Jeannie Lieb recently provided an update on social media on the Davenport Hadban horses that she helped put in Al Khamsa preservation homes in 2010. Quoting her: Updated March 2024: 1998gg RL Thunder Cloud (DDA Tyreb CF x DDA Hadba) Owner: Kathryn Toth, OH 2003gm RL Shelby Girl (RL Thunder Cloud x DDA Shalaana) Owner: Jessie Heinrick, OR 2011gm Wordah CW(RL Thunder Cloud x RL Shelby Girl) Owner: Hannah Logan, Alberta Canada 2013gs Zubayr CW (RL Thunder Cloud x RL Shelby Girl) Owner: Karlee Mason, Alberta Canada 2006cm RL Bilquis (DDA Rasan x RL Boomerette) Owner Jeannie Lieb, MA 2013cm Suri Al Sahra (RL Thunder Cloud x RL Bilquis) Owner: KathyWerking, KY 2010bm Zuraidah Assahara (RL Thunder Cloud x RL Kadbat Abril) Owner: Hannah Logan, Alberta Canada 2018bm Free Reins Tahir’s Lotus (pending)(Wahid CW x Zuraidah Assahara) Owner: Hannah Logan, Alberta Canada 2010cm Zubaidah Assahara (Rl Thunder Cloud x R L Angel Girl) Owner: Hazaim Alwair, NC 2020bs Nawaf Alasil
The below account of the origin of al-Hadb is an application of the way I propose to date the origin of Arabian horse strains. I translated it from the Arabic version of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript. My own notes follow. The accounts of al-Hadb with al-Dhafeer: In the presence of Sultan Ibn Suwayt and a crowd of people at the gathering, Shabat al-Mani’ of al-Suwayt, a man advanced in age, and ‘Ali al-Mani’ the son of Shabat’s brother, were queried about al-Hadb, how they came about, their origins, and which of the strains they trace back to. The two aforementioned reported that: “Mani’ was at the time of Bani Lam. He was from our grandfathers. Between us, O those present here and Mani’, there are four grandfathers. We do not know how she passed to Mani’, except that we hear and know from our elders that there is no Hadbah other than the horses of Mani’. She [the strain] traces back to Kuhaylat Umm Ma’aarif. The reason for her being called Hadbah is that there was a mare at Mani’s with profuse hair, so abundant that it covered her crest. For this reason, she was called Hadbah. She [the strain]…
At the old farm of Basil Jadaan near Damascus. Note the short back, the strong coupling, the arched neck, and the huge eye. The overall balance. Stare at him: he is a concentrate of Arabness.
This morning Carrie Slayton announced to me the birth of a filly out of her grand old broodmare RL Zahra Assahra (Portent x Antezzah by Grand Pass). She is to be named Zalfa, with the suffix Al Arab. Zalfa means “the one who draws near” in Arabic. That’s because she came from so far away, and just about everything about her was far fetched. I am so excited about her. Notice the low set eye, the deep girth, the far-extending withers, the short back and the croup typical of this dam line. I obtained her elderly dam from the late Marilyn McHallam, at her farm dispersal, and had her brought from Canada to California. First to Northern California, where she was bred to Michael Bowling’s Latitude but did not take. Then to Carrie Slayton’s in Southern California, who first boarded her for me, then asked me if she could have her, and if I would take a filly from her. Carrie bred her to Porte CF (Portico x Recherche), for three close crosses to the grand Portia, and other crosses further back. A colt would have remained Carrie’s, and Carrie will get, if she wants, the first filly from this filly.…
I keep marveling at this horse, and how close to the desert bred Arabians the Hadban Enzahi stallion Wahid CW (Wahid CW x RL Zahra Assahara) looks like, 112 years after the importation of his ancestors from North Arabia to the USA. Photo by Hannah Logan
I spent part of the weekend at Hazaim’s house and small farm in North Carolina, and got to see his five Davenports, four Kuhaylan Haifis and a Hadba Enzahi. The best part was a trail ride around the subdivision, him on Gilad Ibn Dubloon and me on Una CF. Below are two photos of his 2010 Hadba Enzahi mare, Zubaida Assahara (RL Thunder Cloud x RL Angel Girl by Letarnard), with 4 lines to *Hadba. She was in many ways my favorite, despite being the smallest of the lot. A war mare, built like a tank, with a broad chest, a deep girth and a broad, round rib cage, exuding stamina and power, with a pleasing and dry head, a big eye and prominent eye socket, a dry bony face, an elegant arched throat, hair fine like silk, a shiny copper coat, overall not without style, and so reminiscent of the small and valiant desert horses of my childhood in Syria.
