Rosemary Doyle and Joe Ferriss at the Doyle open barn on August 28th, in Oregon. We’re so lucky to have them around. Photo courtesy of Karsten Scherling.
To celebrate the inclusion of the Babolna asil horses in the Al-Khamsa Roster, here is a photo of a stallion from these bloodlines, owned by Stephanie Weirich of Germany. This is the chestnut stallion Farag II-3 (by Farag II x 204 Ghalioun, by Ghalioun x 3-Siglavy Bagdady VI). He is also a tail female descendant of 25-Amurath Sahib, and is actually 50% Babolna (non-Egyptian) blood. His strain is Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz. Photo courtesy of Tzviah Idan.
Karsten Scherling, who takes really good (and free!) pictures took this one of Carver DE (Maloof Najid x Greggan’s Lark LHF by the gorgeous Greggan), one of the main Saqlawi Jadran stallions at the Doyles’, during their open barn last week in Oregon. My friend Lyman Doyle is leading him. For many more beautiful photos of the Doyle’s 60 years of breeding celebration, check out Karsten’s website.
Hurrah! The Babolna Roster proposal unanimously (41 – 0) passed the second round of voting during the Al Khamsa assembly in Redmond, Oregon. This means, among other things, that the living descendants of the mare 25-Amurath Sahib and the stallion Siglavy Bagdady VI are now accepted by Al Khamsa, following a thorough research process. Below is a photo of the Babolna head stallion Farag II (Farag x 25-Amurath Sahib), courtesy of Tzviah Idan. To me, this marks the second step towards constituting an international Roster of asil Arabians horses, based on the Al Khamsa Roster. The first step was taken when Al Khamsa accepted the line of Soldateska (1911), the one remaining asil line from the Weil-Marbach stud in Germany, a few years ago.
Javera Chelsea (by Thane x HB Diandra by Mariner) belongs to Doris Park of Iowa, and she is certainly lucky to have her. This full sister of the grey Javera Thadrian is now at Craver Farms for a full brother-sister mating. Just try to find the slightest defect in this mare’s conformation. I haven’t been able to so far. Photos by Charles Craver.
I finally got to meet Carol Monkhouse at the Al Khamsa Convention in Oregon. Carol was visiting from the UK, with her husband Terry Lee. She has a couple mares, Maloof Habiba (Maloof Habibi x Maloof Sahara by Subani) and Maloof Hadiya (Parnell x Devlin), and their offspring, which she keeps at the Doyle ranch, in Alfalfa, Oregon. I had corresponded with Carol some fifteen years ago, after a mutual friend, Tzviah Idan, had introduced us to each other, at at time all three of us happened to be looking at remaining old Blunt lines (i.e., no Skowronek, who is so ubiquitous as to have his own Wikipedia page) around the world. I was delighted to finally meet her in person. We had identified the 1978 asil stallion Arabesque Azieze (Hansan x Orilla by Oran) in New Zealand (last asil Wadnan al-Khursan stallion in the West, also last asil line to Oran); some asil descendants of the 1950 mare Rozina (Saoud x Ruth II by Bendigo) in South Africa, by the asil Kuhaylan al-Mimrah stallion Gordonville Ziyadan (more on this precious line later, it is still there); the two asil Courthouse Hamdani Simri full sisters Sappho and Sceptre (Bleinheim X Selima by Bahram, more on those twi later as…
Sixty years ago, in 1949, a young Terry Doyle and his father, Dr. Joseph Lyman Doyle (“Doc”), hauled the asil mare Gulida (by Gulastra x Valida by Ghawi), a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah tracing to the marbat of Ibn Sudan, to their farm in Sigourney, Iowa. They bred her once to the asil stallion Nusi (Gulastra x Nusara), a Kuhaylan Da’jani; they also bred her several times to the asil stallion Ghadaf (Ribal x Gulnare), also a Saqlawi Jadrani from the same marbat. Sixty years later, I had the privilege of seeing and taking video of some 50 horses at Terry and Rosemary’s Doyle Arabians ranch, in Alfalfa, Oregon. Most of them are unique in that they trace exclusively to the three horses Gulida, Nusi, and Ghadaf, and that such a closed group has endured for so long. They are also unique in that the younger ones among them carry more than 25 crosses to the stallion Gulastra (Astraled x Gulnare), who had tremendous impact on the early foundation American breeding of Arabian horses, and who was the subject of a recent CMK symposium, in Redmond, Oregon. But what is really unique about the Doyle’s horses is that they are the last horses of exclusively…
I bought back the stallion Taj al-Muluk after having sold him at age 2. His strain is Ubayyan al-Suyayfi, his sire is the old Hamdani stallion Haleem (Saudi Arabian Stud Book #862); his dam is al-Hafna (#1915 in the same), a daughter of al-Barraq and Ghazwa. Here is a recent 6 minute video, the stallion looks at his best as of minute 2.30. You can see a video of his sire Haleem by clicking here.
