their stud in al-Khurmah, and gifted to the King of England, who then sent her to Canada during WWII, where she was bought by Henri Babson of Chicago. An absolute favorite of mine, *Turfa is a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz, sired by a Ubayyan al-Hamrah, as per her registration information in the Arab Horse Society Studbook of the UK, Volume VI [Correction: as per the letter sent by Brigadier Gen. Anderson, then Secretary General of the UK’s Arab Horse Society, to Henry Babson]. Everything else that has been said about her strain being ‘Ubayyan is completely unsubstantiated, as I will try to shoe in a next entry. The blood of *Turfa is just so precious. I really feel that the more *Turfa in a horse, the better the horse, as the fine specimen pictured below show. Both are 25% *Turfa.
In a recent comment, Joe Ferriss talked about beautiful Arabian horse ears, as exemplified by the asil stallions’ Brimstone’s short, prickled ears. So Jeanne Craver sent me this photo of Brimstone. A picture worth a thousand words. Aside from the ears, Jeanne tells me that Brimstone, the sire of the black Sportin Life in the video below, had a straight profile too, and that he had a floating trot like nothing else Charles and her had ever seen (and they have seen a lot).
[August 10, 2009 correction: The uplaoding of the picture below elicited a discussion between Laszlo Kiraly and RJ Cadranell, as a result of which the horse in the picture was identified as the non-asil Babolna stallion Koheilan XI (Koheilan X x 242 Kuhailan Zaid), a stallion with a distant line to the English Thoroughbred mare 30-Maria. Apologies to the readers for this mistkae. Edouard] The discussion on asil Arabian facial features expands as more and more readers and contributors send pictures of beautiful profiles without the prominent ‘dish’ now so common in show horses. Laszlo Kiraly of Pecs, Hungary, sent me this stunning photo of the asil Babolna stallion Siglavy Bagdady VI (Siglavy Bagdady V. – 250 Kuhaylan Haifi I), taken in 1967. Laszlo tells me it reminds him of Bahrain’s horses’ heads. It also reminds me of some of the best Lebanese horses of the olden days; and of the best desert breds from Syria; and the Saudi Arabian horses; and some many Tunisian horses; and of the Egyptian horses before most of them became show toys. All these are one and the same horse. Look at this picture and look well. There are not many horses like this…
It looks like some of you are enjoying the occasional digression from pedigree and geneology stuff. Yesterday, Anita Westfall sent me two nice pictures of some of her horses: This picture is of her very pretty Miss Attitude (by Lorenzo CF x Dawn’s Attitude SF, also by Lorenzo CF), a Kuhaylat al-Hayf of the line imported to the USA by Homer Davenport. It shows both the ‘human eye’ with the white, and the long eyelashes! The other photo – also from Anita, who by the way takes really, really nice pictures, including that legendaary picture of Prince Hal – shows Miss Attitude (front) together with Anita’s other Kuhaylat al-Hauf mare, Bit O’Ruth (Lorenzo CF x LD Genisis LD byPlantagenet, back). The one in the back has a slightly dished profile, while the one in the front has a straight profile, but will all the features of a classic arabian head: small muzzle; large, open nostrils, delicately shaped lower lip, dry face with the veins showing; clean, arched throat; deep, well-drawn, cicular jowl, and above all, large, feminine eyes. A delight of a mare.
Another Hearst import to the USA in 1947 is *Bint Rajwa, who came with her dam *Rajwa, and her full brother *El Abiad. There were essentially two groups of Hearst horses: one group was bred in Lebanon, from well-established Lebanese asil lines, and included the horses: *Bourhane, *Kouhailane, *Layya, *Lebnaniah, *Mansoura, *Nouwayra, *Najwa, and *Mounwer; another group was desert-bred, and had come from the Syrian desert to Beirut for racing purposes. This second group included *Arkane, *Snounou, *Ghamil, and *Rajwa. Rajwa’s recorded strain is Saqlawi “Ejrifi”, a marbat I have never heard of before, and the name of which I believe is misspelt. It may well be Saqlawi Arjabi (alternative spellings: Erjibi; Rajabi), which is the fourth and last of the four main branches of the strain (Jadran, Ubayri, Arjabi and al-Abd), but I am not sure. I will need to check this one. Bint Rajwa is Rajwa’s daughter by a famous asil Arabian horse of Lebanese breeding: the grey Karawane, who raced in Beirut in 1940s in the ownership of Henri Pharaon (who else?) and was otherwise known as “Karawane al-Azim”, i.e., Karawane the Great. A picture of her is appended below, from the website of Suzi Morris’ Ariena Arabians, courtesy…
Here’s a YouTube video of the magnificent asil stallion Sportin Life (Brimstone x Asallah Al Krush), a Kuhaylan al-Krush tracing to the mare Werdi, imoprted by Homer Davenport to the USA in 1906. He passed away recently at Pamela Klein’s, but there are still some of his get and grandget.
