A nice desert scene from the collection of Robert Montagne at the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris, showing sheep herders in the Syrian desert, around 1930
From the collection of Jesuit priest, pilot and archaeologist Antoine Poidebard at the French Musee du Quai Branly comes this photo of a group of sheep herders from the Shammar tribe. The back of the photo has the following writing in French: “Berger bédouin de la tribu Chammar / Haute Djéziré / Cliché Poidebard”- manuscrit à l’encre bleue : “Berger bédouin de la tribu Chammar (désert de Syrie)”- étiquette collée : “Environ 300.000 nomades vivent sur les immenses territoires du désert de Syrie et sont rattachés au gouvernement de Damas. Nomades et pasteurs, ils pratiquent l’élevage du mouton et du chameau.“
From the collection of French anthropologist Robert Montagne at the French Musee du Quai Branly comes this photograph of a vivid desert scene showing a desert well and a camel (in the back) pulling waterskins out of the well.
A gorgeous photo from yet another collection at the Musee du Quai Branly, this time that of famed French anthropologist Robert Montagne, who studied Bedouin society and culture. The title in French is: “Desert de Syrie — Reunion dans la tente d’un grand chef bedouin de la tribu des Rwalla”. The young man to the right looks like Fawaz al-Sha’laan, the young leader of the Ruwalah at the time, who often appears in photographs by Carl Raswan dating from the same period.
Also from the Varliette body of photographs at the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris comes this beautiful photo of a camel-herding tribe marching. The palanquin of the daughter of the chief of the tribe is in the middle of the picture. The photo is also associated with Albert de Boucheman’s masterpiece “Materiel de la Vie Bedouine”.
From the Varliette collection at the French Musee du Quai Branly comes this stunning photo of a “Tribe Marching” (Tribu en ordre de marche). It was taken between 1920 and 1934. The photo seems to have been published in Albert de Boucheman’s foundational study “Matériel de la vie bédouine”, of which I own a rare copy. I now have a lead into who Varliette is, given this apparent association with A. de Boucheman, whose focus in that book was the Sba’ah Bedouin tribe.
From the Varliette collection of photographs at the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris comes this photo taken between 1920 and 1934 of a Bedouin sheep herders’ encampment near Palmyra in Syria, titled “Campement de Bedouins Moutonniers”. Sheep herding tribes present in this area and at that time include the ‘Umur, the Fawa’irah, the Lhayb, and other smaller tribes. They were called in Arabic shawayah, or “people of the sheep” (shaat in Arabic), in contrast to the jammaalah tribes (those of the “people of the camel” – jamal in Arabic); and the baqqarah tribes (those of the “people of the cow” – baqar in Arabic).
Title: From the same Jacques Edinger collection as the earlier photos on this blog, housed at the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris comes this photo titled “Chameau entravé de la tribu des Rwalla.”
From the same collection at the Musee du Quai Branly as the pictures in the earlier posts.
From the same collection of Jacques Edinger at the French Musee du Quai Branly: inside a chief’s tent: the divider separating the public area of the tent from the private quarters (now a rare, highly sought-after item); a barebones camel saddle, and the falcon on his perch.
Also from the collection of Jacques Edinger at the French Musee du Quai Branly — Jacques Chirac is this photo of a Bedouin leader and his beautiful mare from the Negev/Naqab desert around the city of Beersheba/Bi’r al-Sab’. Note the prickled ears, the small muzzle, the protruding eye sockets and the broad, flat forehead on this beautiful desertbred horse.
From the collection of Jacques Edinger at the French Musee du Quai Branly comes this bueatiful photograph titled “Fils de chef bédouin tenant le cheval de son père” (“Son of Bedouin chief holding his father’s horse), and taken between 1930 and 1937 in Syria.
