A blog on desert arabian horses, past, present and future
The photo below shows 20 Farag, a daughter of the EAO import Farag, out of the mare 25 Amurath Sahib. Her dam was herself a granddaughter of the desert-bred stallion Kuhaylan Zaid, imported by Carl Raswan and Bogdan Zientarski for Bábolna on the same trip that they bought Kuhaylan Haifi and Kuhaylan Afas for Prince … Read more
From Severine Vesco comes this beautiful photo of the handsome Syrian stallion Mahboob Halep, with his owner Jean-Claude Rajot in France. He is a Shuwayman Sabbah originally from the Shammar, and a personal favorite of mine. This stallion becomes finer and dryer year after year.
Dahjani Al Arab, a Kuhaylan Da’jani born in 2008, is one of four authentic, desert-bred Syrian stallions in France. The other three are Mahboub Halep, a grey Shuwayman Sabbah; Nimr Shabareq, a chestnut Ma’naqi Sbayli, and Dahess Hasska, a chestnut Kuhaylan Nawwaq. Photo of Dahjani taken earlier this month by owner Arnault Decroix in Normandy. … Read more
This morning I received this email from the Penn Equine Assisted Reproduction Laboratory (PEARL) at U. Penn’s veterinary school, where I was trying this new ICSI technology on one of my older mares, CSA Baroness Lady. We have 2 cleaved embryos in culture for Baroness Lady x Dahjani Al Arab. Today is “Day 7” and … Read more
My beautiful Ginger, now owned by Bev Davison, got a pretty, pretty filly for Bev by her stallion Ahsahm. This is Ginger’s third filly in four years. Surely this great broodmatron, now 24, has done more for the Rabanna female line than any other mare of similar lines in the last decades. Photos by the … Read more
DeWayne Brown took these. This young horse has style and substance.
Some twelve years ago, Luis Baudin wrote this beautiful piece on Daughters of the Wind, in French. Here is a translation, largely done with Deepl (the best instant translation engine by far): “I would like to come back to the Tunisian horse named Jehol Sahraoui (Ouaffar x Kalthoumia by Sabour), a deep bay born at … Read more
My beloved Wadha nearly died while foaling, and her foal by Monologue died too. A large bay colt, both hindlegs white, so large that he was stuck at the level of his hips for two and a half hours and died before he could come out. Wadha’s vagina was teared up pretty bad and she … Read more
Lovas Nemzet, Laszlo Kiraly’s 22 years old Hungarian horse magazine is having its annual photo competition. The deadline is July 24, 2022. Everyone is encouraged to apply.
The last thing I wanted this year is another colt. Still, my appreciation for this latest one is growing at each candid shot Terry Doyle sends me through DeWayne Brown, who owns the dam. Look at that neck, that gaskin and these hocks, at such a young age. Bashir is really a good sire. I … Read more
I finally managed to get a better photo of Assad Princess Surrayah. Please excuse the candid photo. She’s putting weight on nicely. Assad Princess Surrayah She will be put out to pasture with Gülilah Sawwan very soon.
I like this little chap. He speaks well for his sire as a breeding stallion. The dam is of course excellent.
It’s a colt — the third in a row from that Ma’naqi line. This morning Pippa went into labor and quickly delivered a healthy chestnut colt at Terry and Rosemary Doyle’s in Oregon. He is by Bashir Al-Dirri, Jenny Krieg’s excellent horse (below). His name is Sharif Al Arab. Sharif means “distinguished, eminent, illustrious, noble, … Read more
Wadha’s foal by Monologue is due this week, and Pippa’s foal by Bashir (“the Dude”) the next. I am hoping for a bay foal in the first case, regardless of gender, and for a filly (chestnut, because no other option) in the second. Both should be nice foals, if delivery goes all. In other news, … Read more
My new book with Kate McLachlan and Moira Walker, “The Arabian Horses of Abbas Pasha” will be published in late-July 2022, capping six years of work. It is based on the (re)discovery and translation of the Abbas Pasha Sale List, an original Arabic document drawn at the close of the auction sale of the famed … Read more
Kate and I started talking about the mare Sidi Bint Maistro a while ago. I finally summoned up the nerve to get my 2 cents together and make an offer for her. Who was the first horse you bought?
This photo from Mirko Ulram at Yeguada Schieferegg this morning. Their third foal and first filly. Both mom and daughter are doing well. sired by Ibn Hamza out of Hassirah
Ghazal Al Layel and Louna are maternal half sisters, out of the Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah mare Ghazal Al Banat. Louna/Loonah is the 1993 daughter of the Hamdani ibn Ghorab stallion Mobarak, featured previously on this blog. The younger half-sister, Ghazal Al Layel, is the 1995 daughter of the Ma’naqi Sbayli stallion Shaddad, who has also featured … Read more
This is considered beautiful by some.
