On Bogdan Zientarski and Carl Raswan’s expedition to Syria and Iraq, to find horses for Prince Roman Sanguszko’s Gumniska Stud, one of their first stops was Egypt. There, they saw a number of horses from different studs and stables, including the Astraled son Rustem, the Crabbet-bred mare Bint Riyala, a grey son of the Sheykh Obeyd mare Serra, the dark chestnut Ibn Rabdan, and a desert-bred stallion, Schammar. They also toured the racing stables of Cairo, and found there a filly which Raswan thought very beautiful. He wrote about her in glowing terms to Prince Sanguszko, hoping for extra funds to buy her: From the beginning I said, that I do not expect to find a stallion or mare in Egypt (or Syria) which might “suit” Mr. Z. (& consequently you too). However, we “discovered” an unusual mare. – She seems to be the “sister” to Nedjari. A mare of the very same type & breeding. – From among several hundred (perhaps 600) horses which we have seen this one mare is outstanding. She is the type which, when brought to Poland, people will point to her & say: “What an Arab!” and neither Mr. Z. nor I would be…
In my opinion, the 1984 Saqlawiyah mare Tohama (Akhtal x Ibdaa by Ikhnatoon x Ibtisam by Nazeer x Mouna by Sid Abouhom) was one of the nicest mares at the EAO in the 1980s. Photo by Judi Parks.
Of course, the ultimate objective of tallying and identifying the horses of Ali Pasha Sherif breeding not owned by the Blunts would be to be able to put a reasonably solid pedigree on horses like Saklawi I, Sabha El Zarka, Roga El Beda, Farida El Debbanie, Muniet El Nefous (the old one), Nader El Kebir, Bint Yemama, and perhaps above all, El Dahma. I don’t despair of being able to do this some day.
There are not many of these. Lady Anne reviews four of them in a letter to Wilfrid Blunt, dated December 13, 1914: “Up to last year Yusuf Bey was the only one of the sons owning a stallion from that Stud [APS’s] — a beautiful white horse about 15 years old. But its name was ‘Kaukab’ not ‘Valentino’… Ibrahim Bey had a horse but that was done away with two or three years ago when the glanders scare occured. Of outsiders Moharrem Pasha and Ahmed Fathi, formerly wakil of the Daira, each had a stallion. I know Moharrem P. still has his. A. Fathi’s was not remarkable and would hardly fetch 500 pounds but that can be found out without much difficulty. Mutalk is pretty sure there is nothing else…” — The first one with Yusef Bey is clearly Kaukab (Ibn Sherara x Bint Nuar El Shakra) and is identified by name here. Lady Anne saw in 1914 and described him. See earlier entry. — The second one, the one that was with Ibrahim Bey Sherif but died a few years before, appears to have been the horse mentioned in a February 24, 1902, entry of Lady Anne’s Journals: “He…
As I continue perusing Lady Anne’s Journals and Correspondence and what was published of her Sheykh Obeyd Studbook looking for information on those horses of Ali Pasha Sharif breeding she did not own, I came across this conclusion, which others might have already reached before. Excerpts from the Sheykh Obeyd Studbook published in Pearson and Mol (1988) list an entry for the mare Bint Helwa Es Shakra (Johara), which was purchased from Ibrahim Bey Sherif, son of Ali Pasha Sherif, on April 19, 1897, and sent to England the same year, after having been covered by “Ibn Bint Nura Es Shakra (white about 7 years) by Ibn Sherara in Cairo and barren“. I was wondering who that stallion could be. He obviously was not one of Lady Anne’s horses. He stood in Cairo, not in its outskirts where the studs of Prince Ahmed (in Matarieh) and of the Khedive Abbas Hilmi (in Qubbeh) lied. Downtown Cairo was the location of one or more of the palaces of Ali Pasha Sherif — who had died earlier in the same year. Could this stallion have been of the few horses that remained with Ali Pasha Sherif’s sons, for riding purposes, when the stud…
This is a picture of Ghazieh gleaned from the internet. Born in 1897 at APS. Bought by the Blunts in 1897 at the APS sale, died in 1917 at Sheykh Obeyd Stud. By Ibn Nura out of Bint Horra by Aziz out of Horra by Zobeyni. Dam of Feyda by Jamil (Aziz x B. Jamila), who is in turn dam of Ibn Fayda (at Inshass Stud in Egypt) and Ibn Fayda I (at Sidi Thabet in Tunisia) both by Ibn Rabdan. Also dam of Ghareb who was used by Lady Anne as a sire at Sheykh Obeyd stud, and her daughter Feyda and Ghazwa and grand-daughters faiza adn Falha were admired by visitors to Sheykh Obeyd Stud from the world over. Funny, I don’t see a dished face or a flat topline. Maybe Lady Anne Blunt and Ali Pasha Sharif did not know enough about breeding Arabian horses to breed for these. Maybe show judges know better. Personally, I would die for a mare like this one.
