A blog on desert arabian horses, past, present and future
Jeanne is the mother of Al Khamsa. Her involvement with the organization she helped found, which she documented in a recent post on Facebook, reads like a history of Al Khamsa of sorts: I was graduating from college, and realized that I could now fulfill a dream and have a horse. Fell in love with … Read more
Here are excerpts from the report the Al Khamsa Preservation Task Force submitted to the Al Khamsa Board of Directors at this January’s winter Board meeting: Al Khamsa Preservation Task Force January 2013 Update Task Force Goals for 2013: 1) identify bloodlines in danger of being lost, and classify them in order of most urgent … Read more
Today I am crossing my fingers that Pirouette CF, shown below with her 2012 gray filly ADA Sareeah (by Dubloon CF) will check in foal to the late Palisades CF. Another of Sareeah:
Photos by Chris Emmert, taken at the 2007 Al Khamsa Convention in Paso Robles, CA. Polynesia LD, a 1993 bay Saqlawiyah Jidraniyah, is one of the glories of the late Carol Lyons’ “Sharp” program (Al Khamsa Arabians with no Blunt ancestry). As mentioned in the comment thread on his entry, her dam was a granddaughter … Read more
A minute of walk at the end of a nice workout. He’s a work in progress, of course, but I’m enjoying the steady improvement.
Speaking of jewels (Confetti CF is on the left, Provance CF on the right): Edouard, take this out if you want — but their owner, Mary Ann Brewer, has decided to stop breeding, and is offering these two Kuhaylat, and Tokens Ceelen (a straight Davenport mare, tail female to Schilla) on a free lease to … Read more
The below standing rule has been unanimously adopted by the Al Khamsa Board, and concerns recognizing the remaining, surviving, original, tribal, authentic, asil horses of the Tahawi clan of Egypt as “horses of interest to Al Khamsa”. They are not registered by the Egyptian Agricultural Organization (EAO) and therefore not accepted by WAHO (long and … Read more
Monday mornings are rough. This one was all the rougher because the weekend that preceded it was so good. Yesterday afternoon, I came back from the Al Khamsa Convention in Pennsylvania, where I saw old friends and made new ones. Many important things took place at this Convention, including the unanimous acceptance by Al Khamsa’s … Read more
In a few days, Al Khamsa will be in a position to announce a very good news concerning the last remaining asil horses of Tahawi bloodlines. In the meantime, I am sharing with you this 30 year old photo, which Yehia al-Tahawi, a member of Cairo’s Jockey Club and otherwise a breeder of Straight Egyptian … Read more
I now realize that I’ve never listed tail female asil Arabian lines in the USA in one place before. I want to make up for this omission. As “Straight Egyptian” horses constitute the overwhelming majority of asil Arabians in this country (more than 95%??), I thought I’d list the Straight Egyptian female lines in a later blog … Read more
Recently, I was looking at the list of horses with a line or more to the 1911 Crabbet stallion Nureddin II (Rijm x Narguileh), and a quick look at his offspring led me to believe that there were none left who only traced to Al Khamsa-accepted foundation horses plus Nureddin II. In other words, I … Read more
I thought I’d gather in one place all the relevant information on this blog about those asil lines that just about to vanish. In most cases, the line is down to one single individual horse. You’ll find that information by scrolling all the way down the middle column, in a series of link called “Rare … Read more
Al Khamsa has a new website, larger, slicker, with tons of information and at your fingertips. The education section is particularly rich, with articles, lists of foundation horses and a preservation section about endangered lines.
This beautiful 1905 desert-bred stallion was imported from Northern Arabia to the USA by Homer Davenport in 1906. He is a son of the mare *Urfa, a Saqlawiyat al-‘Abd from the horses of Didhan al-‘Awaji of the Wuld Sulayman Bedouins’ ruling clan. His sire is the “Great Hamdani” Simri stallion, apparently a major sire among the … Read more
Yesterday, the Al Khamsa Board of Directors unanimously approved the proposal submitted by Joe Ferriss to include the three mares Folla, Fotna, and Bint Barakat in the Al Khamsa Roster. The three mares were bred by the Tahawi tribes and sold to Ahmad Hamza of Hamdan Stables. On Saturday, the general assembly of Al Khamsa will be … Read more
The 1987 black mare Cealie (Haziz Halim x Bint Alliette, by *Adhem out of Alliette, by Hallanny Mistanny out of *Lebnaniah) is the last asil descendent of the mare *Lebnaniah, a grey Ma’naghiyah imported from Lebanon by W.R. Hearst to the USA in 1947. The Arab Horse Association Datasource shows Cealie as being last owned … Read more
In sharp contrast to the appalling number of non-Straight Egyptian asil foals born in the USA over the last few years, here are the number of registered Straight Egyptian (as defined by the Pyramid Society) foals registered in the years from 2001 to 2008: Two observations: first, the relatively hight number of Straight Egpytian foals … Read more
I was talking to Anita Enander yesterday, and she alerted me to an alarming statistical trend in the numbers of live births of non-Straight Egyptian, Al Khamsa Arabians in the USA, over the past few years. Just glance at the graph below: It plots the number of non-Egyptian, Al Khamsa foals born in each of the … Read more
ADA Intuition (“Poppy”) is the 2005 chestnut daughter of Atticus and Capucine, a straight Davenport Kuhaylah Hafiyah. This is her third ride after a year in pasture after just three months of under saddle work, so she is quite green still, but well behaved through an arena with jumps (and a neighboring goat pen, and … Read more
Since we were admiring Fragrance, I thought I’d share this one, taken by Anita Enander this summer, of Fragrance CF in her summer coat . Though unfortunately the shot is not perfectly framed, the mare’s style comes through.