The other day I was telling Carrie Slayton that I wanted to breed and own very powerful Arabian horses horses, with very deep girths, very round barrels, short backs, long hips, high and extended withers, flamboyant action, lots of spirit, fire in the eyes, dark skin on the face, very fine skin, shiny coats, masculine … Read more
Just about a year ago I wrote about the mare Jezabel , “die Wüstenstute” and her journey from Iran to Europe. Mirko Ulram graciously sent me these photos of her great-granddaughter Jasminah. She is the product of a mating between a grandson and a granddaughter of Jezabel. Mirko confirmed that the pedigree is correct. (AllBreedPedigree … Read more
This document is a milestone, and it took a year to get it this far, in a true collective effort.
I woke up in Beirut this morning to good news from Yasser from his countryside house in the Nile Delta. My Khallawiyah mare Bint Rammah just foaled a well-built filly by Batal al Zaman. Yasser and I are partners on the filly. Yasser’s photo. We will name her Jawaher Al Arab. Her older sister was … Read more
… and I did not even celebrate it. Shame on me. The young girl after which this website is named was born on the day it was launched, and is now a teenager (left on the photo).
اقول ويلفظها البعض التخيرة بالتاء
.وأضيف الكحيلة الشكيلية هي وكحيلة العشيّر رسن واحد
The mare in the photo below is Al-Qahira, daughter of the mare ‘Abeerah from Edouard’s earlier post, bred and owned by Basil Jadaan. Her sire was Mokhtar. The photo was taken at the Pure Syrian Show in 2008. Picture purchased from In The Focus.
This horse is actually Montezuma (Sir x Tara), a Kuhaylan Hayfi of Davenport lines that was mostly used to produce half-Arabs.
First time I see a photo of this mare. She was beautiful. I wish that her type had prevailed in these *Turfa horses. She was 44% *Turfa.
I usually try to follow these news, but this one escaped me: a cuneiform inscription — 26 lines, the longest discovered in Saudi Arabia so far — along with a stone relief of Nabonidus, the last Babylonian king, was discovered this past July in the ancient Central Arabian town of Fadak, south of Hail*. So … Read more
Another rare set of photos, these of the Dahmat ‘Amer mare Ridaab also a the farm of Basil Jad’aan — with a young Basil holding her. She has a nice colt by Marzuk that year. Her sire was the Dahman ‘Amer stationed at the Military Housing in al-Hasakah in North-East Syria, and her dam one … Read more
I took these two rare photos of ‘Abeerah, the black Shuwaymat Sabbah at the farm of Basil Jad’aan in 1992. Sired by the dark Ma’naqi Hadraji of the ‘Ufaytan clan of the Shammar, and out of a grey mare by the Saqlawi Jadran of Farhan al-Nayif of the Tai, and out of a black Shuwaymah … Read more
I grew up reading Lady Wentworth’s massive book “The Authentic Arabian Horse” as well as Robert Mauvy’s little book “Le Cheval Arabe”. I had (and still have) a great deal of trust in the first, and the second was bedtime reading for me for many years. Both books featured intriguing mentions of an Arabic legend … Read more
In the French “Journal des Haras” much is said about the French Government missions to purchase Arabian stallions (and sometimes a couple of mares) during the 19th century. Although private initiatives may have occurred before, the first and oldest record I have found so far is the breeding program of Count of Tocqueville, with a … Read more
An excerpt by the French Gamont, who was in charge of Mehemet Ali’s stud of Choubra between 1828 and 1842. Google Translate will get you a good translation. Haras d’abas-pacha. — Le haras d’Abas-Pacha est situé dans une plaine de sable, auprès d’Héliopolis. Ce haras est une copie de celui de Choubra. Longtemps, Abas-Pacha a … Read more
Finally, a photo of Shaykh Ahmad al-Taha, leader of the Juhaysh tribe in Northern Iraq. The Juhaysh were a large sheep-herding tribe. The belong to the larger Zabid confederation, which migrated northwards from Yemen to the Euphrates valley some 500 year ago. Only the leaders of the tribe kept horses. The Juhaysh had two main … Read more
I am sure many of you have alreay seen the piece Yasser Ghanim al-Tahawi recently wrote for the Kuwaiti Bait Al-Arab’s magazine. Yasser has emerged as one of most precise and boldest thought leaders on the subject of the identity of the Arabian horse. Scroll down to the end of the pdf for the piece. … Read more
This is Jamr again, in stills. I want to see similarities with the Blunt horses in this 1922 video by British Pathe. Again, I wish the neck was a tad longer; and if he had three more inches to him. Part of it was due to poor nutrition because he was weaned at three months … Read more
I feel very comfortable with Jamr‘s head, because of the combination of the straight profile, the small muzzle, and the deep jowls. I think one needs to see beyond the flashy, in-your-face, provocative, even disturbing “beauty” of present day heads of Arabian horses of the showring kind, with its exaggerated features. One instead needs to … Read more
In relation to the previous post, I am showing here two screenshots from the book Heroic Poets, Poetic Heroes: The Ethnography of Performance in an Arabic Oral Epic Tradition, by Dwight Fletcher Reynolds (Cornell University, 1995). They provide a good introduction to the epic of the Bani Hilal.
