French equine librarian, collector and breeder, Philippe Deblaise just published the book “Tiaret, le reve Algerien” that will add tremendous value to the literature on Arabian horses, by pulling together the knowledge available about the glorious breeding program of the Arabian horse Stud of Tiaret, in Algeria. This stud was founded by the French in the 1870s, when France was the colonial power in Algeria, and relied exclusively on stallions and mares imported from desert-bred Arabians from Arabia. This stud is unique in the world as no stallion born outside desert Arabian was ever used at stud until Algerian independence in the 1960s. Click on the flyer (in French) to enlarge it.
I am really looking forward to the forthcoming publication in English of the book of King Abdallah I of Jordan, edited by his great-granddaughter Princess Alia Bint al-Hussein. The book “Jawab al-Sa’el ‘an al-khayl al-asayil” is a short treatise mainly concerned with the physical characteristics of the Arabian horse, and was already published three times in Arabic, and all three editions are now out of print.
From The Training and Management of Horses by J.P.F. Bell, published 1904. The colt should be in possession of a small head, broad between the eyes, clean, open jaws, and a small, tapering muzzle. His eyes should be full, generous, and prominent, showing plenty of fire when the colt is put upon his mettle. His ears should be small, tapering, and inclining towards each other at the tips when erect. His nostrils should be delicate and curved, with broad, expansive cavities, and when distended they should appear almost transparent at the edges. His neck should be long, lean, and planted on a set of oblique shoulders, with good play. He should have a moderately long, straight back, with strong, well-developed, muscular quarters. He should be deep-chested rather than broad, because if he is very broad in the chest he will never be fast, though he may be able to stay. His fore-legs should be well set on, clean, bony, flat, and free from splints and side-bones, while they should not be too long from the knees to the pasterns. The knees should be flat and fairly large, while the pasterns should be moderately long and elastic, to insure easy springing…
I can’t believe it’s been more than one month I haven’t blogged. I just flew into Kuwait city, coming from Yemen, where I spent a little less than a week, for work. I had been meaning to see the registering authorities of the newly accepted Yemeni WAHO studbook, but ended up working round the clock for three days in a row, in the mountain areas of Ibb and Ta’izz. Yemen is just gorgeous. Despite being one of the poorest countries in the world, it is one of my favorite Arab countries, and I like everything about it: the people, the culture, the history, the architecture, the food, etc. I will be in Kuwait for five more days, also for work. That’s another country I have come to like over the years.. I have been fascinated by Arab seafaring history for some time now, and Kuwait was one its hotspots. If you are a sailing buff or just happen to like good travel literature, then I recommend you read “Sons of Sinbad”, by Australian traveler and photograph Alan Villiers. It is an account of the author’s voyage on of the last Arab sail boats along the centuries old maritime trading line from Kuwait to Zanzibar via Aden (and back).…
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 precious work was written more than 1,200 years ago (yes, twelve hundred years ago) by one of the most prolific and knowledgeable medieval Islamic historians and genealogists. Every one of the 140 books Ibn Al-Kalbi (757 AD -819 AD) wrote is now lost, except two books that miraculously survived: the “Book of Horses” and the more famous “Book of Idols“. A manuscript version of the “Book of Horses” was published in Arabic, first in 1946, then in 1964. If you happen to read Arabic and live in the USA, here is a list of a few libraries where you can find a copy. I xeroxed mine from the Georgetown University Library. Another manuscript version was also translated to French and published by E.J. Brill Publishers in Leyden, Germany, in 1928. The “Book of Horses” revisits the stories of the most famous horses in pre-Islamic times (before 610 AD)…
In 1997, Jens Sannek and Bernd Loewenherz published what is perhaps the most interesting book to be written in recent times by Western travelers looking for Arabian horses in their original homeland. Traveling with a party of about 14 people which included French preservation breeders Jean-Claude Rajot, Louis Bauduin and Benoit Mauvy, as well as several young children, and joined by Syrian guides and friends, Jens and Bernd visited the Syrian cities of Damascus, Aleppo, Hama, as well the Syrian desert, from Palmyra to Der el Zor (map here), for about two weeks. They described and photographed many of the older Syrian desertbred horses I grew up around (such as Mahrous, Mashuj, both now deceased and Mokhtar, still alive and now in France with Chantal Chekroun). They even met with some of Syria’s last truly nomadic Bedouin clans, the ‘Affat al-Dbayss – a clan from the Fad’aan tribe that owns a good marbat of Ma’naghi Sbayli in the general vicity of Der el Zor. Their book, written in German with an English summary at the end, is full of insights and anecdotes, as well as factual information, and gives one an excellent overview of the state of Syrian Arabian horse breeding in the late 1990s. Unlike other contemporary accounts I have come across, the authors’ description of the…