From the Abbas Pasha Manuscript — that bottomless treasure — page 546: “and we mated her a second time to the Hadban horse of Saffuq al Jarba, and he is of the horses of al Jaless of al Kawakibah” Elsewhere in the Manuscript it is recorded that the stud/marbat of Hadban Enzahi of the al-Kawakibah section of the Ruwalah belonged to Nahi al-Mushayteeb of al-Kawakibah, and that it was an old stud. Al-Mushayteeb obtained them from al-Nazahi of the ancient Bedouin tribe of al-Fudul. That Hadban stallion in the testimony was the great-grandfather of a horse that was three years old in the early 1850s. This means that in the 1830s or early 1840s at the very least, there was already a branch of the Hadban strain of the Kawakibah with the Jarba leaders of the Shammar, and that one of the horses of this Shammar branch of that Hadban strain was used as a stallion. Saffuq al-Jarba, nicknamed “al-muhazzam”, meaning “Saffuq of the belt” because he was so warlike that he reportedly never left his military gear, died in 1843. This is very consistent with the testimony of the Jarba leaders of the Shammar in the mid 1980s about their prized Hadban strain…
By far my favorite stallions at Mrs. Barbary’s Shams El Asil farm are the 2002 bay Hadban stallion Zay El Amar (SEA Halawat Zaman x Meshmesha by Anas x El Anood by Akhtal) and his own sire the 1998 grey SEA Halawat Zaman (SEA Shams El Asil x SEA Set el Hosn by Lokman a.k.a. Ibn Adaweya). Perfect conformation, muscular stallions, with high withers, deep girth, sloped shoulders, good bone, short backs, plus all the rest, the result of 50 years of selection. Mrs. Barbary is a master breeder for sure. Photo below by Ahmed Nashaat.
What a balanced, well-built, harmonious desert-looking mare. You can see the influence of both *Hamrah and *Haleb on her. She was by *Hamrah out of *Meleky (*Haleb x *Hadba). Does anyone know where this look can be found in today’s Davenports?
I am in Yemen for the week. I am done with work for today, and the only book I brought with me is Lady Anne Blunt’s invaluable Journals and Correspondence (Archer and Fleming, 1986). Lately I have been combing the Journal entries for references to non-Blunt, non-Ali Pasha Sherif early foundation stock of Egyptian Arabian breeding, in the hope of finding new direct or contextual information about these horses. I believe I have just made an interesting discovery which I am eager to share with you here. During the later years of her life in Egypt, Lady Anne paid many visits to the studs of members of the Egyptian royal family like those of Prince Ahmad Pasha Kamal, Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfiq and other notables, and described their horses in her Journals with remarkable consistency and accuracy. Most of the horses she describes during these visits have bred on to become foundation horses of modern Egyptian Arabian horse breeding, including Bint Yemama, Om Dalal, Dalal, Tarfa, Doga, Radban, Saklawi II, Dahman El Azrak, Farida Debbanie, Roga El Beda, Sabha El Zarka, Jamil El Ahmar, Koheilan El Mossen, El Sennari, etc, etc. Lady Anne’s description of them and the information she provides on the…
How I love this young Davenport filly of the Hadban Enzahi strain, born a couple months ago at Jeannie Lieb’s from her rescue mare RL Bilquis (DDA Rasan x RL Boomerette by DDA Ihsan) and sired by RL Thunder Cloud (DDA Tyred CF x DDA Hadba by Letarnad), with so many crosses to the original import mare Hadba. Here she is with her dam RL Bilquis, aka “Penny” who is a small mare, but still looks gorgeous in Jeannie’s good care..
Another piece of good news from preservation breeder Jeannie Lieb yesterday, with new hope for the Davenport *Hadba rare and endangered tail female. “RL Thunder Cloud x RL Bilquis delivered a beautiful chestnut filly with a perfect blaze, 3 white anklets and 1 white sock, last night around 11:00pm. Mother and daughter are doing great and this little gal is a firecracker!” *Hadba was the war mare of ‘Ajil ibn Zaydan al-Jarba and was taken by the Ottomans when this Shammar rebel Bedouin leader was killed. She was later resold and ended up with Homer Davenport who imported her to the USA in 1906. This is the same tail female line as the racing legend Kontiki.
Marie Arthur shared this photo of RL Boomerette (DDA Ihsan x DDA Hadba by Letarnad), a 2000 mare of the Hadban strain from Davenport bloodlines.