I seldom post photos of horses for sale on this blog, if at all. Once in a blue moon, I make an exception for horses I would have liked to acquire myself. This one is one of them. Bev Davison has a gorgeous black colt for sale. Pedigree here. His name is SpiritWind Sahmadhi by SpiritWind Ahsahm out of DA Willow Windsong by Serr Serabaar. He is black (genetic tested, and clear for SCID, CA, LFS, & OAAM1.) He has Fay-el-Dine sire line and Basilisk dam line. He is built like a tank and with a lot of style, the way I like them. Look at the shoulder, the withers, the bad and the hip.
I am so taken with Belle’s new colt by Jamr, born a couple months ago at the farm of their new owner Moira Walker. Moira named him Belisarius. He is a throwback to the USA Arabians of a hundred years ago, those you find in black and white photographs of horse magazines and books. At that time, Arabians were good all around horses, not overly specialized in a single discipline, whether halter, endurance or racing.
Today Barakah Al Arab was bred to Monologue CF for a Sharp foal of the *Nufoud Kuhaylan ‘Ajuz tail female of King Ibn Sa’ud; and Madinas Miracle was bred to Jamr Al Arab for a foal from the rare Ubayyan strain belonging to Ibn Jalawi.
I have not looked at my “Aldahdah Index” in a while. It is a compendium of standardized entries on older Middle Eastern Arabian horses, mostly Syrian and Lebanese, in the style of the Raswan Index. I will publish it one day. I looked up the entry of the Khdili stallion of Abbud Ali al-Amud, who has recently been the subject of discussion on social media (Facebook and WhatsApp groups). I had written this about him back then: AL-KHDILI OF ABOUD ALI AL-AMOUD: an Asil desert-bred stallion; later owned by the Armenian horsedealer Apo in Aleppo. Strain: Kuhaylan Khdili, of the marbat owned by ‘Abbud ‘Ali al-‘Amud, a Bedouin from the Aqaydat tribe; al-‘Amud got his horses from the marbat of ‘Udayb al-Waqqa’ of the Saba’ah tribe. Comments: He was a small horse of such classic Arab type, with such an extreme head, that people in Aleppo were reluctant to use him because they found him to be ‘pretty like a mare’. He is closely related to the beautiful mare Leelas, a Kuhaylah Khdiliyah bred by ‘Abbud ‘Ali Al-‘Amud, and which is a daughter of the Ma’naqi al-Shwaiti al-Najrissi of the Aqaydat tribe. That was what I had about him some…
The stallion below is the Saqlawi Jadran Benlarich Futhi El Arab (Sidi El Thabi x Johrhemar El Lulwa), tail female to Ghazieh through the Orpen import Nabilah (Enzahi x Zamzam). He was a versatile riding horse, with a show record under saddle, and an endurance career with over 1600km, that included completing the Fauresmith National Ride in 2010, a roughly 200km ride split over three consecutive days, as well as a first place finish in the heavyweight category at the 120km at the Parys Daly Land Rover ride. In addition to his accomplishments as an athlete, owner Eduard von Moltke says that he was a very great gentleman. His pedigree is noteworthy, as his dam, Johrhemar El Lulwa, is the granddaughter of Inzam Saklabilah, who was out of Nabilah by Gordonville Ziyadan; Ziyadan was not just the only son of the Kuhaylah Mimrahiyah mare Barakah, but also the only asil son that her fellow Orpen import Zahir got. It is unusual to see all three Orpen imports this close in an asil pedigree today.
Below is a photo of the young filly that my father traded Dahess for. She was 10 days old in the picture. Her name was Amshet Shammar, born in 1995. Her sire was al-Aawar, the desert-bred Hamdani Ibn Ghurab stallion, and her dam was the old bay Krush mare Ghallaiah, which Radwan Shabareq had acquired from Rakan son of Nuri al-Jarba. Ghallaiah was sired by the black Saqlawi Marzaqani of al-‘Anud, the wife and mother of leaders of the Tai tribe. Ghallaiah’s dam was also sired by the same horse, which came from the Marazeeq, the owners of that strain since the 1840s (at least). That’s me on the background, and the late Mustafa al-Jabri to the right.
