“She outraced all of them by far”
These were Barghi Ibn Dirri’s own words, in my translation of the certificate of his mare Meshura, a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah of Ibn Dirri, who was bought by Lady Anne Blunt, and who was Pharaoh’s sister, Azrek’s maternal aunt, and a close relative of Basilisk’s:
“I declare that I took part in a raid with a group of fourty five horsemen from the Fid’an, their military commander being Mashi [illegible name likely al-Sahim] al-Khrisi, and the raid was on […] al-‘Issa from Ahl al-Shamal and with them Bani Sakhr […] and I was riding this Saglawia and she outraced all of them by far and I took the camels [away] and brought them back [to the camp] and the remaining horses [two illegible words, likely ‘stayed behind’] / then my son […] took part in a raid on her, with the Fid’an al-Wuld, and the Saba’ah, and he [two illegible words] / on Ibn Sha’lan and he killed [illegible first name, likely Mahbus] son of Kunay’ir ibn Sha’lan, and the horses [taking part in the raid] were more than five hundred on that day, and Jad’aan Ibn Mahayd was present and she outraced all the horses, and my son took camels [away] and brought them back [to the camp] before the other horses entered [the camp] and she was only joined by a Kuhaylah al-Musinnah, a bay, the mare of Dahir ibn Shayi’ al-Mahaydi, and she was the one which Jad’an had bought and returned / and the raid was long and very far, so much that the [two illegible words, of which one verb] and the camels [taken in the raid] did not reach [our camp] / and other than these two raids, we did not raid on her because she is dear [to us] and [illegible word] among us.”
Meshura no longer has asil descendants, but her close relative Basilisk still does, and it’s partly because of Barghi’s statement above that I was keen on obtaining a Basilisk descendant (DA Ginger Moon, who traces to Basilisk through Rabanna) — and by the way, that sub-listing of Basilisk in the Blue Arabian Horse Catalogue does not make any sense to me. The Blunts were so consistently weeding out foundation stock that did not meet their high expectations in terms of provenance and authenticity, that their decision to keep the female line of Basilisk at Crabbet long after other lines had been eliminated, and even more, to use stallions from that line (e.g., Berk, a great-grand-son) speaks in favor of the authenticity of the line.
I found a trace of this Dahir ibn Shayi’ al-Mayahdi who was riding the Kuhaylat al-Musinnah; she was the mare who was as fast as Meshura in the ghazu described above and the mare Jadaan bought and returned; he is mentioned in this Fad’aan tribal clans and genealogy list online. He is indeed from the Mahayd clan as his name suggests but not from Jadaan’s line, rather a distant cousin.
The origin of the strain of Kuhaylan al-Musinn still puzzles me.
There is reliable information tracing the strain’s development to a Kuhaylah Ajuz of the Fad’aan (so like K. Hayfi and K. al-Khdili); at the same time there is trace of it with Aal Saud in Najd who claim the strain is theirs, and also in Bahrain.
Not incompatible I know, but still there is a missing link somewhere.