All you need to know about this horse is in the photo’s legend. Nice horse. Line extinct like all the horses of the Strognaov/Sherbatov importation of 1888.
Arabian horses do not come in one type or form; rather they are of many, many types; unfortunately, in this day and age, one type has come to dominate and has spead everywhere; it is the type associated with the dished profile, so popular in show contests. According to a number of oral stories from old Bedouin men, dished or concave profiles were considered a physical defect, and horses with such profiles were not sought after. It was considered that such horses could not keep up with other war horses, because the slope or angle of the “dish” would somehow affect the horse’s capacity to exhale large quantities of air while running. The two photos below show two separate types of heads largely found among Bedouin horses of yesterday and today. The first one is a picture of Mershid (Hamrah x Dahurah), a Kuhaylat al-Ajuz mare in the USA. Mershid’s head is very reminiscent of desert breds in Saudi Arabia today. The second one represents the stallion Ribal (Berk x Rijma), who looks like another type of Bedouin horses to be found in Arabia. *Written by Pure Man and Translated by Edouard
This is Atiq Ayla (Laheeb x Al Hambra B by Salaa el Dine out of 228 Ibn Galal I to Bint Azza I, from the Egyptian Dahman Shahwan line tracing to Bint El Bahreyn). Ayla has a very large, expressive eye of the ‘human type’ with plenty of white showing and long eyelashes. She is bred by my friend Tzviah Idan of Idan Atiq Arabians in Israel.
Hence read the start of a journal entry Lady Anne Blunt wrote in 1911 (Lady Anne Blunt, Journals and Correspondence, edited by Rosemary Archer and James Fleming, 1986). The entry, brisking with excitement and enthusiasm, recorded the arrival at Sheykh Obeyd, Lady Anne’s Egyptian studfarm, of five of the choicest, best-authenticated desert-bred Arabian horses ever to get out of the Arabian Peninsula, after an arduous journey that lasted several months. In the same vein, stay tuned for the fresh news of another exciting importation straight from “Arabia” to the “West”, as I put together pictures and text for a story that will no doubt excite many of you, especially those in Europe. Here is a peek (as you can see, these are three, not five):
Check out the new photo galleries of horse pictures at the revamped website of the Davenport Conservancy. One of my favorite is this photo of the magnificent Craver stallion Sir (Tripoli x Dharebah) in old age. How I wished I was around to see him live.
Clothilde Nollet of Maarena Arabians in France, just sent me this link to the website of a young Syrian lady, Dr. Ghasoub al-Abrash Ghalyoun, who moved to Spain and brought with her an asil mare from Syria, Karboujah (Sa’d x Roudeinah by Mas’huj), and her grey asil son Najm Ya’rob, by the stallion Fawwaz (Ayid x Sit al-Kull). Dr. al-Abrash also has other horses at her Abrash Krush stud near Madrid. While I have never seen this stallion or his dam, I have very vivid memories of their sires, grandsires, and grand-dams: the stallions Ayid, Fawwaz, Mas’huj, Mahrous, Sa’d, and the mares Jamrah, and Sitt al-Kull populate my teenage memories, when my father and I used to drive from Lebanon to Syria and visit the studfarms of Syrian horse-breeders. The stallion Najm Yarob is interesting pedigree-wise, because he trace to two completely different branches of the Kuhaylan al-Krush strain. His sire, Fawwaz, comes from an old-established marbat of Kuhaylan al-Krush in the city of Hama in central Syria. This marbat traces a branch of the Krush horse family originating from the Fad’an Bedouin tribe, and know as Krush al-Sane’. The mare *Werdi, a Kuhaylat al-Krush mare imported by Homer Davenport to the…
In the entry below, I wrote about how I liked arabian mares that have long eyelashes, which magnifies the human-like expression many of these mares have anyway. Below is a picture of of such mare. Bint Mawj al-Athir was an asil (heck, she is the mother of all asil) Kuhaylat al-Nawwaq (that’s the right spelling, other spellings include Nowag, Nuwwag, Nawag, Nawaq, etc), or Kuhaylah Nawwaqiyah, from Lebanon. I never saw that mare in person, but my father, who took this picture of her in the 1970s when she was in her late twenties and in very poor condition, holds her and her particular lineage in the highest regard. I will no doubt come back to Bint Mawj al-Athir to introduce you to her pedigree, which by the way contains the blood of many horses now represented in the USA. For now, I just wanted you to look at the expression in the eyes of this beautiful, classic, regal Arabian mare. If you have more pictures of arabian mares with long eyelashes and a “human eye”, feel free to send them to me.
