Sleepless in Doha…
Tonight I landed in Doha, Qatar, for a work-related conference. I will be confined in the city’s overwhelmingly luxurious Sheraton hotel for the next three days, while you ride, train feed and enjoy your horses. Thank God they have wireless internet in the conference room. I will be blogging about Asil Arabians in my little corner. If I am caught, I will say it’s for the good cause (and I will continue to hope that my boss does not read this blog).
Arabian horses are a really big deal here. The majority was imported from the West. “Decorative” horses mostly. Not quite my cup of tea. Others hail directly from Egypt and Syria. A tiny minority are indigenous Asil Arabians from old Qatari bloodlines. I recall this wonderful picture of a bay Wadhnan stallion in one of the early volumes of the Qatari studbook. If only Qatar had a hundred more like him left. How many are left? Where are they? Who knows their histories? I wish I could sneak out and see some of these gems..
I have no Qatari pictures for you, but here’s just one of the things you missed last October:
ADA Skylarking, 2006 gm, Kuhaylan Haifi
I saw a stallion and a mare of old Qatar lines, some year ago at the Al Shaqab/Doha stud.
Stephan
Do you have pictures of him? what strain was he of? Hamdani? was he 100 percent old bloodlines? are they using him? so many questions!
Hi Edouard,
I took a video, no photos. Maybe the stallion was from the Wadnan strain, but not sure. They said, they use him, to produce Endurance horses. He’s a lot of energy. It was also interesting, that all the arabians from oversea were living in a barn with air condition, the Qatari lines were living in a seperate barn, without air condition.