This afternoon I scanned some photos from a trip to Syria my father and I took in 1995 (almost 30 years ago, yikes!). I am more aware than ever about the need to put old analog records in digital format and online. Starting with Dahess, the handsome Ubayyan Suhayli stallion my father had just traded for a filly from the breeding of Radwan Shabareq. Dahess was a personal favorite of mine. Funny how some horses are just horses, while others touch your soul. This was the last time I was to see him, as he met an untimely death in a freak accident a few months later. To me, he will always remain the epitome of the desert Arabian horse, the real deal. His origins were flawless. His sire Awaad was a Kuhaylan Krush al-Baida from the strain of Mayzar Abd al-Muhsin al-Jarba, a strain that goes back to Ibn Rashid and the Mutayr Bedouins; his dam al-Jazi was sired by the grey Ubayyan Suhayli of ‘Atnan al-Shazi, a Faddagha Shammar Bedouin who had obtained the line from the Sahlan/Suhayli owners of the strain; I recall being told that this horse was sold to the UAE in the early 1980s…
I have been trying to go back in time as far as possible with the pedigrees of modern Syrian Arabian horses, looking for male ancestors as early as the 1930s and 1940s. It’s a difficult task, because the registration of Syrian foundation horses (the first wave in Volume 1, and the second wave in Volume 7) is based on oral testimonies, which seldom go beyond three or four generations, whether in horses or in humans. How many of us can readily remember the name of our paternal great-grandmother? A horse that keeps coming back in the back of the pedigrees of Syrian Arabians is the Dahman Amer of Sa’ud al-‘Ajarrash. In the back of the pedigree of this mare born in 1971, for example, where his owner’s name is misspelt and his strain is misrepresented. The mare’s hujjah shows the right strain and owner for this stallion, her great-grandfather, which was likely active in the 1940s. The same stallion appears as the sire of the Egyptian RAS desert-bred stallion El Nasser. Below a photo of this really fine mare in extreme old age (around 32). She was a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah of the strain of Ibn ‘Amoud. I took this photo…
A photo of Tarff (*Fadl x *Turfa) I had not seen before — he is in two of my mares. What a good mare *Turfa was, perhaps one of the best ever imported to the US. I second the old saying among US Arabian horse breeders that the more *Turfa in a horse, the better the horse. The same cannot be said of other more recent desert blood, which is precious but needs to be used with care, in my opinion, if one wants to avoid longer back and shorter hips. On another note, Americans really maintained their stallions very fat in the 1950s.
Very happy with how Shaman is turning out (look past the winter coat ), and he is not three yet. I am inching closer towards the type of horses I want to see. I like them built like tanks, the stallions very masculine and the mares very feminine, all very dry and superlative movers. No to “living art”, no to “cute”, no to “extreme”. Yes to being a good horse first, before being an Arabian. Yes to irreproachable authenticity of bloodlines. Shaman will make a good stallion. Photo by DeWayne Brown taken today.
The Sba’ah ‘Anazah had a first-class marbat of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak known as Ubayyan al-‘Awbali. The ‘Awbaliyyat were the Ubayyan Sharrak mares of al-‘Awaabilah clan of the Mihlif of the Mawayiqah of the Sba’ah. The Nawwaq clan owners of Kuhaylan Nawwaq are from the Qasim (Gasim) section of the Rasaalin of the Sba’ah. The Ma’naqi Sbayli take their name after Ibn Sbayyil of the Ajlan of the Rasaalin of the Sba’ah. The Ajlan are headed by Ibn Mijlad. Zudghum, owner of the most famous Ma’naqi Sbayli marbat of the XXth century was Zudghum Ibn Mijlad (TBC). Amir al-Dandal told me that the Ma’naqi Sbayli (Najrissi) marbat of the Aqayadat was obtained from the Rasaalin. The hujjah of the mare Aseelah (dam of Dinar, by al-Aawar) states that she was Ma’naqiyat Zudghum.
