I am a big fan of the breeding program of Terri Somers at Royal Blue Arabians in New Jersey. Terri is the owner of the striking grey Ma’naghi Sbayli stallion RB Bellagio (photo below, in harness, by Arabi Fadh Onyx x Sirrunade by Faaryan), and has been breeding classic and athletic horses of this Ma’naghi Sbayli strain for some years now (check out her story here). Her horses trace all the way back to Haidee, the Ma’naghiyah Sbayliyah mare of Sulayman Ibn Mirshid, the leader of the Bedouin tribe of Qumusah – no less. Haidee was bought by Major R. Upton and taken to the UK in 1874; her daughter Naomi was then exported to the USA in 1887 where the line bred on. The young stallion [okay, Terri tells me he is a gelding not a stallion. Tood bad] pictured below is one of the most promising yet bred by Terri. His name is GTS Hawa El Adhar (RB Bellagio x SS Fajulya by PRI Saqlawi Suud) and his pedigree is a tapestry weaving together several 1960s American Arabian breeding programs the likes of Jane Ott’s, Charles Krausnick’s and Joseph Zoran (note the four crosses to Julyan and hence Gulastra, and the multiple crosses…
In 1874 and again in 1875, Captain Roger Upton traveled to the Syrian desert and purchased a number of Arabian horses from the Bedouin tribe of Sba’ah, which he imported to Great Britain. One of the mares he bought for a Mr. Sandeman, was the Ma’naghiyah Sbailiyah Haidee. Another was the mare Kesia (I), which he bough for a certain Mr. Henry Chaplin. Kesia (I) was a Kuhaylah Nawwaqiyah, sired by a Kuhaylan Nawwaq, bred by the Qumusah section of the Saba’ah Bedouin tribe, which owns the marbat. The head of the Qumusah, Shaykh Sulayman Ibn Mirshid put his seal on the mare’s hujjah, which makes this mare very precious. Kesia (I) came to Great Britain in foal to a desert-bred Saqlawi al-‘Abd stallion, and produced a filly Kesia (II). The dam and the filly are two of the few mares of the Nawwaq strain to have been imported to a Western country – another one is *Malouma. The tail female of Kesia II no longer exists in asil breeding anywhere. However, her great-grandson Segario (Nimr x Shabaka, out of Kesia II) is still represented in asil pedigrees in the USA, where his dam was imported from Great Britian by Colonel Spencer Borden. Today, the blood of Kesia survives in…
The dark chestnut stallion Shaykh al-‘Arab is one of the foundation stallions of the (now defunct) Lebanese Asil Arabian horse breeding. Born in the desert somewhere between Hims and Palmyra, he was bred by Rakan ibn Mirshid, Shaykh of the Gomussah section of the Sba’ah Bedouin tribe in the 1930s, then sold to Beirut for racing. His sire was a desert-bred Ma’naghi Sbayli, the stallion of ‘Awdah al-Mis’ir of Sba’ah, and his dam a ‘Ubayyat al-Usayli’, one of the best marabit (pl. of marbat, i.e., desert stud) of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak among the Sba’ah tribe. [Other equally good marabit of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak with the Sba’ah tribe ainclude ‘Ubayyan ibn Duwayhiss, ‘Ubayyan al-‘Awbali, ‘Ubayyan ibn Thamdan, and ‘Ubayyan ibn ‘Alyan, the latter being the strain of the Blunt import Queen of Sheba, then owned by Beteyen Ibn Mirshid, Rakan’s ancestor.] In Beirut, the horse was successfully raced by Henri Pharaon under the name of Shaykh al-‘Arab (a reference to his prestigious breeder), and then given to the Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture as a breeding stallion. Shaykh al-‘Arab’s sons and daughters became good race horses, so much so that veteran Syrian racehorse owner Ali al-Barazi recalled attending race in Beirut where the top…