Jeanne Craver just sent me this headshot of my Wisteria CF (by Triermain x HB Wadduda by Mariner), which Charles Craver took a couple days ago at Craver Farms. They made my day. There is something unique about the eyes of every Arabian horse. Sometimes it’s the shape. Or the size. The darkness. The bulge. The sparkle. The white in the eyes. Some horses have all these features. Others only some of them. In Wisteria’s case, it’s the long, long eyelashes that make her look almost human. I’ve always had a soft spot for Arabian mares with long eyelashes. Maybe it’s because I like Arabic poetry. Arabic poetry, mainly that of the pre-Islamic kind, is replete with descriptions of the eyes in general, and of eyelashes in particular. It can be women eyes (often), camels’ eyes (even more often), or horses’ eyes (somewhat less often).
I recently shared with you my plan to propose the mare *Lebnaniah for inclusion in the Roster of Al-Khamsa horses as of 2010. The process is very thorough, usually involving several individuals putting their research skills together. It typically takes several years to complete. As part of this process, I will be sending the Al Khamsa Board original information about *Lebnaniah’s ancestors – information that was not available before. Much of this information is actually included in “Al-Dahdah Index” (don’t laugh), an annotated catalog of noteworthy asil and non-asil horses that were bred in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, the northern Arabian desert, etc) throughout the twentieth century. I have already shared with you the entries on the stallion Shaykh al-Arab and Kayane. The “Al-Dahdah Index” is a living document, which I have been patiently working on for the past twelve years, and I update as often as I can. The information is based on oral and written primary sources from the Middle East — i.e., it is not extracted from books written by Western travelers, horse buyers, and other occasional visitors. I would like to see the “Al-Dahdah Index” published some day, but not before I add a couple thousand more entries. I think I’ll give it another…
This little lady, Labwah al-Shaykhah (DB Krush x HS Marayah), represents a new ray of hope for the endangered Shaykhan (a branch of Ubayyan, formed in Lebanon and named after a Ubayyah mare called al-Shaykhah) strain. Only two or three mares of breeding age are know to be alive today, in the USA, one of which is HS Marayah, Labwah’s dam, owned by Jenny Krieg of Maryland. Labwah, whose name means lionness in Arabic, has the long ears for which the Shaykhan strain was known for back in Lebanon. Photo of Labwah courtesy of Jenny. July 20th update: By the way, Jenny and I have an article on that strain in the next Khamsat issue. You should subscribe!
Pure man just sent me this small photo of the masculine stallion Al Fateh, a Ubayyan from Saudi Arabia, by the stallion El Basheer, a Suwayti, out of the Ubayyah mare Al-Sayida. I like this horse.
Kuwait recently announced the launch of its brand new state stud, Bayt al-Arab, to replace its older Arabian Horse Center. Their nice website includes an interesting — but too sketchy — historical timeline. Most of the founding stock is of Egyptian bloodlines, and was imported from Germany, Qatar and the USA, mainly from Ansata Arabian Stud.