On a very old strain, from the Arabic original of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript, translation mine: The Gmassah [a branch of the Sba’ah tribe] were asked about the [strain of] ‘Ubayyah of Ibn ‘Alyan, which marbat she is from? The elders of the Sba’ah informed that: ‘She is ‘Ubayyah Huwaynah, [belonging] to [the tribe of] … Read more
The following are excerpts from the RAS Dr. Ahmed Mabrouk’s book “A Journey to Arabia”, pertaining to his visit to Eastern Arabia in 1936: [King Abdul Aziz of Saudi Arabia] gave me two recommendations, one to H.H. Prince Seoud Ibn Galawi, Ruler of El-Ehsa […]. The well known hospitality of H.M. The King and his … Read more
A mes lecteurs francais: je vous conseille vivement ce livre, auquel j’ai eu le plaisir de contribuer il y a quelques annees: Homer Davenport’s Quest of the Arabian Horse. Les images sont superbes et les annotations tres documentees.
I bought AAS Nelyo last July from Edie Booth as a potential outcross for my horses down the line. He is a ‘Ubayyan, from the line of *Mahraa, a 1943 mare of the horses of Sa’ud ibn ‘Abd Allah Ibn Jalawi Aal Saud, the governor of the oil-rich Eastern Province of Saudi Arabia. I think … Read more
Barakah is now 5. I think she may have more growing (and widening) to do. She is 95% Davenport (four generations of Davenport stallions on top) but she looks nothing like full-Davenport horses. She is leggier, and differently balanced, with flatter bone. She has her sire’s drooping quarter (when moving this does not show). Pity … Read more
Wadhah is now 11, and looks truly magnificent. She is in foal to Monologue CF, and due in mid-May for her first foal. She really looks like the Thadrian daughter that she is. She has fully transitioned from the zarqa (darker, blue-grey) to the safra (light grey, almost white, with yellowish mane and tail) shade of … Read more
I am about to state the obvious about horses that combine different, well-established bloodlines: sometimes they look like horses of one bloodline, and sometimes like horses of the other bloodline, depending on the angle, the stage of growth, the light, etc. Jamr, who is roughly half Davenport, half Doyle (i.e., Blunt), sometimes reminds of me … Read more
I went to see the horses a few days ago. They looked wonderful. The younger ones have finally matured into what I was expecting of their bloodlines. I felt so vindicated, in terms of the breeding decisions I took over the past decade. I had remained uncertain about these decisions until recently. Jamr, albeit small, … Read more
A very good endurance riding friend of ours is sending her mare to visit Gülilah Sawwan , the last living SE son of the German import Mahib. Assad Princess Surrayah is sired by the noted endurance sire (and all around sweetheart) Sidi el Nabiel out of the Maistro[imp] daughter Sidi Halima. She’s not exactly a … Read more
Below is a photo of the Kuhaylan Haifi stallion Marouf/Maroof, photographed in 2008 at the Pure Syrian show. Picture purchased from In The Focus.
From the 1936 book of Dr. Ahmad Mabrouk of the Royal Agricultural Society of Egypt, “Rihlah ila Bilad al-‘Arab”, comes this picture of a stallion of King Abd al-‘Aziz Aal Saud at the al-Kharj stud in Najd. Arabian horse fans would do well to carefully study the horse in this picture: he was the senior … Read more
We’re in the process of getting the stallion Harab Bachir’s registration in the Namibian stud book finalised. These are some VERY candid photos and as you can see my talent for equine photography blossomed at a young age and promptly withered. I’m very excited about this stallion. Apart from the line to Tuwaisan[imp] that is rare in … Read more
This video sent along by Talal Farah shows a race held in Bahrain between a part-bred Arab horse from Lebanon and a Bahraini mare owned by the Bahraini ruler. The part-bred, a grey owned by famous racehorse owner Mahmud Fustuq, is Bahr al-Hadi, who sired a good deal of the Lebanese part-breds. He was very … Read more
In the same vein as the photos of lesser-known Crabbet horses which Kate re-published below, here is a photo of Rasim (Feysul x Risala, born 1906) from the December 1933 edition of the French magazine Le Sport Universel Illustre, with a nice description of him in French. The photo was taken during a visit of … Read more
This evening I had a bout of nostalgia for my old horses, so I went looking for pictures of Dahess, the desert-bred stallion my father and I bought from a racing stable in Beirut in 1993. I was 15. One afternoon, as I was just coming back from school, my father told me that he … Read more
From the Arabian Horse Archives comes this beautiful photo of the 1922 desert-bred Hamdani Simri stallion *Saoud, imported by Amin Rihani to the USA in 1928.