Just got back from Oregon yesterday, and I am already swamped with work (yuck!). Of course, once there, and around horses and horse people, tweeting about the Al Khamsa Convention didn’t even cross my mind, and I’ll just have to come to terms with that. I will be writing about the Convention, the CMK Symposium, the barn tours, the rides in the Great Outdoors of the High Desert country, and all the wonderful people I saw there over the next few days (weeks?). I am having withdrawal symptoms.. Meanwhile, here is a pic of the 2009 Al Khamsa Board of Directors, taken by Karsten Scherling (hi, Karsten!). Find the outlier. From left to right: Jenny Krieg, Mary Gills (Sec), Lisa Rettke, Ellen May (Veep), Pam Studebaker (Prez), me, Rosemary Doyle, Monica Respet, and Marilyn McHallam.
Tomorrow I will be hitting the Oregon trail with the family to attend the 2009 Al Khamsa Convention, my first since 2005, as well as the CMK Symposium. This time I will be taking my video camera with me, so you should expect a couple video uploads when I return (September 1). While I doubt I will have the time to write as frenquently as I would have liked, you can follow convention updates and other news on my (admittedly under-utilized) Twitter account. There is also a Twitter widget at the bottom of this website (scroll down).
Thanks Edouard for posting that picture of Al-Awar. I agree with you that he is much more impressive in person than in photos which explains my difficulty in getting a good photo of him at the Racing club in Aleppo, nearing dark time in November 1996. When a horse makes a good impression on me, I have great difficulty in wanting to take a photo because I want to spend every moment looking at the horse to record what I see in my mind, and taking photos requires me to think about the camera and capturing something quickly, which is an intrusion on the live experience, possibly missing an important moment. This is why in the 1970s we mostly took horse movies (before video) and usually Sharon was taking the movies as I was looking. But Al-Awar is truly a horse that one needed to see in person. Even as an aged horse, his wonderful expression and temperament, light free movement as he was being ridden in front of us, and the rich sheen of his deep chestnut coat resembling some rare earthen stone, was unforgettable. In his harmonious presentation, I was reminded of Homer Davenport’s quote about “nothing to…
You ought to read the absolutely lovely story of how a British breeder Jenny Lees of Peark Island Stud, got aquainted with Arabian horses while living in Bahrain. Jenny writes that her Hamdaany Kuwaiti was said to bred by the Anazah and had come to Bahrain through Kuwait, hence his name. Back in the 1960s, around the time when the Sheykhdom of Kuwait became independent (in 1961), it began imlementing a policy of inviting Bedouin tribes from the Syrian desert, which was then suffering from a severe drought, to settle in Kuwait and become Kuwaiti citizens. These were mostly Anazah tribes. This movement was part of a larger pattern of reverse migration of Bedouin tribes that had moved to the north some two hundred years earlier, back to the south. Most ‘Anazah Bedouins, mostly Hssinah, Sba’ah, Ruwalah, and Amarat, and some Fad’an, headed back south, trading the increasingly burdensome policies of the Syrian and Iraqi socialist regimes for the relative wealth of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Qatar. They brought many, many horses back with them. Most of these ‘Anazah tribes settled in Saudi Arabia’s “Northern Border” province, around ‘Ar’ar and Hafr al-Batin, in the Eastern Province, and in the al-Jahra…