If any of you want to know what it feels like for a Western woman to live in today’s Saudi Arabia, then you ought to check out Susie of Arabia’s Jeddah Daily Photo Journal. Nothing to do with Arabian horses, but interesting still 😉
This is another picture of the beautiful Hearst stallion *Mounwer (b.1942), the subject of a recent entry. The picture is from the website of Ariena Arabians, and is courtesy of Nyla Eshelman. *Mounwer’s handwritten pedigree by his Lebanese breeder George Khamis indicates that he was sired by the stallion Kayane, out of the chestnut mare Bint El Berdowny, who seems to have raced at the Beirut racetrack in the 1930s. I have a lot of information on Kayane here. Bint El Berdowny, “the Daughter of the Berdowny”, is a name commonly given to racing mares hailing from the town of Zahlah and its vicinity, in the central part of the fertile Biqaa valley of Lebanon. The Berdowny is the name of the stream on the banks of which Zahlah lies. View Larger Map According to Khamis, *Mounwer’s dam Bint El Berdowny was sired by a black Ma’anaqi Sbayli, and his maternal grand-dam, a chestnut mare by the name of Subayha that may have also raced in Beirut, was sired by a desert-bred, grey Ma’anaqi Sbayli stallion of the French Army, which controled Lebanon and parts of Syria at the time. [The French Army maintained a large military base in Rayak, the village of…
Did you know that there were monkeys in Arabia? Hamadyas baboons live — proliferate — in southwest Saudi Arabia and in Yemen. Check these pictures out! and this video too:
Comming on a recent post, RJ Cadranell mentioned the CMK Record, a publication that replaced the Arabian Visions Magazine. Below, a scanned article of the CMK Record, Fall 1988 issue, courtesy of Micheal Bowling, where he discusses the 1942 asil stallion *Mounwer, imported to the USA by W. R. Hearst in 1947. *Mounwer was a Shuayman Sabbah by strain, and was bred by the Khamis family of Rayaq, Lebanon, by Kayane out of Bint al-Berdowni. Check out my entry on Kayane here. *Mounwer is the paternal half-brother of the mare *Layya, also bred by the Khamis family and imported by Hearst. While *Layya has left (too few) asil descendants, and was accepted by Al Khamsa in 2002, the blood of *Mounwer is now completely lost to asil breeding. (If you have a PC, right-click on your mouse, and download Michael’s article to be able to read it without damaging your eyes. If you have a Mac, I don’t know what to tell you…) And that’s a photo of *Mounwer, who really looked like he was a lovely horse. More on some of his ancestors later.
These days I seem to have less and less time to devote to writing longer articles that aim to make a point in a well-documented, systematic way. That’s why you’re seeing more and more photos and videos these days. It’s not that I ran out of things to say. I just ran out of time to put things together in a more organized way. That’s why I thought I’d create a special section on this blog where I’d put more crude, quick-and-rough thoughts (bullet points really – they love bullet where I work), waiting to be organized into a full-blown blog entry. It’s also a way to offer some leads to those of you who’d want to take the research further. So check My Scrapbook section from time to time. My Twitter account is also supposed to play a similar role, although I haven’t quite gotten hooked on it yet.
… and this is Mazfufah (Haleem x Ma’zufah), who is Matrubah’s full sister. Matrubah was featured in an another post I wrote earlier today. Pure Man, who sent me Mazfufah’s picture, also told me the two mares are almost total look-alikes. Of course, one needs to recognize that Matrubah’s picture was taken by a professional, while her sister’s was taken by an occasional photographer, and shows the mare in an ungroomed condition.
“Pure Man” sent me this beautiful picture of the desert-bred mare Matrubah (Haleem x Ma’zufah), an asil Kuhaylat al-Krush from Saudi Arabia. Matrubah is owned by Prince ‘Abd al-‘Aziz Al-Sudayri and graces his new Aziziyah Stud. More on this original branch of the Kuhaylan al-Krush strain in this earlier post here. I know there is not many of you reading this blog who think that a desert bred horse cannot also be beautiful, but those of you who still think so, think again.