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I have been telling you about that Hamdani Simri line in Europe, the one from the mare Sobha of Ali Pasha Sharif, which went to the Crabbet Stud and eventually to the Courthouse Stud. A Hungarian preservation breeder, Laszlo Kiraly, bought what seems to be the last three registered asil mares from that line, Saraly El Shahin. The other two still need to be located. There might be a couple more who are not registered. The mares have been through a lot, after leaving the care of their breeder and last preservation owner, Penelope Pembleton. Laszlo sent me pictures of Saralee, who is still recovering and still in poor shape, some of which are below. I also found some pictures of one of Saralee’s ancestors in the tail female, the beautiful and very desert-like Courthouse mare Somra II (Fedaan x Safarjal by Rasim). He sire was the desert-bred Saqlawi Jadran of Ibn Zubayni stallion Fedaan, imported by Mr Clark of the Courthouse Stud to the UK in the 1920s. With desert-bred, well authenticated, beautiful grey horses like Fedaan and Mirage in the UK in the 1920s, there was really no need for Skowronek. Oh well.
The best news for 2012 on the preservation front came yesterday from Hungary, and I am not quite over it yet. Preservation breeder Laszlo Kiraly was able to acquire a precious treasure: the 18 year old Hamdaniyah Simriyah mare Saralee El Shahin (Ansata Aly Jamil x Saree, by Salaa El Dine x Selmah by Shakhs x Sappho by Bleinheim), one of the two or three European asil descendants left to the Ali Pasha Sherif mare Sobha (Wazir x Selma). From a sheer preservation perspective, this mare is precious is so many ways: first, because of its tail female; second, because of the extraordinarily high amount of Ali Pasha Sherif bloodlines she carries through her great grand dam Sappho (Bleinheim x Selima by Bahram x Siwa II by Rheoboam) pictured below; third, because of the two lines she carries to the asil Courthouse Stud desert bred imports Nimr and Fedaan, who have virtually disappeared from the global asil gene pool (save for another line in South Africa to Nimr but also to the third Courthouse desert bred import Atesh); fourth, because of the last asil line left to the Blunt desert import Meshura; fifth, because this is the only asil Crabbet damline…
Take the time to (re)read this article by RJ Cadranell, one of the best ever written on the sale of Egypt’s Ali Pasha Sharif collection of asil Arabian horses, drawing on two souces: Lady Anne Blunt (her Journals, her Sheykh Obeyd Studbook, and some of her private, unpublished notes) and Carl Raswan (his Index). By the way, I don’t think I’ve ever shared with you my personal assessment of Raswan’s standing versus Lady Anne Blunt’s, as sources of scholarly information on Arabians. I don’t think many of you will like this assessment, but here it is anyway: I have found Lady Anne Blunt to be generally correct unless the contrary is proved; and Raswan to be generally incorrect unless the contrary is proved. Raswan’s defenders usually use such statements as “he was not a native speaker of English”, “his thinking was so complex and elaborate that few could understand it” or even “he was constantly making corrections to what he wrote” to absolve him. All this may be true, but scholarly research on Arabians is not rocket science, yet in my opinion, Raswan’s monumental body of work (his Index) is cryptic, garbled, ambiguous, incoherent, confusing and often downright contradictory. It…