The last horse I bred in Lebanon before moving to the USA in 2000 was this handsome young colt, by the Ma’naqi Sbayli stallion Dinar (Al-Aawar x Aseelah) out of my Saqlawiyah Sha’ifiyah Fadwa (Al Kaher x Loumah, by Faisal x Hababah). Fadwa was a striking bay mare, the outcome of an Egyptian-Syrian cross as her sire Al Kaher (Ikhnatoon x Marium by Ibn Shahrzada) was an Egyptian EAO export to Syria. He was given away to somebody as a weanling. Pity, because I thought he was special. But then again, one can’t keep them all. Not sure he was ever registered. I need to look him up.
Two more pictures of the authentic desert-bred stallion Barazan (Odeilan x Asfourah), a Saqlawi Marzaqani bred by the Shammar Bedouin. Photos by Gudrun Waiditschka in 2006 in Syria. Look at the striking similarity of the the bottom photo of Barazan with that of *Haleb, another desert-bred that was imported to the USA in 1906. True desert type has remained remarkably consistent over the past 100 years.
Khalid Rakhlani runs a beautiful page on Facebook, called Arabian Horses in Syria. It features numerous photos of Arabian horses of 100% Syrian stock, registered in the Syrian Arabian Horse Studbook. This morning’s photo of the stallion Barazan caught my eye. He represents a type of desert horse that is rapidly disappearing: small, yet well built, with this wild animal quality to him. His sire Odeilan, a seal brown Ubayyan Suhayli, was very small, but this was from malnutrition. Barazan is jet black without white markings, in the pure tradition of old Saqlawi Marzaqani stallions. In the 1950s, the Maraziq Bedouins who have owned the strain since the 1850s stood a famous stallion called the “Black Marzaqani”, who sired the famous race winner Mawj al-Athir (who was also his brother, the black Marzaqani having bred his own dam as a young colt). Later in the 1970s, the daughter and wife and mother of Tai leaders, Anud al-Nayif also stood a black Saqlawi Marzaqani stallion — the “horse of al-‘Anud”. Below, an early photo of his maternal grand-dam Tairah when she was still in the Syrian desert, with her Bedouin owner Sabah Munawikh al-Uthman of the al-Luhaib clan of the Shammar.…
There was another important aspect of my recent series of conversations with Abu Tamer, Hammad Jaddu’ al-Jaz’aa, the venerable Tai Bedouin owner of a hundred year old marbat of Saqlawi Jadran Arabian horses known as the Saqlawiyyat of Dari al-Mahmud (or Saqlawiyyat Dariyyat as they have been calling them these days). It relates to the stallions him, his brothers and their father Jaddu’ al-Jaz’ah before them used to breed to their mares. He mentioned them using the following desert-bred stallions over the decades: The grey Kuhaylan Krush of Juhayyhim al-Mitkhan of the Tai, a horse Juhayyim got from the Shammar Jarba (early 1980s and 1970s) The black Kuhaylan Haifi of Juhhayim al-Mitkhan, a horse of Tai lineage (early 1970s and 1960s) The stallion of Muhammad al-Fajri of the Shammar, a Saqlawi Shaifi of the strain of Ibn Bisra (1970s) The fleebitten grey stallion of Bunyan al-Mujwil (al-Jarba), named “al-Sarukh”, a Saqlawi Shaifi of the strain of Ibn Bisra, born with the Jawwlah of Tai, but originally of Shammar stock (early 1970s and 1960s) The chestnut Kuhaylan Ibn Jlaidan of Bardan ibn Jlaidan of the Shammar (early 1970s and 1960s) The second horse of ‘Ebbo al-Humayyid, a bay Saqlawi Jadran of…
This evening I was chatting with Hammad Jaddu’ al-Jaz’ah (Abu Tamer). We chat regularly about the horses about the horses of the Syrian Jazirah more generally and the horses of his family in particular. They have been breeding a well established (mathbut) strain of Saqlawi Jadran since the 1920s. At around 85 years old, Abu Tamer has an excellent memory. This evening he told me a few things about his horses which I did not know before. First, the original mare his father acquired was a daughter of Dahman Amer the horse of al-Ajarrash. This seems to have been a notable desert-bred stallion, present in the back of the pedigrees of many Syrian desert horses (beyond the number of generations registered in the studbook). The Dahman Amer of al-Ajarrash is the sire of the Hamdani Simri stallion al-Malkhukh, who is present in most Syrian horses today through his great-grandson Krush Juhayyim (son of the Ubayyan Suhayli of Abd al-Aziz al-Maslat, the son of a daughter of al-Malkhukh), but also in the tail male of the Saqlawi Ibn Zubayni stallion Abjar (son of Ghuzayyil, son of Hamdani al-Jhini, son of al-Malkhukh son of al-Ajarrash). Most notably, the Dahman Amer of Sattam…
Khalid Rakhlani’s Facebook page “Arabian Horses in Syria” has a nice photo of Khaldee (al-Khaldi) that I had not seen before, courtesy of Sha’lan al-Ahmad Khaldee is the most prominent stallion in modern Syrian breeding.