Those of you who have looked at the Saudi Arabian Stud Book may have noticed that most of the horses registered in it trace back to a grey horse by the name of Al-Harqan, born in 1947. This horse is the sire of 25 horses in Volume I of the Saudi Stud Book. Pure Man, who by virtue of his knowledge of asil Arabians in Saudi Arabia, is a main contributor to this blog, tells me that Al-Harqan is Kuhaylan Harqan by strain. He also tells me that King Abdel-Aziz Aal Saud (d. 1953) asked a Bedouin from the tribe of Harb by the name of Ibn Fadliyah for a stallion from his famed Harqan horses, and that Ibn Fadliyah gave the king his best stallion: Al-Harqan. Pure Man also tells me that before Al-Harqan, the House of Saud maintained two other stallions of the same strain, but that they don’t appear in modern pedigrees because Saudi authorities did not keep written stud records back then. I think the strain of Kuhaylan Harqan is extinct in the tail female today, but I may be wrong, because there might still be desert horses of this strain in Saudi Arabia which I would not…
Every time I look for a substantive article on Arabian horses online, I keep stumbling on something that was written in “Arabian Visions” like this informative article on the Perdue’s Rudalaro breeding program in Lamar, Colorado. I am a big fan of this program by the way, and especially of one of its flagship stallions: Fa Raad (Fa-Turf x Raada), whose famous picture is featured below. Arabian Visions was the magazine R.J. Cadranell published in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Michael Bowling and Rick Synowski contributed to it from time to time. I never got the chance to ask RJ why he stopped issuing it. I wish he – or somebody else – would resume publishing it. It was such a precious learning tool. Check out Michael’s CMK website for a list of Arabian Visions articles and other good articles on the subject. That will make for a few dozen hours of good reading, for those who haven’t read these articles yet..
This is a rarely seen picture of the very pretty asil Babolna mare 25-Amurath Sahib (Amurah Sahib x 221 Kuhaylan Zaid, by Kuhaylan Zaid), courtesy of Jeanne Craver. The blood of legends like Kuhaylan Zaid, Siglavy Bagdady, Kuhaylan IV, Amurath 1881, Jussuf, Tajar, and Ghadir, to name but a few, flows in the veins of this mare and her living descendents, who are “living history” as far as the Arabian horse (in its asil and non-asil forms) is concerned. I am never tired of repeating that the blood of the descendents of this mare constitutes one of the last hopes for an outcross to the heavily inbred European asil bloodlines.
Here is the comment from Jehangir Rustomjee, Bahrain Royal Stud registrar: “It is with great regret that I inform you that neither of the Royal studs have any female Dhahma (Dahmeh) descendants left, my eyes well up and my chest tightens as I convey this to you. I am so pleased at the international interest in our horses about who so little is known outside Bahrain.” How tragic that a strain precious and ancient as that of the Dahmah would die out in its cradle. The link to the Dahman strain on the Bahrain Royal Studs website is still there. Check it out it while it lasts. Thank God a thin line to the mare Sawannah remains in North America, as well as the Bint El Bahreyn Egyptian horses too, of course. [Basil and Hazaim, if you are reading, this sad news makes Dahmat al-Tuwaymin all the more precious now.]
Jean-Claude Rajot, who has lately been a frequent visitor of Syria (more on these visits later, including from Jean-Claude himself), sent me these photos of a couple horses in the stud of Hussain al-Ghishm in North Eastern Syria. Both horses are of the Kuhaylan al-Wati strain. The al-Ghishm, a family of ranking shaykhs of the Shammar, have been famously breeding desert-bred Kuhaylan al-Wati for at least five human generations. Their horses are asil and are held in high repute across the desert. I have been meaning to keep these photos for a full entry on the Kuhaylan al-Wati strain, as part of the “Strain of the Week” series, on which I am way behind, but they have been sitting in my hard drive for some time now, and thought, hey, the pictures speak for themselves anyway.. The older stallion is al-Ghishm’s main breeding stallion. I think his name is Amer Hakem but I am not sure. I especially like the younger colt. Of course, even though both horses are in very good health, you shouldn’t compare their condition to that of horses grazing in Europe or America’s lush pastures. PS – this is the best blood in the Syrian desert.…
I am done reading my latest issue of the Khamsat magazine, which features the WAHO 2007 conference in Syria. Joe Ferriss has a nice article on “Some Reflections on the Continuity of the Desert Horse”, and Hazaim al-Wair and I have an article in that same edition with some nice photos too. Below is a photo of Joe Ferriss (to the right) and Pam Studebaker (current Al Khamsa President) with yours truly, during the 2001 Al Khamsa Convention in Springfield, IL.
This one has an “artistic” touch to it. Still, the grey horse leading the pack has an impressive tail carriage.
