I have been trying to go back in time as far as possible with the pedigrees of modern Syrian Arabian horses, looking for male ancestors as early as the 1930s and 1940s. It’s a difficult task, because the registration of Syrian foundation horses (the first wave in Volume 1, and the second wave in Volume 7) is based on oral testimonies, which seldom go beyond three or four generations, whether in horses or in humans. How many of us can readily remember the name of our paternal great-grandmother? A horse that keeps coming back in the back of the pedigrees of Syrian Arabians is the Dahman Amer of Sa’ud al-‘Ajarrash. In the back of the pedigree of this mare born in 1971, for example, where his owner’s name is misspelt and his strain is misrepresented. The mare’s hujjah shows the right strain and owner for this stallion, her great-grandfather, which was likely active in the 1940s. The same stallion appears as the sire of the Egyptian RAS desert-bred stallion El Nasser. Below a photo of this really fine mare in extreme old age (around 32). She was a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah of the strain of Ibn ‘Amoud. I took this photo…
Basil Jadaan’s gorgeous foundation mare Marwah, a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah of the marbat of Ibn ‘Amud from the Shammar, pictured here with the late Najm al-Himmayri. Najm’s day job was “horseman”, or “horse expert”. Marwah was the dam of Hijab (by Ward al-Mayel), exported to France and the maternal grandam of the French-bred Syrian stallion Menjad Maram Al Baida (by Mokhtar). Najm, together with a few others like Abd al-Qadir Hammami (from Aleppo), ‘Uqlah al-Hanshul (from Deyr), Fawwaz al-Rajab (from Homs), Rashid ‘Issa (from Hama), Shakir al-Salluh (from al-Mayadin), was a fountain of knowledge. He knew all the stories and the all the horses and all the strains. I never met him, but Basil knew him well.
Yaqut is another gorgeous Saqlawiyat Ibn ‘Amud from the breeding of Basil Jadaan, by Shaddad (Marzuq x Aseelah) out of Karawiyah (Odeilan x Marwah). She is a maternal grand-daughter of Marwah and the dam of Basil’s stallion Shadeed. Sadly, this maternal line was lost due to the war in Syria and is now only represented through Shadeed. Yaqut’s sire Shaddad, a Ma’naqi Sbayli, was bred by Kamal Abd al-Khaliq in Aleppo, and his lines blended very well with Basil’s mares. Below, her son Shadeed against the backdrop of Palmyra’s ruins
A grey desert-bred asil stallion. Strain: Saqlawi Jadran, from the marbat of ‘Abd al-Hamid (a.k.a. Hamid) al-Talal al-‘Assaf of the leading family of the Tai tribe, who got the strain from Ibn ‘Amud of Shammar (according to Hamid himself). From the strain that came to Ibn ‘Amud from al-Frijah of al-Ruwalah. Sire: Saqlawi Jadran of Hamid al-Talal of Tai, from the marbat of ibn ‘Amud of Shammar. Dam: a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah of Hamid al-Talal of Tai, from the marbat of ibn ‘Amud of Shammar. This grey horse was standing at stud with the Shaykh of Tai Farhan al-Nayif al-‘Assaf. His nephew Muhammad al-‘Abd al-Razzaq al-Nayif, the current Shaykh of Tai, borrowed him for a while. It is unclear whether he was bred by the Nayif clan of the al-‘Assaf ruling family of Tai or by their cousins the Talal clan. It does not really matter. Hamid al-Talal said that this horse was a Saqlawi Jadran of the marbat of ibn ‘Amud from his horses. According to Hamid al-Talal, his Saqlawis came directly from Hasan Ibn ‘Amud of Shammar in 1928 (verify the date). According to Mahruth ibn Haddal, the ruling Shaykh of the ‘Amarat and paramount Shaykh of the ‘Anazah,…
I finally found a couple good photos of Marwah, the Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah of Ibn Amud. The top photo was taken at the entrance of Basil Jadaan’s old farm. Marwah was sired by the grey Hadban Enzahi of Fazaa al-Hadi al-Jarba, the son of the old bay Hadban Enzahi of Fazaa. Both Hadbans stood in Garhok in North Eastern Syria, and were widely used by the neighboring Arabs. She was small, but otherwise impossible to fault. Her croup and hindquarters were among the best I have ever seen in desert-bred Arabian horses. NOTE: Please, if you feel the urge to share on social media, link to the entire blog article, but don’t download and share as if the photo were yours. I don’t want Facebook to own these photos or others.
I spent the morning digging through old photos, which also bring back stories. I like this photo so much. It features a Tai Bedouin horse breeder, Muhammad al-‘Abd al-Sulayman al-Rhayyil, putting one of his toddler sons on his Saqlawiyah mares near Al-Qamishli, North Eastern Syria. The photo belongs to the sons, now grown men in their thirties and fourties. I believe it is from the early 1980s. The mare is a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah from the breedeing of al-Rhayyil. He or his father obtained what would have been the granddam of this mare in 1952 from the family of the Shaykh of the Tai, Abd al-Hamid (a.k.a Hamid) al-Talal al-‘Abd al-Rahman. The latter got the line from the family of the owner of the marbat, Hasan al-‘Amud, the Shaykh of the ‘Amud section of the Northern Shammar. According to ‘Abbas al-Azzawi (in his encyclopedic book “The Tribes of Iraq”, in Arabic), who quotes the Shaykh of the ‘Amarat Bedouins Mahruth ibn Haddhal, the ‘Amud had obtained the prized original mare in war from the Frijah section of the Ruwalah. This piece of information makes this line one of the most authenticated Saqlawi lines in the desert, because the Frijah are the…