I just finished reading the first volume of “Cities of Salt”, the five-volume masterpiece of the prominent Arab novelist Abdelrahman Munif. I really recommend that you read it, if world literature is your cup of tea.. An English translation exists, by Peter Theroux, and so does a German one. There might be a French one too, published by Sindbad/Actes Sud edition, but I couldn’t find it online. Set sometimes in the 1920s or 1930s, the first volume of “Cities of Salt” tells the dramatic story of the transformation of a small village in an unnamed Arabian kindgom, following the discovery of oil by Americans. It describes the abrupt transition from tradition to modernity and its impact on the land and its inhabitants, from an Arab perscpective. Behind this thin veil of fiction, readers will no doubt recognize the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, where the book was actually banned. Munif, who died in 2004, was well placed to write about this topic. He was born in Jordan, from an Iraqi mother, and Saudi father, the scion of a distinguished family of Agheyls, these merchant families whose caravans criss-crossed the Arabian peninsula, from Gaza and Damascus to Kuwait and from Hail to Bagdad.
The Bedouin tribe of Al Murrah has been immortalized by Wilfred Thesiger‘s gripping classic “Arabian Sands” (1959). If you want to have a less romanticized account of the life of this South Arabian Bedouin tribe, then you ought to read this book, by Donald Powell Cole of the American University in Cairo. Yet Cole’s book was written in the early 1970s, and the nomadism it describes is now gone. By the way, Al Murrah was the tribe of Ibn Jallab, founder of the marbat of Kuhaylan Jallabi, now extinct in Asil form (sorry, but can’t help but rubbing it in, in light of mtDNA evidence).. [correction: the Jallabi line still exits in Asil form in Bahrain, of course]
I am tying to get hold of the journal article of same name. “Where have the Bedouin gone” was published by anthtropologist Donald Powell Cole of the American University in Cairo in Anthropological Quarterly – Volume 76, Number 2, Spring 2003, pp. 235-267 Here’s the article’s abstract, as written by the staff of Project Muse: “The Bedouin have been exoticized as nomads and essentialized as representatives of segmentary lineage organization and tribalism. This essay shows more complex and multifaceted existences and argues that “Bedouin” has changed from denoting a way of life in the past to marking an identity today. A multi-sited perspective presents socioeconomic and sociopolitical change among Bedouin from Algeria to Saudi Arabia and includes colonial impacts, commercialization of pastoral production, occupational change, and sedentarization. Bedouin involvement in tourism and the manufacture of Bedouin heritage for sale as a commodity and as a component of (some) Arab national heritages are also discussed. The coexistence of segmentation, markets, states, and Islam is stressed, with class divisions now becoming predominant. A concern with Middle Eastern ethnography in general, largely implicit, runs throughout the text.” Good stuff…
Al Khamsa Arabians III is out! Order your copy now. AKA III is the ultimate reference on Asil Arabian horses in North America (but then, I do have a couple articles in there, as well as translations of some Arabic original documents). I wish someone had the time (and energy!) to produce an Arabic version of this book.. Maybe I will some day, Lord willing. Meanwhile I haven’t managed to maintain my daily blogging routine this week, so I should keep my expectations (and yours) reasonable.
If anyone of you is in the mood for some serious reading about Bedouin tribes in modern day Arabia, then William Lancaster’s The Rwala Bedouin Today is the book to read. I found it a rather easy read for an academic book that delves deep into into anthropological theory. It describes in detail how the Rwala creatively used a number of assets and options in their possession to cope with the many transformations modernity brought about to their identity and lifestyle. The chapter on the history of the tribe is informative, too.
Anyone interested in objective (vs. romanticized) knowledge of Bedouins in the 20th century needs to read this book. The author, Jibrail Jabbur, a Syrian, was born at the turn of the twntieth century in a town on the fringes of the desert, near Palmyra; he studied in Princeton, NJ, and went on to become a Professor of Arabic literature at the American University of Beirut (my alma mater).