I was sorry to hear about the passing of Majd, the bay Kuhaylan Hayfi stallion whose picture i recently posted. While visiting the Al Basel government stud in Syria, Majd’s sire was introduced. He is an imposing grey of good size, and his name is Basil [Mahrous x Halah]. He is of the Kuhaylan Mimrah strain and is bred by Mustapha Al Jabri. He is a horse of great quality and has a wonderful nobility which reminds me of that sense of quiet, confident, but strong diginity akin to a great war horse. The Blue Star stallion Muhairon (Sirecho x *Muhaira) was very much like this. [askterisks are used to denote imported to North America.] I wish I had more photos of Basil but the one here is descriptive of his quality which shows great proportions, leg quality and wonderfully shaped ears, a true Bedu charger to be proud of. -Joe Ferriss
Another horse that I saw at Al Basel was, to me, a real charmer. His name is Shawal. He is a Shuwayman Sabbah stallion. He is handsome, very charismatic and an excellent mover. Unfortunately I did not get the chance to go inside the arena to take pictures so he was photographed from the railing and it cuts of the view of the whole horse. Nonetheless, I wanted to share his photo because even in his body language you can detect a special personality, one which is enhanced by his very dark bay color against the backdrop of bright sand. He is another prized Asil stallion at Al Basel. I don’t now about his present status. -Joe Ferriss
I just wanted to quickly add to the wonderful blogs on the Kuhaylan Hayfi strain. I learned much by reading them. I just wanted to add that I found it comforting when I visited Syria in 1996 that the Kuyahlan Hayfi strain that came from there via *Reshan is still very much alive. When we were visiting the newly built Al Basel government stud, they introduced a number of their stallions of various strains. One handsome young bay stallion was of the Kuhaylan Hayfi stallion. I got a snap shot of him. It is fairly descriptive and I wanted to share it here. It is not a very sharp image because he was quite far away in a very large paddock and we did not have the opportunity to get in the arena close up. So I set my camera to the max telephoto and offer the image here in web resolution. The sire of this colt was the senior stallion at the time, a handsome grey named Basil. I do not recall getting to see the dam but perhaps someone who sees this blog and is familiar with the breeding at the stud can tell us more about this…