Mostly a note to myself.. I finally found a document that establishes the breeder of Krush Juhayyim, the foundation stallion of modern Syrian Arabian horsebreeding. A breeding certificate mentions that the sire of a grey ‘Ubayyah mare is “Krush Juhayyim from the marbat of al-Abd al-Muhsin (Sattam al-Hawwas)”. Sattam is the son of Hawwas the son of Mayzar the son of Abd al-Muhsin al-Jarba. Mayzar was the leader of the Syrian Shammar as of 1934. PS — I learned from the Jarba shaykhs that this Krush strain came to them directly from Ibn Rashid of the Shammar of Hail. After the Ottomans quelled the rebellion of the Shammar under Abd al-Karim al-Jarba and hung him over a bridge on the Tigris in Mossul, his mother Amshah took her surviving son Faris and Abd al-Karim’s son Abd al-Muhsin, and stayed with their relative Ibn Rashid to shield them from the Ottomans. Upon their return to Mesopotamia, Ibn Rashid gave the young Abd al-Muhsin one of his Krush mares, which he had gotten from the al-Dawish leaders of Mutayr.
Lady is the very last Al Khamsa mare from the female line of Ferida of Lady Anne Blunt. Hers is one of the glorious lines of American Arabian horse breeding. She is 24 this year, and will likely not get pregnant anymore, but I have four frozen embryos from her. This is as good a photo of her as I ever managed to get.
This young mare (b. 2016, so I guess not that young anymore) can look pretty when she wants to..
A photo of the young Jadah BelloftheBall “Belle”, with her dam Belladonna CHF, at her owner’s Mary Sue Harris in 2002. Photo by Randall Harris.
I am scanning old photos, and these two from the Syrian Kuhaylan al-Khdili stallion Sa’ad Al-Thani (Al-Aawar x Leelas) emerged from the lot. I am happy he has a tail male going, with Dahjani Al Arab in France and Abul Hol in Syria, a Kuhaylan al-Mimrah (#1857 in the Syrian Studbook). Photos taken in 1995 at Mustafa al-Jabri’s (his Volvo in the back). That was a good horse, one of his sire’s best get.
A photo of the desert-bred mare and Davenport import *Wadduda I had not seen before. Not a single surviving photo has done justice to this mare. PS — Jamr is a direct female descendant of *Wadduda.
… and so does the beautiful young girl that inspired it. I love searching the DOW archives for mid-January blog entries to see how much my older daughter has grown over the years.
This is a stylish stallion with a superb pedigree and very clean pedigree. The fact that I recall most of his ancestors in the fifth and sixth generations must mean that I am getting old.. I remember Adeelah, Obeirah, Mokhtar, Maseh, Al Kahirah, Mobarak at Basil’s, Marzouq, Aseelah, and their son Shaddad at Kamal Abdel Khalek in Aleppo, Fawaz and his dam at Saleh Sorouji in Damascus, Ayid at Ayman Ajlani, and Mashuj at Fouad Al-Azem in Hama. The 1990s and early 2000s were the golden years of the Arabian horse in Syria.
