I have not looked at my “Aldahdah Index” in a while. It is a compendium of standardized entries on older Middle Eastern Arabian horses, mostly Syrian and Lebanese, in the style of the Raswan Index. I will publish it one day. I looked up the entry of the Khdili stallion of Abbud Ali al-Amud, who has recently been the subject of discussion on social media (Facebook and WhatsApp groups). I had written this about him back then: AL-KHDILI OF ABOUD ALI AL-AMOUD: an Asil desert-bred stallion; later owned by the Armenian horsedealer Apo in Aleppo. Strain: Kuhaylan Khdili, of the marbat owned by ‘Abbud ‘Ali al-‘Amud, a Bedouin from the Aqaydat tribe; al-‘Amud got his horses from the marbat of ‘Udayb al-Waqqa’ of the Saba’ah tribe. Comments: He was a small horse of such classic Arab type, with such an extreme head, that people in Aleppo were reluctant to use him because they found him to be ‘pretty like a mare’. He is closely related to the beautiful mare Leelas, a Kuhaylah Khdiliyah bred by ‘Abbud ‘Ali Al-‘Amud, and which is a daughter of the Ma’naqi al-Shwaiti al-Najrissi of the Aqaydat tribe. That was what I had about him some…
فرس شقراء كحيلة الخدلية يعود مربطها الى عضيب الوقاع السبيعي ابوها الصقلاوي الجدراني من خيل دريعي الاحدب من عشيرة شمر ابو امها المعنقي السبيلي حصان الشويطي من خيل النجرس من عشيرة العقيدات
I have written frequently about this horse. In my opinion, Saad II was one of the three best sons of al-Aawar. He was out of a grand mare, Leelas, a Kuhaylah Khdiliyah of ‘Abbud al-‘Ali al-‘Amud of the ‘Aqaydat. That strain harked back to the Kuhaylaat al-‘Ajuz of the Khdilat section of the Fada’an. It was held in high esteem by all the Bedouins across Arabia. Indeed, I have rarely seen such unanimity about a strain. I took these pictures at Mustafa al-Jabri’s farm in 1997. Saad II was in poor condition then. My father, who really had an eye for picking good stallions for his mares, thought the world of him. He sent his favorite mare, a bay Saqlawiyah Sha’ifyah of Ibn Bisra from Rayak, Lebanon all the way to Aleppo, Syria, to be bred to him. She produced that gorgeous colt, below. Photos at the farm of Michel Pharaon, then leased by Husayn Nasser. I never knew what happened to him. My father probably gave him away to someone.
This mare was one of the most sought after in Syria. I took this photo in 1992 at the stud of Hisham Ghorayeb in Damascus. Her dam was a Ma’naqiyah Sbaliyah of the marbat of Turki al-Najriss of the ‘Aqaydat Bedouins, a prestigious strain that goes back to the Rasaalin of Sba’ah. Her sire was the Saqlawi Sh’aifi of Diban al-Ka’r. He traced to the horses of Hajjo Ibn Mahel of the Shammar. I recall that Hazaim Alwair and I spent an entire summer in 2005 making phone calls to multiple Bedouins to verify the authenticity of this horse. I have it all written somewhere.
