I took these two rare photos of ‘Abeerah, the black Shuwaymat Sabbah at the farm of Basil Jad’aan in 1992. Sired by the dark Ma’naqi Hadraji of the ‘Ufaytan clan of the Shammar, and out of a grey mare by the Saqlawi Jadran of Farhan al-Nayif of the Tai, and out of a black Shuwaymah by the ‘Ubayyan Suhayli of the leader of the Jubur, ‘Abeerah was one of the most beautiful desert-bred mares. She was much prized by Basil, and give him a beautiful black filly by Mokhtar, which he named al-Qahirah. ‘Abeerah traced to the horses of Sfuq al-Rahbi (al-Jarba), who obtained the damline from the leaders of the Bu-Mutaywit (a sub-tribe of the Juhaysh between Sinjar and Tall ‘Afar) who in turn got her (again) from the Jarbah leaders of the Shammar, who owned the strain. ‘Abeerah (alt. spelling Obeirah) was the dam of Khaldee, a horse present in almost every Syrian pedigree today, by the seal brown desert-bred Kuhaylan Ibn Jlaidan sire al-Asda’ (Khaldee was not by the Hadban Enzahi stallion Burhan, his official pedigree notwithstanding).
This year I will be using for the first time frozen semen from one of the Syrian stallions now in France. I chose Arnault Decroix’s Dahjani Al Arab (same prefix as my horses, by chance). He is a Kuhaylan Da’jaani from the old Syrian desert bloodlines I have known and loved for three decades (sheesh!). He traces directly to the Kuhaylan Da’jaani marbat of Ahmad al-Taha, the Shaykh of the large Juhaysh tribe in Northern Iraq. This is the same breeder as El Nasser’s, the Kuhaylan Da’jani which Egypt’s Royal Agricultural Society (RAS) used in the 1940s. These bloodlines are quite prized for racing in Syria today. Just look at the striking similarity between El Nasser and Dahjani Al Arab, 80 years apart.