The Arabian Horse Archives, a project which this blog supports, has an online digitized copy of Cecil Covey’s 1982 booklet “Crabbet Arabians”. It features a photo of Ibn Yashmak I had not seen before. Now I see why the Blunts imported him from Egypt to use him on their Crabbet mares.
Jeanne Craver recently shared with me these threephotos of the 1967 mare Nauwas (Al Khobar x *Muhaira), an Ubayyah from the strain of Ibn Jalawi of Easter Arabia. The photos are from/by George Hooper, who had owned Nauwas in her later years. An article I had written some fourteen years ago on this blog featured a black and white version of one of these photos. I now own a direct grand-daughter of Nauwas, so in a way, the wish I had expressed in the article has come true.
Frolicking in the Wisconsin snow at her new owner’s Moira Walker.
Warriors of the past and warriors of the present. Gender roles reversed. Two radically different worlds side by side. Today both worlds interact through the desert Arabian horse. The median breeder of desert Arabians in the US is a woman, while young Bedouin men are claiming back their old horse heritage.
Richard Pritzlaff riding. Photo gleaned off the internet, without a source. Rabanna, like her contemporary the Doyle mare Gulida, is a boon for any breeder to have in the pedigree of their horses. So much of the real Abbas Pasha blood in these two mares. Much gratitude for dedicated breeders like Sheila Harmon and others for having carried that line forward in recent times. My personal favorites are the grey “Rabannas”, e.g., Kumence RSI, Aloha RSI. They look different from the chestnuts, not just color wise. I see more of the original Rabanna in them.
Somebody has been bugging me to help set up Arabian racing in Southern Africa. I can’t help but wonder what the members of this group think. If “per definition” (i.e. Skowronek, etc.) WAHO Arabians are allowed, is it really Arabian racing?
From time to time — I am not sure why — I have intense flashbacks of Yemen, where I spent perhaps the most memorable stays of my life. I visited it often between 2005 and 2015, traveling around the country from the ancient cities of San’aa, Dhamar, Ibb, Ta’izz and al-Mukallah to the remote villages and fortresses atop the mountains. The people and the culture left a deep mark on me, and so did the architecture and the landscape. It is the one part of the Middle East where the most ancient manifestations of an original Arabian civilization express themselves the most vividly, without noticeable Greek, Egyptian, Roman, Persian, Ottoman or now ubiquitous Western influences. I found these pictures on a Facebook page dedicated to Yemen (Mahdi al-Dubaybi’s page). Most of the pictures are from villages and towns in the mountain provinces of San’aa, Raymah and al-Mahwit, incuding of the towns of Haraz, al-Mahjabah, and Dar al-Hajar, which was the residence of the last Imam of Yemen before the 1962 revolution.
This should be the first foal of my Mayassa Al Arab (Clarion CF x Cinnabar Myst by ASF David). She will then be ten years old (below, at two years old). So grateful to Deb Mackie for having made it happen!
The origins of the three horses presented by Shibly Bisharat to King Faruq of Egypt are currently somewhat obscure, as the only information we have at present comes from Shibly’s son Midhat Bisharat’s correspondence with Dr Hans Nagel, which gives their strains and includes the fact that they were purchased from the Trans-Jordan Frontier Force when it was disbanded in 1948. There is no mention of their breeders, and no direct connection to the Bedouin. Only the stallion Besheir El Ashkar and one of the two mares, Badria, still have descent in horses accepted by the Asil Club and Al Khamsa. What we know of these two from Pearson and Mol’s 1988 The Arabian Horse Families of Egypt is given below: Besheir el Ashkar was a chestnut foaled on 26th March, 1935. He was presented to the Inshass Stud by Basharat Bey in March 1948 and sold to the Wasta Farm in October 1951. p. 59 Badria was a chestnut foaled on 26th March, 1941. She was presented to the Inshass Stud by Basharat Bey in March 1948 and transferred to the Veterinary Section of the Army in June 1953 and later to the EAO. p. 129 Both horses have an exact…
The second issue of the Bedouin Horse Journal of South Africa has an upcoming article on Belle and her rare Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz strain.