El Dahma is the foundation mare of the most prized tail female line of Arabian horses worldwide. Yet she remains shrouded in mystery. She was a mare from the Stud of Ali Pasha Sharif of Egypt, born around 1880, no color given, and was known only by her strain name as “The Dahma”. The little we know about this elusive yet extremely influential matriarch is summarized here. The information in this link comes from three sources: first, the book known as the “RAS History” (page 33), which is the official name of Volume I of the Egyptian Agricultural Organization (EAO) studbook, published in 1948; second, an early herd book of Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfiq of Egypt, which mentions that this mare, “the Dahma”, was a gift from Ali Pasha Sharif to the Khedive (the viceroy of Egypt, then Khedive Tewfiq the father of Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfiq and of the next Khedive Abbas Hilmi II). third, Carl Raswan’s Index. However, given that Raswan’s was not a primary source, and that he did not mention his primary sources, I will take the liberty of discarding it for the purposes of this discussion. El Dahma seems to have produced at least four horses at both Khedive Tewfiq and his son Khedive Abbas Hilmi…
I recently saw in the online brochure of a well known stud that breeds “Straight Egyptians” that the Saqlawi Jadran descendents of Roga El Beda (i.e., the tail female line represented by Moniet El Nefous and El Bataa in modern pedigrees, among others) was made to trace back to the desert-bred mare Ghazieh through Bint Horra (allegedly the dam of Roga El Beda, according to this brochure). This is plain wrong, and was based on erroneous information from the Raswan Index, which has been relayed in Al Khamsa Arabians I and II, and later corrected in Al Khamsa Arabians III. Decade old Mitchondrial DNA research (Bowling, 1999, unpublished) indicates that the haplotype market for the Roga El Beda tail female is different from that of the Ghazieh tail female. I don’t know what you think, but I have found some of these errors much harder to dispel in the case of Straight Egyptians than for the rest of the asil Arabians, despite rock solid evidence to the contrary (e.g., the myth of the Kuhaylan Jallabi tail female as surviving in Straight Egyptians).
Those of you who have looked at the Saudi Arabian Stud Book may have noticed that most of the horses registered in it trace back to a grey horse by the name of Al-Harqan, born in 1947. This horse is the sire of 25 horses in Volume I of the Saudi Stud Book. Pure Man, who by virtue of his knowledge of asil Arabians in Saudi Arabia, is a main contributor to this blog, tells me that Al-Harqan is Kuhaylan Harqan by strain. He also tells me that King Abdel-Aziz Aal Saud (d. 1953) asked a Bedouin from the tribe of Harb by the name of Ibn Fadliyah for a stallion from his famed Harqan horses, and that Ibn Fadliyah gave the king his best stallion: Al-Harqan. Pure Man also tells me that before Al-Harqan, the House of Saud maintained two other stallions of the same strain, but that they don’t appear in modern pedigrees because Saudi authorities did not keep written stud records back then. I think the strain of Kuhaylan Harqan is extinct in the tail female today, but I may be wrong, because there might still be desert horses of this strain in Saudi Arabia which I would not…
I find it baffling that some Arabian horse breeders here in the US still believe that the strain of Kuhaylan Jellabi is carried on in Egyptian Arabian horse breeding. Ten years have elapsed since Michael Bowling’s ground-breaking article on the Arabian mare Bint Yemama and her descendants at the stud of Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfik in Egypt, yet most breeders of Asil Arabians of Egyptian bloodlines still refer to the stallions *Fadl, *Nasr, *Adhem, among others, and the mares *Maaroufa, Mahroussa, Negma and their tail-female descendants as Kuhaylan Jellabi. I refrained from using the pedigree website www.allbreedpedigree.com to link to the pedigrees of the horses mentioned above, because it erroneously has them tracing back to the desert-bred mare Jellabiet Feysul, owned by Abbas Pascha, and otherwise a Kuhaylah Jallabiyah true and true. Even respected Arabian horse breeders and researchers such as Judi Forbis show these horses as Kuhaylan Jallabi (I prefer to write Jallabi with an ”a”, but I aslo want this entry to be found by those using the more common form “Jellabi” in their search engines). Michael Bowling shows that the mare Bint Yemama (Saklawi I x Yemama) of Prince Mohammed Ali is actually the maternal half-sister of the famous Mesaoud, the Saqlawi Jadran of Ibn Sudan bought by Lady Anne Blunt from Ali Pasha Sharif. …