Photo of the day: HS Marayah

This past weekend I took part of my family to visit with Jenny Krieg, of Poolesville, Maryland. Jenny is the president of Al Khamsa for a few more days. A new board will take over for a year after the 2009 Tulsa Convention, which starts today, and which I am so sorry for not being able to attend. Jenny is otherwise the proud owner of HS Marayah (2 pics below). Marayah traces to the Shaykhah mare *Layya, imported to the USA by W.R. Hearst in 1947. Jenny is one of the few breeders preserving this rare line in Asil form, and this year she bred Marayah to DB Khrush (pic also below) for a 2009 foal.

In 2007, mtDNA research showed that Marayah and a Lebanese mare from the same strain and the same original breeder as *Layya shared the same haplotype, implying a common tail female ancestor.  Sayyid Husayn Nasir, a veteran horse breeder from Rayk, Lebanon told me that *Layya’s original strain, and therefore Marayah’s, is ‘Ubayyan, from the marbat of the Donato family, a merchant family of Venitian Italian origin settled in Aleppo then in Beirut and owners of large agricultural estates in Lebanon’s central Biqaa’ valley around Rayak. 

*Layya’s great-grand dam was a famous and important mare, and was hence known as “al-Shaykhah” (feminine of al-Shaykh, or al-Sheikh, a honorific title in the Arab world).  Her descendents were named al-Shaykhat, after her. They practically formed a new strain, and back in Lebanon, few people if any recall that these horses were originally from the ‘Ubayyan strain, and even fewer if any, recall the connection to the Donato family.