Note the well-built grey horses with the high-tail carriage in the video.
These are some of the horses of the Bedouin tribe of Yam, who lives in the area in and around the famous historical city of Najran, in the province of same, which lies in South-Western Saudi Arabia. Pure Man tells me that the Yam Bedouins in this area of Saudi Arabia, while now settled, are known to have preserved ancient horsemanship traditions. He also tells me that they have preserved Arabian horses pure since the time of their grandfathers, and that they are deeply attached to their horses and very proud of them. They should be. Yam’s horses mostly belong to the two strain of Kubayshan — an ancient strain originating from that area, with the Qahtan tribe, Yam’s northern neighbors — and Khumayssan — a strain I had never heard of before. They are reportedly asil, but have never been registered in WAHO by the Saudi Government authorities in Dirab (and it’s better like this – who is WAHO anyway to tell Bedouins what standards of purity are?). Below is the picture of a sunset in Najran
Now this one is asil. This is al-Sakb, a desert-bred Hamdani from Saudi Arabia, bred and owned by Pure Man. His sire: Suhayl, an Ubayyan; his dam: Wajjabah, a Hamdaniyah, by the stallion al-Harir, an Ubayyan out of Wassamah, by Qays, a Suwayti.
Tiwaiq is the head stallion at al-Khalediah Farm in Saudi Arabia. Al-Khaledia, the property of H.R.H. Prince Khalid ben Sultan ben Abd al-Aziz Aal Saud, is one of the largest horse farms in the Middle East, with more than 500 Arabian horses. Judging from pictures such as this one and others (here), Tiwaiq, described on the website as a ‘pure desert horse’, does not look like an Arabian to me, but like a good English Thoroughbred. I wish there was a pedigree to look at.
I am back in the USA after more than a month in Morocco, Yemen, Lebanon (home) and France. It’s good to be back. There’s lot to catch up on, including news on the upcming Al Khamsa 2009 Convention in Redmond, Oregon. Check the website here, and if you haven’t registered yet, click here to do so.
Louis Bauduin just sent me this older photo of the masculine stallion Jazour, a Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz, by Saadi out of Izarra. Jazour was bred in France by Robert Mauvy, and reflects a blend of Tunisian and Algerian breeding. Too bad Izarra, bred by Admiral Cordonnier at Sidi Bou Hadid in Tunisia, never left a female line. A young Louis is holding the bridle.. Jazour is the sire of Kerak, bred in the Netherlands, by the late Dr. Foppe Klynstra, a friend of Mauvy’s out of the striking desert-bred mare Nijmeh, herself from the Majali Bedouins of Jordan. Both Nijmeh and Kerak are pictured in Klynstra’s beautiful book “Nobility of the Desert“. More on Nijmeh later.
A famous verse from a long poem by Beduin prince and poet Imru’ al-Qays al-Kindi (501-544 AD), where he describes his Arabian horse: Lahu aytala zabyin wa-saaqa na’amatin wa-irkha’u sarhanin wa-taqribu tatfuli In English (translation mine): “He has the flanks of an antelope, the legs of an ostrich, the trot of a wolf and the gallop of a young fox.” “He” refers to the poet’s horse, of course. Below is a picture of an Arabian wolf (Canis Lupus Arabs) from the Saudi Arabian desert reserve of Uruq Bani Ma’arid.
This magnificent white stallion is not a show horse but a desert bred stallion that took part in a halter competition organized in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. His name is Ruzayq, and he was sired by Haleem, a Hamdani. Ruzayq stands at the Saudi government stud in Dirab. He traces to Saqlawi mares bred by the Bani Sakhr tribe (now settled in both Jordan and Saudi Arabia). The Shaykhs of this tribe, Aal Fayiz, were famous for their Saqlawis. Thanks Pure Man for forwarding this beautiful photo. What a horse. What a HORSE.
This is a famous photo. The masculine stallion pictured is a Hamdani from the Bahrain Royal Stud, by al-Jallabi al-Mashoosh al-Thani (Specked Jellabi II) and out of “the Hamdaniyah of Fatis”. Fatis was the old “Master of the Horses” (stud manager) who was in charge of the stud from 1942 to 1974, according to this website that also has a picture of Old Fatis.