Now that’s my Zahrah (Dinar x Hanadi by Krush Juhayyim), a Kuhaylat al-Nawwaq from the marbat of Shaykh Abdul Jalil al-Naqabashbandi, a sufi leader from the area of Der al-Zor, in the Middle Euphrates region of Syria. My father and I picked Zahra from Kamal Abdul Khaliq’s herd when she was 10 days old, in 1994 I think, and we eventually sold her when I came to the USA in 2000. She is pictured here with her filly foal by Saad al-Thani, a Kuhaylan al-Khdili, and another favorite of mine, who is also a son of al-Aawar (and so Dinar’s half brother). The little, un-named filly was thus double al-Aawar. She died a few days after the picture was taken. I will talk about the origins of all these horses in more detail later. For now, I just wanted to feature four generations of Al-Aawar breeding (Al-Aawar, his son Dinar, Dinar’s daughter Zahra, and Zahra’s filly foal who was double al-Aawar).
Ma’anaqi Zudghum is one of the most respected marabet of Sbayli, owned by a Bedouin of the Sba’ah tribe called Zudghum. Dinar’s sire, the Hamdani Simri al-Aawar, was pictured in an earlier entry. This photo was taken by my father at Mustafa al-Jabri’s stud in Aleppo, where Dinar, then a growthy two and a half years old colt, was on loan from his owner Zafir Abdul Khaliq. Back then (early 1990s, judging by the shirt I am wearing in the picture), Dinar was thought to have a ‘prettier’ head than your average Arabian horse from Syria, so breeders rushed to breed him to their mares even though he was still too young. It may have stifled his growth process. Again desert-bred horses in general and al-Aawar’s sons and daughters in particular take a longer time to mature, and in a hindsight, I think this one would have matured into a much better proportioned horse had he not been used so heavily at such a young age.
This venerable, glorious horse, one of my all-time favorite stallions, will be featured in detail in an upcoming post, which I am taking my time to write. Meanwhile, enjoy the picture, which I took at twilight at Radwan Shabareq’s stud in Aleppo, Syria, sometime in the mid 1990s. Al Aawar was in his 20s.
The mountain region of ‘Asir, in south western Saudi Arabia is one of the areas of the Middle East that fascinates me the most. Historically it was part of Yemen until 1934, I think. I have recently bought Thierry Mauger’s beautiful book, “Undiscovered Asir”, and recently Pure Man sent me this video of the moutain ‘Asir tribe of Al-Rayyith. The ‘Asir tribes were not horse breeding tribes.
Check these two articles (Part 1 and Part 2) out. I hope to see Joe in Redmond, OR, next week. He’s traveling by bus with some indians as we speak.
The mare *Subaiha and her daughter *Taffel were bred in Saudi Arabia, by Prince Saud ibn Abdallah ibn Jiluwi, a close relative of Saudi Arabia’s founder King Abd al-Aziz, and governor of the eastern, oil-rich Hasa (al-Ahsa’) province starting from 1938. His father Abdallah was governor of Hasan from 1913 to 1938. They were imported by John Rogers to California in 1950. No asil progeny left. I don’t know their strain. Most of Ibn Jiluwi’s horses were either from the ‘Ubayyan strain or the Hamdani strain, though.
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:
Commenting 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 Michael Bowling, where he discusses the 1942 asil stallion *Mounwer. *Mounwer was imported to the USA by W. R. Hearst in 1947. He 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.