One consequence of my re-discovering George Tabet’s booklet after a twenty year hiatus is that it allowed me to solve a couple of puzzles related to Arabian horses imported to the USA. One of these relates to the 1947 W.R. Hearst desert-bred import *Rajwa and her son the stallion *El Abiad, who was imported by to the USA by F.E. Mars. Rajwa recorded strain is Saqlawi “Ejrifi”. *El Abiad’s is a variant: “Ejrefi”. I had not heard of this marbat of Saqlawi Ejrifi or Ejrefi. I long thought it was a spelling mistake. Tabet’s bilingual list of Arabian horse strains finally resolved that puzzle. Under the Saqlawiyaat to be mated, it had this: Saqlawi al-‘Ajrafi/’Ujrufi/’Ejrefi, goes back to Saqlawi al-‘Abd [in the French version: with Turki Ibn Najriss of the ‘Aqaydat] Here it was, as a branch of the Saqlawi strain, with the exact same spelling as for *Rajwa and *El Abiad, with additional information on the strain and its breeder. Tabet’s booklet was written in 1937, ten years before the Hearst importation. Tabet’s reference to the Shaykh of the ‘Aqaydat, Turki al-Najriss as the breeder of this strain also provides a clue about *Rajwa’s breeder, given how rare that strain…
I recently took part in a discussion on Facebook about the Samhan strain. Mohammed al-Matrooshi of the UAE had posted a photo which Carl Raswan had taken of a Samhat Qumay’ mare of the Ruwalah. Not posting here because I assume Raswan’s photo is copyrighted. Someone asked if the strain was extinct. I then shared a photo of this beautiful Samhat Qumay’ mare, which I had taken in the early 1990s outside Aleppo. She had come from the area of al-Mayadin, in the valley of the Euphrates, to be covered by one of the Jabri stallions. She was not registered. The ‘Aqayat got most of their strains from the Sba’ah. Then, out of the blue, someone from that same area posted a photo of his chestnut mare, and said that she was the grand-daughter of the above mare, and that the strain was alive and well. Then I dug in my own photo archives and found another photo of the same grey mare, one year later, this time with her daughter by my stallion Dahiss, the ‘Ubayyan Sharrak/Suhayli, then with Radwan Shabareq. I need to show it the man from al-Mayadin, to see if he recognizes the filly, who could…
I don’t know if this stallion of excellent lines is still alive or not, but a reader asked about him. He was bred by Radwan Shabareq in Aleppo, and given to the late Mustafa al-Jabri who used him at stud. I knew him as a newborn, as a colt and as a stallion. His mother bellonged to an old Bedouin, ‘Aboud al-‘Ali al-‘Amoud of al-Uqaydat, who was extremely attached to her, and held her in the highest esteem. He refused to part with her at any cost, despite many offers. He refused to breed her, because he did not think that any stallion he knew was worthy of her in purity or othewise. Yusuf al-Rumaihi, the late Qatari consul in Syria (we are in the mid-1980s), a collector of desert-bred horses and an avid learner and fine connoisseur of desert lines, wanted her at any price, but the old Bedouin would not sell. The mare was getting up in age. He did agree to lease her, and the mare went to Damascus where she was bred to the Egyptian stallion Okaz (Wahag x Nazeemah). She foaled a filly which the Qatari consul retained. After this, the old Bedouin nagged so much…
This old mare was at Mustapha al-Jabri’s farm near Aleppo, Syria in the mid-1990s, when I took this picture, and was brought there to be covered by one of his stallions. She was one of these unregistered tribal horses, and came from the Aqaydat tribe, from the area of al-Mayadin on the Euphrates. Her strain was Samhan Qumay’. This is the only mare I have ever seen from this strain in my entire life, and I don’t think I will see another one. The strain was owned by the Sba’ah Bedouins among others. The Aqaydat of the Middle Euphrates area, who in the late 1800s and the early and mid 1900s were semi-nomadic sheep herders, and as such were much less mobile than the camel-breeding ‘Anazah Bedouins, would lease the elderly and the sick mares of the ‘Anazah, especially the Sba’ah, before these moved south towards Najd on their annual preregrinations. As a result of the most esteemed ‘Anazah strains found their way to ‘Aqaydat, including Ma’naqi Sbayli, ‘Ubayyan Sharrak, Hamdani Simri, and others. This mare was never registered eventually. There was conflicting information about a male ancestor (“Nawwaq ‘Abu ‘Erneh) four generations back in her pedigree, so she was left…