This is how of the rescued Davenport Hadban Enzahi mares, RL Bilquis (DDA Rasan x RL Boomerette) looks like when in the knowledgeable, caring and responsible hands of someone like Jeannie Lieb. This mare, 6 months pregnant, was a pack of bones when Jeannie rescued her, and it was not certain she would survive.
Last week I was talking with a Syrian friend from Aleppo over the phone. Conversations always start with updates on the security situation there, and end with what they were supposed to start with — horse talk. I was telling him about the recent concerted preservation effort that is underway in the USA, to conserve what remained of the Davenport Arabians of the Hadban Enzahi strain, which goes back to the desert mare *Hadba of the Northern Shammar Bedouins, imported to the USA by Homer Davenport in 1906. I was telling him how much I was struck by the racy, elongated, body structure of these Davenport Hadbans — see Anita Enander’s photo of the heavily linebred Hadban RL Boomerette as one example. He laughed, and told me how a now deceased horse merchant had told him that, in the past, the particular branch of the Hadban Enzahi strain from the Northern Shammar (which *Hadba belongs to) were very prized as racehorses across the Middle East, despite their small size. He told me the story of one of these Hadban stallions, who raced and won at the Beirut racetracks, was so successful there that he was sent to the Iraq racetracks, where…
The 1974 Hadban Inzihi stallion Asjah ibn Faleh (*Faleh x *Dawlat by Anter) was the best Egyptian racehorse of all time. I am no fan of what the Egyptian horse has become today, but that was a very good horse. See the naturally arched neck, curvy throat and deep girth. He was no china doll. Ralph Suarez’s blog has an article about his sire *Faleh, here.
Recently, I wrote here about the little-known group of horses from the Hadban strain tracing to the desert-bred mare *Hadba, imported by Homer Davenport from Arabia in 1906. The hujjah (Arabic authentication certificate) of that mare is available, and I did a new translation of it, which appeared in the reference book Al Khamsa Arabians III (2008). I am reproducing an updated, revised version of this translation here: We, who put our names and seals below, based on our honor, say that the bay mare whose has a stocking on her left hind leg and a star on her face, that her dam is a Hadbah to be mated and her sire is Shuwayman Sabbah, and the sire of her filly is Ma’naqi Sbayli; Abd al-Sakam Azraq took this mare from Hajj Ismail the Shaykh of Sfireh, and Hajj Ismail took her from ‘Ajil ibn Zaydan the Shaykh of Shammar, and for the sake of clarity, we have put our names and seals [below]. Written by: Abdessalam Azraq [seal] From the people of [the town of] Sfireh: Muhammad Nur [or Nadar or Thawr, unclear] [finger print] Ahmad al-Muhammad [seal] Mustapha al-Bdeiwi [seal] Hajj Ahmad al-Abdallah from the tribe of al-Fardun [seal] Ahmad Sarraj [seal] I swear by God…
There are basically two groups of Davenport mares of the Habdan strain. One group traces through the Trisarlah daughter Waddarlah, then to Bint Oberon, then to two daughters who bred on: DDA Hadba and DDA Shalaana. Bint Oberon’s third daughter, ACDS Bonne Jour, has had no foals. DDA Hadba (no longer producing) has one daughter, R L Boomerette. R L Boomerette has one daughter (location unknown), and Boomerette is now with with new Davenport breeders Gene and Chris Pluto. There is hope there. DDA Shalaana has two daughters, but they are in non-breeding homes. I am not certain of Shalaana’s status, but I believe she is deceased. The other branch is where you find the mare and filly from the picture: through the other Trisarlah daughter, Letarlah, and through her to two daughters, Antezzah and Jamila Wahid (descent through a third daughter, who was exported to Jordon, is presumed lost to the group). The daughters of Jamila Wahid may well be lost to the group as they are with an elderly breeder, and the future for those horses is quite uncertain (in my opinion). Several of Antezzah’s offspring also went abroad and are presumed lost to the group. One daughter, RL Kadbat Abril is,…