This what a “very beautiful head” meant in 1895. Let’s keep it that way.
Samantha Mattocks published this feature on our new book “The Arabian Horses of Abbas Pasha” in the British “Arabian Magazine”
Hamidi al-Dham al-Hadi al-Jarba was the supreme leader Shaykh of the Jarba Shammar. Westerners know him mostly for hosting a delegation of breeders to the Shammar in 1996.
Nelyo looked very “old style” Arabian the other day. I love how fine his mouth amd muzzle look. There was too much visual noise in the background, so I converted the picture to black and white.
The excerpt below comes from Eduard Löffler’s 1860 book, Die österreichische Pferde-Ankaufs-Mission, which is a firsthand account of the 1856-7 expedition helmed by Colonel Rudolf von Brudermann to the desert to buy horses for the state studs. The expedition, by this point, had already acquired a number of horses, including Aghil Aga, who still has a presence in Al Khamsa horses. They had met with the Wuld Ali, who were camping in the Hauran, to the south of the Tell al-Hara, “only 17 or 18 hours of riding from Damascus”. Löffler says the sheikh was Mohamed El Duchi (Mohammed Dukhi ibn Smeyr in Lady Anne Blunt’s Bedouin Tribes of the Euphrates, and Mohammed ed Douhi in Roger Upton’s Travels in the Arabian Desert), who happened to be in Damascus at the same time as the Austrians, negotiating with the governor over camels for a caravan of pilgrims travelling to Mecca in May. Colonel von Brudermann made arrangements via the Austrian consul Pfaeffinger to journey with the sheikh back to the Wuld Ali, where they might see their horses. Löffler remarks that the horses of the Wuld Ali were “edle, schöne, prachtvolle Thiere, die entzückten und jeden Pferdefreund enthusiasmirt haben würden”…
Kinza arrived at the Doyle farm in Oregon some ten days ago. She will most likely go to Bashir Al-Dirri in the spring, when she will have put more weight on. Bev Davison keeps her dam Ginger, as well as two siblings, a filly and a colt, and has sold another full sister.
Billy Sheets, who with his father and grandfather before him owned Arabian Stud Farms [ASF] told me some twenty years ago that the bay stallion active at ASF under the name ASF Gersom [Dhahran x Esperanzo Asal Fanifara] was not ASF Gersom, who had died young, but his younger full brother, ASF Jedeciah, the 1977 model, also bay. Not sure why I remembered this today.
Superb photo of Fragrance CF [Regency CF x Anthesis CF] taken by Carol Mingst in 2012.
Jamr, despite being small, is magnificent. In fact, he does not look small at all when moving. Yesterday, I also took these photos of him walking in hand. He is short [13.3 and a half], I am tall [6 feet], so that makes for titled photos where his legs look shorter and his body bigger. I wish I had taken some video too, as he was moving in a way very reminiscent of the 1920s Crabbet stallions in this British Pathe short film, one hundred years later.
The horse I enjoyed seeing the most yesterday was Monologue CF. He has never looked better since Darlene Summers and I acquired him from Pamela Klein in 2011 [I think 2011, I have been getting all mixed up with dates lately]. You can click on the photos to enlarge them. His eye was shining and so was his coat, despite the dusty winter coat, and his gorgeous neck crest is back. It is hard to imagine a broader forehead, a larger eye, a deeper jowl and more balance in any horse. He is a model of balance, harmony and proportions. I will have him bred to Barakah next spring. I wish Davenport breeders used him more, and I wish I had more mares for him.
Yesterday I went to see my horses up in Pennsylvania, and took a lot of pictures with my smartphone. Smartphone photos are what they are. This is a head snapshot of little Bassma Al Arab [Jamr Al Arab x Jadah BelloftheBall], now one and a half years old. In this picture, her head looks like that of her sire Jamr: she has his deep jowl, small muzzle, elastic nostril, triangular head, and especially his large, soulful, low-set eye. She also has her dam’s very long ears, which is a plus. The profile is flat, without a hint of a dish, and I like it like this. Lots of asalah and old type in that filly.