Jean-Claude Rajot, who has lately been a frequent visitor of Syria (more on these visits later, including from Jean-Claude himself), sent me these photos of a couple horses in the stud of Hussain al-Ghishm in North Eastern Syria. Both horses are of the Kuhaylan al-Wati strain. The al-Ghishm, a family of ranking shaykhs of the Shammar, have been famously breeding desert-bred Kuhaylan al-Wati for at least five human generations. Their horses are asil and are held in high repute across the desert. I have been meaning to keep these photos for a full entry on the Kuhaylan al-Wati strain, as part of the “Strain of the Week” series, on which I am way behind, but they have been sitting in my hard drive for some time now, and thought, hey, the pictures speak for themselves anyway.. The older stallion is al-Ghishm’s main breeding stallion. I think his name is Amer Hakem but I am not sure. I especially like the younger colt. Of course, even though both horses are in very good health, you shouldn’t compare their condition to that of horses grazing in Europe or America’s lush pastures. PS – this is the best blood in the Syrian desert.…
I first saw Mubarak in 1989 when an old truck disembarked a batch of three horses at the farm of Hisham Ghurayyib in Damascus, Syria. I was told that the truck had just come from the desert area of al-Jazirah, “Upper Mesopotomia”. It was my first encounter with Arabian horses born and raised in the desert. I was 11. My father was breeding Asil Arabians back then and I was familiar with the first generation offspring of desertbred horses, or horses born on the fringes of the desert, but I had never seen the “real thing”. My very first reaction was one of disappointment. Not only were the three horses – a black Kuhaylat al-‘Armush mare, a fleebitten Kuhaylat ibn Mizhir mare, and a chestnut Hamdani Ibn Ghurab stallion – tiny, they were worn out, and extremely thin. They feet were badly damaged, and the hooves were so overgrown that the poor horses could badly walk. Were these the “horses of the desert” (khayl sahraa)? My father had given me his Nikon and asked me to take photos of all the horses, while he was checking them out and asking about their origins. I took a rapid photo shot of the…
Back to El Nasser. An earlier post identified his sire, “Douhaymane El Ajarrache”, as a Dahman (or Duhayman) ‘Amer from the al-‘Ajarrash family of the Shammar Bedouin tribe. “Douhayman El Ajarrache” was actively breeding in 1937, when El Nasser’s dam was bred to him to produce El Nasser in May 1938. Last year – and here is the fresh information I promised – I stumbled on the hujjah (certificate of authenticity) of a desert-bred mare tracing to a stallion that could be “Douhaymane El Ajarrache”. The mare is now dead but she has descendants alive today in Syria, in the very area El Nasser was born, the Upper Jazirah. Here is the full translation of this mare’s hujjah: “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, I, the undersigned, ‘Ali al-Blaybil son of Husayn, from the village of Qartaba born in 1915, from the tribal section of al-Yassar, from the the tribe of Tai, testify by God Most High, that the grey mare which I sold to Mr. Nawaf al-Sulayman al-‘Abd al-Rahman in 1950, is from my horses, called Jilfat Stam al-Bulad; the sire of her dam is the horse of Sa’ud al-‘Ajarrash, a chestnut Dahman ‘Amer, and I did that breeding myself. And Gost is bears witness to what I say. Testifier: Ali Husayn al-Balybil, ID #: […], owner of…
The starting point of any serious discussion on El Nasser should be a short statement in Judith Forbis’ “Authentic Arabian Bloodstock”, p. 137, where she cites a letter from Henri Pharaon, the one-time owner of El Nasser. “Pharaon wrote to me on October 6th, 1970 that El Nasser was born on May 1938, that he had purchased the horse from Cheikh Ahmad Taha, that it was bred by the Gheiheich (Ajarash, El Ajarrache) of Upper Syria, the Jezirah region, and that his sire was Douhayman El Ajarrache of the Tibour tribe.” I saw the letter Pharaon wrote to Forbis, in French. I also saw a copy of the horse’s Lebanese racing papers, which match the information in Pharaon’s letter. Save a few small transcription errors (Tibour is Jibour, for example), and one incorrect analogy (Gheiheich and El Ajarrache are two different entities), all the names in the letter are those of well known and identifiable tribes, clans, and individuals. In September 1997, I asked a 90 year old horse merchant, ‘Abdl al-Qadir Hammami what he knew about all these names. Click here for his answer, which one of several inputs that helped clear El Nasser as an Asil Arabian horse. Hammami did not recall Douhayman El Ajarrache, the sire of El Nasser, but identified the strain of the horse as being Dahman (female…
It was already two in the afternoon when our van stopped at the house of Faddan Ibn ‘Ufaytan, the owner of the marbat of Ma’naghi Hadraji I had heard so much about. We had spent the entire morning looking at the horses of the Sherabiyin, in the villages of Tall al-‘Arab al-Gharbi and Tall al-‘Arab al-Sharqi, formerly Kurdish villages of North-Eastern Syria, now settled by a majority of Arab sheep-herders turned farmers. The modern-day Sherabiyin constitute a loose tribal grouping of Bedouins of humble descent and disparate origins, with a solid reputation as cattle thieves and petty robbers. Bedouins from more noble tribes do not typically hold them in high esteem as a group, and jokes about the Sharabiyin’s dubious sense of truth abound. Our host, Dahir al-Salih was a Sharabi from Tall al-‘Arab al-Gharbi, which everyone called by its more common Kurdish name: Garhok. Dahir’s sons and his extended family made a living by training horses for long distance racing. The traditional sport was quickly transforming into a profitable industry, fueled by rising demand for endurance horses from Damascus and the Gulf countries. Dahir was making good money, and his horses were fat. Our party included two friends from Aleppo, both horsebreeders, Radwan Shabareq and Kamal Abd al-Khaliq, in addition to Hazaim and I. Radwan and Kamal boarded their horses at Dahir’s, and visited…
I found a picture of a Kubaylat Ibn Jlaidan to show you, as well as a writtten certificate of origin (hujjah, plural hujaj). The picture, taken in the mid 198os, does not do justice to the mare, and I hesitated a bit before posting it: it shows a chestnut desert-bred mare in rather poor condition, against a background of miserable mudhouses. These were built in the second half of the twentieth century by impoverished Shammar Bedouins who had finally abandoned their black tents and camel herds, and settled in a relatively barren area of North Eastern Syria (known as the Upper Jazireh), not far from the Iraqi and Turkish borders. Many Shammar clans paid a heavy price for clinging to their nomadic lifestyle till the very end: the more fertile lands had already been grabbed by earlier settlers. The picture also shows the concrete houses which Bedouins started building as of the 1980s, to replace the older mudhouses. Barely an improvement. The mare herself is well built, with a deep girth, high withers, a round hindquarter, a well-sloped shoulder, a nicely set tail, and a pretty head. Her neck is thick though, a defect typical of many of the desert-horses of the twentieth century. The man holding her…