Few people outside the group of North American Davenport breeders are aware of the existence of a fourth tail female of asil Arabians entirely tracing to the 1906 importation of 27 desert-bred horses from North Arabia. The Kuhaylan Haifis, the Kuhaylan Krush, and the horses tracing to Schilla are well known, but the Hadbans not so much. Homer Davenport imported the mare *Hadba, bred by the Shammar, to the USA in 1906, and bred her daughter Killah, in 1911. Her grand-daughter Anlah by Antez was bred at Kellogg Farms in California, while Anlah’s daughter Ehwat Ansarlah was bred by W.R. Hearst’s stud in 1948, also in California. Ehwat Ansarlah was part of the Second Foundation group of Davenport horses, and produced a daughter, Trisarlah by Tripoli. The line still goes on, but so thinly that it is hanging by a thread. There are still a few mares of breeding age, but they are not being bred, and the entire group risk falling off the radar screen and disappearing entirely in a few years. This is why the Institute for the Desert Arabian Horse thought to place the 1995 grey mare RL Zahra Assahara (Portent x Antezzah by Grand Pass out of Letarlah, by…
Joe Ferriss has a nice article on Egyptian Arabian stallions of the Hadban strain in the online newsletter Arabian Essence. Speaking of Hadban stallions of Egyptian bloodlines, I was lucky to have known the grey stallion Kaheel (by Ashour who was by Anter out of Ayda x Yosr by Ibn Fakhri out of Bint Yosreia), who was bred by the Egyptian Agricultural Organization in Cairo, and died in my home country of Lebanon, leaving no progeny, some time in the late 1990s. I made plans to purchase Kaheel after I saw him for the first time. When I went to see him again at some equestrian center north of Beirut, he had just died from a colic. Kaheel was a unique individual in many ways: a Anter grandson in the tail male, both sire and dam from the Hadban strain (he actually qualifies as Sheykh Obeyd and Heirloom) and otherwise the direct grandson of three lesser known but very special Nazeer offspring, all three of which belong to good racing lines: 1: Ayda, by Nazeer x Lateefa, and hence a full sister of Serenity Ibn Nazeer / Lateef 2: Bint Yosreia, by Nazeer x Yosreia, and a full sister of Tersk’s Aswan / Rafaat, among…
I just got word that two asil mares of the Kuhaylan Hayfi strain, from the horses tracing to the desert-breds imported by Homer Davenport to the USA in 1906, were exported to the United Arab Emirates. Both are now owned by Mohammed Bin Humooda of Al-‘Ain, UAE. They are Affinity CF (Javera Thadrian x Audacity) bred by Craver Farms and Jadah Beshan (Baile La Bamba x Cinnabar CF) bred Randall and Mary Sue Harris. Mr. Bin Humooda already owns a number of asil Saqlawi Jadran horses bred by the Doyle family, as well as an asil Hadban Enzahi stallion bred by the Dirks family who is being used in endurance racing. This exportation is encouraging news for the asil Arabian, and a sign of Arab breeders’ emerging interest in old USA-bred, asil bloodines. May there be more of these. Below is a picture of Audacity, Affinity’s dam, and another of Javera Thadrian, Affinity’s sire, with Nancy Becker on top.
The bay stallion, Hadban, the sire of the two Crabbet foundation mares Rose of Sharon and Nefisa, comes from my tribe, ‘Utaybah. His strain was Hadban Enzahi. His breeder was Jafin (not Jakin as recorded) ibn ‘Aqil al-Da’jani al-‘Utaybi. The house of ‘Aqil are well known among us, and are among the Shaykhs of the Da’ajin section of the tribe of ‘Utaybah. The paramount Shaykh of the Da’ajin who yield great respect comes from the clan of al-Hayzal. Al-Hayzal Shaykhs such as Thiql al-Hayzal are cited several times in the Abbas Pasha Manuscript. For instance, Saudi leader Faysal ibn Turki gave a Saqlawiyah mare that had belonged to al-Hayzal to Abbas Pasha of Egypt.
