From the Arabian Horse Archives: Part of a series of 120 primarily glass slides taken by Joe Buchanan’s father, Robert Earle Buchanan, a professor of Agriculture at Iowa State University, on trips to the Middle East in 1946 and 1949. In the Comar Arabians collection of Garth and Joe Buchanan. Now held by Carolyn and Dick Hasbrook, Twinbrook Arabians, Ames, Iowa. About the chestnut stallion: notice the strong backline, the deep girth, the high withers, the straight shoulder and the long hip. You can see the big eye sockets too. I really wonder what his breeding is. In the pen behind him is another stallion, grey. Only a blurry head shows, but here too you can the protruding eye socket, the dry and delicate muzzle, the prominent bone under the eye, and the fine black skin around the eyes and muzzle. The hindquarter looks droopy but it may be the posture. About the white male donkeys: these are from the precious breed that comes from al-Hassa province of Eastern Arabia; they are taller and stouter than average donkeys, and have bigger and drier heads. A very precious breed now vanished.
This is yet another photo from the same collection at the Arabian Horse Archives, showing the mares of King A. A. Aal-Saud at his stud of al-Kharj. Notice the pretty head of the bay mare on the left, and the plain head of the chestnut one near, and the convex profile of the bay one in the center. Clearly, all desert mares, all royal mares, and all different. There was not one single type.
From the website of the Arabian Horse Archives comes this photos of a handsome desert bred stallion at the stud of King Abd al-‘Aziz Aal Saud of Saudi Arabian, in 1946 or 1949. Notice the very dark skin around the eye and the muzzle, a distinctive trait of authenticity (asalah). This photo is “part of a series of 120 primarily glass slides taken by Joe Buchanan’s father, Robert Earle Buchanan, a professor of Agriculture at Iowa State University, on trips to the Middle East in 1946 and 1949. In the Comar Arabians collection of Garth and Joe Buchanan. Now held by Carolyn and Dick Hasbrook, Twinbrook Arabians, Ames, Iowa.”
This unique photo is part of a series of 120 primarily glass slides taken by Joe Buchanan’s father, Robert Earle Buchanan, a professor of Agriculture at Iowa State University, on trips to the Middle East in 1946 and 1949. It is in the Comar Arabians collection of Garth and Joe Buchanan. Now held by Carolyn and Dick Hasbrook, Twinbrook Arabians, Ames, Iowa. It is on the website of the Arabian Horse Archives.
Below is a photo of Hamdani Ibn Bahri (Bahri x Qaisumeh by Qaisum who is Bahri’s full brother), a 2001 asil Hamdani Simri stallion from the breeding of Lee Oellerich in British Columbia, Canada. He has six lines to the stallion *Taamri, DB and carries 50% Taamri blood and three lines to *Rudann, DB and thee lines to *Halwaaji, DB. *Taamri, Rudann, and *Halwaaji were all imported to the USA in 1960 by Sam Roach from the Saud Royal Stud of al-Kharj, Saudi Arabia. The hujjah (certificate of authenticity) of *Taamri was featured here.
This is a unique photo, and a precious witness to an era now long gone. It shows the stables of King Abd al-‘Aziz Aal Saud in the 1960s, at a time when hundreds, if not thousands, of desert-bred horses were being gathered by will or by force, from the Bedouin tribes of Saudi Arabia and beyond (mainly Syria), in the hands of the Saud family. The photo was taken by the late Laura Cavedo, who was being given a tour of the royal studs, and is from the collection of the late William Sheets (Billy). I have fifteen others. There are surviving first-hand accounts of how Farhan al-‘Ulayyan, one of the most trusted slaves of Miqhim ibn Mhayd, who was the leader of the Fad’aan Bedouins during much of the first half of the XXth century, organized the collecting and the shipping of hundreds of ‘Anazah’s desert-bred horses from Syria to Saudi Arabia, in batches of ten, during the 1960s and 1970s and well up to the 1980s. Farhan would buy all the horses he could find, coaxing the impoverished ‘Anazah (but also Shammar) Bedouins out of their horses, and send them to the stables of the Saud family. He would…
This is old Nader, a senior stallion at the Dirab government stud in Saudi Arabia, a Hamdani Simri by Eidan (# 263 in the Saudi Studbook) out of Nadra (#400). Nader is from that same Hamdani line that was kept at the Royal Saudi stud of al-Kharj, and from which several of the 1960s desert-bred imports to the USA (*Amiraa, *Halwaaji, *Rudann) trace to. Notice that this would mean that these imports are Hamdani Simri, too as a result. Only the Hamdani strain information was available before. Pure Man (translated from Arabic by Edouard)