This very old mare is a Kuhaylah Trayfiyyah from the Middle Euphrates valley in Syria, near the small town of al-Mayadin. This area general is home to the tribe of al-Aqaydat (Ageydat), a wealthy and powerful semi-nomadic tribe of cultivators and small herders whose Shaykhs obtained a number of really good desert-bred mares in the first part of the twentieth century, sometimes through ghazu (raids) and sometimes through purchase and gifts. They bred these mares well, and protected them by using only asil stallions, and hence came to own reputalbe marabet. Today some of the prettiest and typiest Syrian horses came from these Ageyday marabet. One of the most well known Aqaydat marabet is that of Kuhaylat al-Trayfiyyah, which is an old strain the history of which I don’t know well. All I know is that it might – just might – derive its name from Matarifah clan of the ‘Anazah tribe. The strain is mentioned in the Abbas Pasha Manuscript, in connection with events that took place in Eastern Arabia, either in Bahrain, Qatar or the al-Ihsaa region of Saudi Arabia. The Kuhaylah Trayfiyyah is the photo was not registered in the WAHO Syrian Studbook and I don’t know the reason. Perhaps…
This is from a handwritten note which I copied from Lady Wentworth’s “The Authentic Arabian Horse”. I don’t have the book with me (it’s in Lebanon in my father’s library), but I vaguely recall that it is an excerpt from Lady Anne Blunt’s manuscript, which she was working on before her death in 1917, and which her daughter Lady Wentworth later ‘integrated’ (plagiarized?) in her book “The Authentic Arabian Horse”. “A straight profile should not be a defect if the forehead is very broad, the eyes placed low and very large, and the muzzle small”. Below is a headshot of Reema, a desert bred Hamdaniyat Ibn Ghurab, bred by the Aqaydat tribe of the Middle Euphrates region (the marbat originally belongs to the Shammar). Reema’s head is a good illustration of the above quote, although her eyes could be placed a tad lower.
I thought I’d share this photo of Nawal with you, after the mention of the strain of ‘Ubayyan ibn Duwayhiss in a previous post of mine. ‘Ubayyan ibn Duwayhiss is a branch of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak owned by the Sba’ah tribe. Nawal was bred by Khairi Ajil al-Dibs, of the Aqaydat semi-nomadic sheep herding tribe, on the Euphrates valley not from the border between Syria and Iraq (lately a hotspost of military activity). Her sire was al-Ma’naqi al-Najrissi, a famous Ma’naqi Sbayli stallion, known throughout the Syrian desert for producing extremely typey and good-moving broodmares. The Aqaydat obtained the two strains of ‘Ubayyan ibn Duwayhiss and Ma’naqi Sbayli directly from the Sba’ah tribe, whose seosonal migration routes spanned Aqaydat territory. Nawal was later acquired by Mustapha al-Jabri of Aleppo, for whom she went on to produce several good broodmares. Mustapha once told me a couple of nice stories about the pride in which Sba’ah Bedouins took in the particular strain of ‘Ubayyan ibn Duwayhiss, in the contexts of their wars against the Ruwalah tribe, but I am afraid I don’t recall any of these stories in enough detail to relate it here. Will ask him next time we speak over the phone. I took this photo at Mustapha’s in the spring of…
It tends to change every other day. For what it’s worth, here is today’s top ten: 1. Reem al-Oud, (Ubayyan Suhayli x Ubayyah Suhayliyah) desert bred from the Shammar tribe, born ca. 1980 2. Reema, (Ma’anaghi Sbayli x Hamdaniyah Simriyah) desert bred from the Aqaydat , born ca. 1975 3. Jauza, (Dahman Shawan x Kuhaylat al-Krush) desert bred from Mutayr, born ca. 1910, imported by Lady Anne Blunt to her Sheykh Obeyd farm in Egypt 4. Bismilah (Besbes x Berthe), a Jilfat al-Dhawi, bred by the French government at the Pompadour stud, born ca. 1985 5. Sahmet (Hadban Enzahi x Jatta), from the strain of Murana, bred by the German government at the Marbach stud, born ca. 1960 6. *Turfa, (Ubayyan al-Hamrah x Kuhaylat al-Khorma), bred by Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud at the Al-Khorma stud, imported to the USA by Henri Babson, born ca. 1930 7. *Bint Maisa al-Saghirah (Nazeer x Maisa) , a Dahmah Shahwaniyah, bred by the Egyptian government (the Egyptian Agricultural Organization) at the al-Zahraa stud, born ca. 1950 8. Sayfia, desert bred from the Fad’aan tribe (Ma’naghi Sbayli x Ma’anaghiyah Sbayliyah), born ca. 1985 9. LD Rubic (Plantagenet x Tarrla), a Kuhaylah, bred by Carol Lyons, born ca. 1980 10. Ceres (Aramis x Dharebah),…