I recently shared with you my plan to propose the mare *Lebnaniah for inclusion in the Roster of Al-Khamsa horses as of 2010. The process is very thorough, usually involving several individuals putting their research skills together. It typically takes several years to complete. As part of this process, I will be sending the Al Khamsa Board original information about *Lebnaniah’s ancestors – information that was not available before. Much of this information is actually included in “Al-Dahdah Index” (don’t laugh), an annotated catalog of noteworthy asil and non-asil horses that were bred in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, the northern Arabian desert, etc) throughout the twentieth century. I have already shared with you the entries on the stallion Shaykh al-Arab and Kayane. The “Al-Dahdah Index” is a living document, which I have been patiently working on for the past twelve years, and I update as often as I can. The information is based on oral and written primary sources from the Middle East — i.e., it is not extracted from books written by Western travelers, horse buyers, and other occasional visitors. I would like to see the “Al-Dahdah Index” published some day, but not before I add a couple thousand more entries. I think I’ll give it another…
This document recently appeared on one of the discussion threads below. For those of you who know the Abbas Pasha Manuscript in its English edition, this is just the first page in one of the original Arabic editions.. This is a quick and dirty translation (writing from work, gotta go home soon), without the Quran verses in the reversed triangle: “Warning/advice about breeding/mating horses; I say, about stallions to be mated; the first to be mated (yushabbi) is Duhayman Shahwan from the strain (rasan) of Kunayhir, and Duhaym al-Najib; the second is Kuhaylan al-Mimrah; then al-Saqlawi al-Jadrani and it is from three branches, the dearest of which is the strain of al-Simniyyat, then the strain of al-Sudaniyat, then the strain of al-Abd; followed by the strain of al-Saqlawi al-Ubayri and al-Marighi, which are the same strain; and following that, Hadban al-Nzahi which consists of six strains: the first (ie, the best) is Hadbat al-Munsariqah; the second is Hadbat Mushaytib; the third is Hadbat Jawlan; the fourth is Hadbat al-Fard; the fifth is Hadbat al-Mahdi; the sixth is Habdat al-Bardawil which is not to be mated; following that is Kuhaylan al-Tamri; and after that, Shuwayman al-Sabbah; and after that, Hamdani Simri al-Khalis; and…
Following an inquiry about photos of descendents of Mohalhil in an earlier post, Jeanne Craver kindly sent me the two pictures below. The first one of his unique offspring, Prince Faisal, out of the desert-bred Hadbah mare Mahsuda, herself a gift from King Abd al-‘Aziz al-Sa’ud to Charles R. Crane. This photo of a rather fat Prince Faisal was taken at an Arabian horse shown in 1952 by Charles Craver’s father (thanks Charles and Jeanne for the picture!). Prince Faisal in turn sired a daughter, Jeddah Princess (second photo), out the desert-bred Hamdaniyah mare La Tisa, another gift to Charles Crane from Ibn Sa’ud. It is such a shame La Tisa and Mahsuda did not leave more offspring. They seem to have been very beautiful mares even by today’s altered (do you like that euphemism?) standards of what an Arabian horse ought to look like. La Tisa was featured in an earlier post on this blog (click here).
In 1909, a French government commission led by Inspector Quinchez bought 24 desert-bred stallions from the Egyptian racetrack of Sidi Gaber in Alexandria. Of these, 17 went to Algeria (then a part of France), and the remaining 7 were distributed in government studs across mainland France. The seven were: Dahman, Meenak, Farid, Aslani, Hamdany El Samry, Latif and Maarouf. The magnificent Dahman, to which this blog paid a tribute some time ago, was no doubt the star of this importation. Dahman’s hujja – which I will translate for you soon – tells us that he was bred by the Shammar tribe, from a Dahman sire and a Rabda dam. He stood at Pompadour for twenty-some years, leaving behind many pretty Asil mares like Ninon (picture below), Melinite, Musotte, and Noble Reine, and some excellent stallions, one of which, Minos (x Melisse) was sent to the King of Morocco. Today Minos appears in many modern Moroccan pedigrees. If Dahman was the most striking, Aslani was the French breeders’ favorite. He originally came from the tribe of Bani Sakhr, by a Ubayyan and a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz. Quinchez had to pay the hefty sum of 8,000 Francs to snatch him away from Alexandrian trainer and racehorse owner Michaelides – the same individual who…
The series of articles on the Ma’naghi Hadraji strain – the fourth in the “train of the Week” feature – is not over yet. There is at least one more post I want to write. Yet I feel the urge to talk about something else for a change, so I thought I’d introduce you to the strain of Kuhaylan al-Dunays. Kuhaylan al-Dunays or Kuhaylan Dunaysan is now extinct in Asil Arabians in tail female, and this has been the case for about 30 years. In the late nineteenth century, the strain belonged to the Sba’ah Bedouin tribe, and stallions from that strain could be bred from [shubuw]. I don’t know where the Sba’ah got the strain from, and I don’t know who owned it within Sba’ah. All things for future research. Perhaps the most famous representative of this strain was the stallion Padishah, a chestnut Kuhaylan Dunaysan from the marbat owned by the al-Mi’rabi landlords of the northern Lebanon plain of Akkar. The al-Mir’abi were not Bedouins, but landowners of Kurdish descent, yet their stud was held in high esteem by Bedouins and townsfolk alike. The Dunaysan marbat was known as the marbat of “Dunaysat of ‘Uyun al-Ghizlan”, in reference to the village of same…