A previous entry quickly went through the Kuhaylan al-Krush horses that came out of Arabia. Of these, the stallion Krush (sometimes called Krushan), imported by Lady Anne Blunt to Egyptian stud of Sheykh Obeyd in 1911, is of particular relevance for the Krush al-Baida branch of that strain. This is what the Sheykh Obeyd Studbook, quoted by Rosemary Archer in “The Crabbet Arabian Stud: its History and Influence“, has to say about Krush: A Kehilan el Krush. Grey stallion bred in 1909. Sire: Kehilan el Sueti of the Harb stock. Dam: Grey Kehilet el Krush whose dam was the mare of Ammash el Reja el Duish, known as the ‘white Krush’ famed for her speed. Purchased in the desert in 1911. As far as I know, these three lines are the only Western reference to the ‘white Krush’, “Krush al-Baida” . They are important because they give away the name of the owner of “Krush al-Baida” – a Bedouin warrior of the al-Dawish ruling clan of the Mutayr tribe, the reason for her fame – speed in tribal warfare – and an approximate date. If Krush was foaled in 1909, and “Krush al-Baida” was his granddam, then she would have been alive in the 1880s-1890s. Bedouin oral tradition remembers “Krush al-Baida” as a mare that carried her rider and…
Western Arabian horse breeders are relatively familiar with the Arabian horse strain of Kuhaylan al-Krush (also known as Kuhaylan Krushan) through a variety of sources. A specific branch of this strain, Krush al-Baida (“the white Krush”) will be the subject of the sixth part of the “Strain of the Week” series (which, by the way, is starting to look like a “Strain of the Month” in disguise). For now, I’ll start the discussion with a brief resfresher of the encounters between Arabian horse breeders and the more general Krush family (beyond Krush al-Baida). Feel free to pitch in with feedback in the comments section of this blog post if you noticed that I omitted a reference or more, or visit this site, which also offers an overview (with pictures) of the main Krush lines around the world. The early fame of Kuhaylan al-Krush was certainly associated with the quest of the Egyptian Viceroy Abbas Pasha I for Asil horses from this strain. Several sources (or perhaps one source that was quoted several times, will look that up later) tell us that Abbas’s quest eventually failed, and that Bedouin owners of Krush mares refused to sell them, or give them…
Arabesque Azieze is at the center of the biggest “what if” story I have recently been involved in. Scroll down this website to see a picture of him (I do respect copyrights, sometimes). This Asil stallion was born in Australia in 1978 and was later sold to New Zealand. He was by the Asil stallion Hansan (El Hilal x Hamamaa), a stallion of Egyptian bloodlines. Nothing to write home about.. yet. The real story concerns Azieze’s dam, Orilla, a 1960 chestnut mare. Orilla was by the legendary Oran (Riffal x Astrella), and out of the mare Rabiha, by Rheoboam out of Nuhra. Oran, a Ubayyan Sharraq of the marbat of Ibn ‘Alyan traced to the famed Blunt desert import Queen of Sheba, and was bred by Lady Yule at Hanstead Stud. Oran was the last Asil stallion used at Crabbet Park by Lady Wentworth. Rheoboam was born at Musgrave Clark’s Courthouse Stud from old Blunt bloodlines… wait, there is more: Nuhra was a bay Asil mare (picture below) imported from Bahrain to England in 1938 by the Earl of Athlone, the brother of Queen Mary of England. Nuhra was a Wadhnat Khursan by strain, and her sire was a Kuhaylan…
Wilfrid Blunt thought seriously about the breeding program at the Crabbet Stud. Some of his thoughts are preserved in his stud memoranda and also his remarks prepared for delivering to the crowds at the Crabbet auction sales. The Wentworth Bequest includes comments dating from 1904 discussing the wisdom of developing a separate breeding program at Crabbet using horses not tracing to Mesaoud. Mr. Blunt posited that those horses could be used as the Crabbet Stud’s own outcross, should one be required in another 50 years. Mesaoud was the most successful stallion the Blunts ever used. They had sold him to Russia just the year before, in June of 1903. Mesaoud’s 12 seasons at Crabbet resulted in more than 100 foals, with the last arriving in 1904. After Mesaoud’s departure, it’s no surprise that Mr. Blunt was wondering whether it was possible to have too much Mesaoud blood. Of the 94 horses listed in the 1904 Crabbet catalogue, only 22 did not have Mesaoud in their pedigrees, and only two of those were male: Nejran and Rijm. Nejran’s 1904 non-Mesaoud colt out of Bint Helwa died. It was a grey colt, so it was unlikely that the Blunts would have used…
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. …
I am pleased to introduce my first guest blogger: Robert J. Cadranell II (RJ) is a friend, a dedicated breeder of Arabian horses of Davenport bloodlines, and one of the foremost Arab horse researchers of our generation. RJ was, together with Michael Bowling, the co-editor of the Arabian Visions magazine, during the nineties, and is currently leading the effort behind the Davenport Conservancy. RJ will be blogging about the history of Arabian horses in the West, and one couldn’t think of a better person to do so.