These have been quite busy days for me, and I have not been able to write as often as I wanted to. That said, I wanted to quick highlight the fact that two new proposals to add new horses to the Al Khamsa Roster have been sent to the Al Khamsa Board of Directors. The first … Read more
Since it’s been busy out, another round of horses and rider — this time Charles Craver with horses of his breeding, born in 1957, 1958, and 1983: Aramis: Fairy Queen (dam of the previously featured Atticus): Brass Band CF:
This was taken at StarWest Stables, New Berlin, Illinois USA, in 2001 during the Al Khamsa convention (I think; maybe someone else will correct me). The horse is the 1982 Kuhaylan Haifi stallion Javera Thadrian; the rider is Edouard.
Blog contributor RJ Cadranell with his 1980 Davenport stallion, Atticus. I’m guessing Edouard is having a busy few days, so I thought I’d try to collect photos of participants here on horseback. If you have a photo to share, feel free to mail it to ambar@ambararabians.com. I also realized after my initial posting that this … Read more
I wanted to highlight an interesting conversation on inbreeding taking place in the comments on Javera Chelsea’s photos. I hope this exchange will serve as a teaser: Lyman Doyle wrote: […] Inbreeding is certainly a fascinating and very complex topic. Googling “inbreeding” can turn up a lot of different information. Granted, you can’t believe everything … Read more
Hurrah! The Babolna Roster proposal unanimously (41 – 0) passed the second round of voting during the Al Khamsa assembly in Redmond, Oregon. This means, among other things, that the living descendants of the mare 25-Amurath Sahib and the stallion Siglavy Bagdady VI are now accepted by Al Khamsa, following a thorough research process. Below … Read more
Sixty years ago, in 1949, a young Terry Doyle and his father, Dr. Joseph Lyman Doyle (“Doc”), hauled the asil mare Gulida (by Gulastra x Valida by Ghawi), a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah tracing to the marbat of Ibn Sudan, to their farm in Sigourney, Iowa. They bred her once to the asil stallion Nusi (Gulastra x Nusara), a … Read more
Just got back from Oregon yesterday, and I am already swamped with work (yuck!). Of course, once there, and around horses and horse people, tweeting about the Al Khamsa Convention didn’t even cross my mind, and I’ll just have to come to terms with that. I will be writing about the Convention, the CMK Symposium, the barn tours, the … Read more
Tomorrow I will be hitting the Oregon trail with the family to attend the 2009 Al Khamsa Convention, my first since 2005, as well as the CMK Symposium. This time I will be taking my video camera with me, so you should expect a couple video uploads when I return (September 1). While I doubt … Read more
I am done reading my latest issue of the Khamsat magazine, which features the WAHO 2007 conference in Syria. Joe Ferriss has a nice article on “Some Reflections on the Continuity of the Desert Horse”, and Hazaim al-Wair and I have an article in that same edition with some nice photos too. Below is a photo of … Read more
I am back in the USA after more than a month in Morocco, Yemen, Lebanon (home) and France. It’s good to be back. There’s lot to catch up on, including news on the upcming Al Khamsa 2009 Convention in Redmond, Oregon. Check the website here, and if you haven’t registered yet, click here to do … Read more
It seems almost impossible to believe that this line has been lost to asil breeding in the tail female. Where have all the Kuhaylan Da’jani gone? Dajania‘s was the second-most important line in Crabbet breeding, which is one of the preeminent components of today’s mainstream Arabian horse breeding. True, there has never been as many mares … Read more
A heads up for the joint Al Khamsa / CMK preservation symposium that will be held in Redmond, Oregon in August 2009. The 1924 stallion Gulastra will be the star of the event. It will coincide with the 2009 Al Khamsa Convention.
The new Al Khamsa website has a pedigree directory. Check it out.
These days, I have been enjoying reading excerpts of Hisham Ibn al-Kalbi‘s “Ansab al-khayl fi al-Jahiliyah wa-al-Islam wa-akhbaruha” in my spare time. This roughly translates as “The genealogies and accounts of horses in the era before Islam and after the rise of Islam”, and is commonly known as “Kitab al-Khayl” (the “Book of Horses”). This … Read more
The 2008 Al Khamsa Convention is taking place in Tulsa, Oklahoma from October the 23rd until the 26th. Check out the schedule here. I plan on being there.