A blog on desert arabian horses, past, present and future
Another desert scene from the collection of French enthnographer Robert Montagne shows the tents of town merchants that use to stay among camel herding Bedouins on a seasonal basis. They would sell them the necessities that the desert environment could not produce: sugar, tea, coffee, dates, rice, spices, metal utensils, etc. Bedouins, their leaders in … Read more
A nice desert scene from the collection of Robert Montagne at the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris, showing sheep herders in the Syrian desert, around 1930
From the collection of Jesuit priest, pilot and archaeologist Antoine Poidebard at the French Musee du Quai Branly comes this photo of a group of sheep herders from the Shammar tribe. The back of the photo has the following writing in French: “Berger bédouin de la tribu Chammar / Haute Djéziré / Cliché Poidebard”- manuscrit … Read more
From the collection of French anthropologist Robert Montagne at the French Musee du Quai Branly comes this photograph of a vivid desert scene showing a desert well and a camel (in the back) pulling waterskins out of the well.
A gorgeous photo from yet another collection at the Musee du Quai Branly, this time that of famed French anthropologist Robert Montagne, who studied Bedouin society and culture. The title in French is: “Desert de Syrie — Reunion dans la tente d’un grand chef bedouin de la tribu des Rwalla”. The young man to the … Read more
Also from the Varliette body of photographs at the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris comes this beautiful photo of a camel-herding tribe marching. The palanquin of the daughter of the chief of the tribe is in the middle of the picture. The photo is also associated with Albert de Boucheman’s masterpiece “Materiel de la … Read more
From the Varliette collection at the French Musee du Quai Branly comes this stunning photo of a “Tribe Marching” (Tribu en ordre de marche). It was taken between 1920 and 1934. The photo seems to have been published in Albert de Boucheman’s foundational study “Matériel de la vie bédouine”, of which I own a rare … Read more
From the Varliette collection of photographs at the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris comes this photo taken between 1920 and 1934 of a Bedouin sheep herders’ encampment near Palmyra in Syria, titled “Campement de Bedouins Moutonniers”. Sheep herding tribes present in this area and at that time include the ‘Umur, the Fawa’irah, the Lhayb, … Read more
Title: From the same Jacques Edinger collection as the earlier photos on this blog, housed at the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris comes this photo titled “Chameau entravé de la tribu des Rwalla.”
From the same collection at the Musee du Quai Branly as the pictures in the earlier posts.
I found this family tree of the Shammar Bedouin clans from the section of the tribe known as Zawba’ (Zoba). It can be found online on an Arabic genealogy website. Most Shammar genealogies were put together by Western travelers, often basing themselves on more or less reliable Bedouin informants. This one was compiled by a Syrian … Read more
When Arabia’s Bedouins tribes engaged in warfare with one another, mares were typically chosen over stallions as war mounts. A number of these war mares found their way to the hands of Western buyers like Homer Davenport and the Blunts, and became part of the foundation stock of Arabian horse breeding in the West. Â Below … Read more
Check this feature out on the Bedouin Heritage Project website.
Mustafa al-Jabri is a longtime Syrian breeder of desert Arabian horses from Aleppo, Syria, and a beloved family friend. Â Mustafa’s stud near Aleppo, which has up to 100 mares and two dozen stallions, is one of the most highly regarded studs in Syria. Over the past decades, Mustafa spent extensive amounts of time with Bedouins … Read more
Here’s an interesting and well-referenced analysis on the social transformations of Bedouin society in Jordan spanning 150 years from the middle of the XIXth society until today, from Rami Zurayk’a blog Land and People. Rami teaches at the Faculty of Agriculture of the American University of Beirut (my alma mater).
Bien que je suive très attentivement et très régulièrement les articles de ce blog merveilleux , je me rends compte avoir laissé passer de nombreuses occasions d’apporter commentaires et précisions. Je m’empresse donc de réparer cette négligence en ce début d’année 2010. Tout d’abord , je m’étonne de la perplexité qu’a suscité la petite maxime … Read more
Even since I found Caroyln’s McIntyre’s blog “Girl Solo in Arabia”, I have been reading it avidly to the point of neglecting everything else. Just take a deep breath, click and start reading. You’ll emerge from it three hours later, with red eyes, but the journey it takes you on is worth every minute of … Read more
I just bought this book, “From Camel to Truck: the Bedouin in the Modern World“, by Dawn Chatty, one of the foremost authorities on nomadic societies and migrations. I will tell you what I think when I read it.
Wilfred Thesiger (1910-2003) is known as the last of the great Western explorers and travelers. He was the first European to have crossed the heart of the lifeless Empty Quarter (al-Rub’ al-Khali), the great South-East Arabian sand desert. Â Before him, Bertram Thomas and Harry St-John Bridger Philby traveled around the edges of that desert, which … Read more
The video below was shot in Qatar, and the rider is a Bedouin from Bani Hajar, a large branch of the tribe of Qahtan. This way of riding is called “Bdaawi riding”. I believe – but I am not sure – that the mare he is riding is from the from the horses exported to Qatar from … Read more
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The archives of Gertrude Bell, sometimes referred to as the “Uncrowned Queen of Iraq” ( how I hate that title!), are at Newcastle University in the UK. If you do not know who Gertrude Bell is, or simply wish to know more about her, then click here. The archives include this first photo of a Shammar … Read more
The mountain region of ‘Asir, in south western Saudi Arabia is one of the areas of the Middle East that fascinates me the most. Historically it was part of Yemen until 1934, I think. I have recently bought Thierry Mauger’s beautiful book, “Undiscovered Asir”, and recently Pure Man sent me this video of the moutain ‘Asir … Read more
A famous verse from a long poem by Beduin prince and poet Imru’ al-Qays al-Kindi (501-544 AD), where he describes his Arabian horse: Lahu aytala zabyin wa-saaqa na’amatin wa-irkha’u sarhanin wa-taqribu tatfuli In English (translation mine): “He has the flanks of an antelope, the legs of an ostrich, the trot of a wolf and the gallop of a young … Read more
Below are three beautiful verses from famed pre-Islamic Arab poet al-Nabigha al-Dhubyani (535 AD -604 AD) about the desert Arabian horses of the Bedouin tribe of Asad. Al-Nabigha praises the tribe in this poem, and part of this exercise consists in praising its horses: fihim banatu al-‘asjadiyyi wa-lahiqin, wuruqan marakiluha min al-midmari yatahallabu al-ya’didu min … Read more
Question : Quand a eu lieu la dernière razzia en Syrie ? Réponse : La dernière razzia a eu lieu en 1943, des Shammar sur les Sba’ah. Ils sont partis d’ici (Hassakè ou al-Hassakah) avec 100 cavaliers le matin. Ils sont tombés sur le campement Sba’ah distant de 40 miles, à midi. Tous les cavaliers … Read more
In 1997, Jens Sannek and Bernd Loewenherz published what is perhaps the most interesting book to be written in recent times by Western travelers looking for Arabian horses in their original homeland. Traveling with a party of about 14 people which included French preservation breeders Jean-Claude Rajot, Louis Bauduin and Benoit Mauvy, as well as several young children, and joined by Syrian guides and … Read more
I just finished reading the first volume of “Cities of Salt”, the five-volume masterpiece of the prominent Arab novelist Abdelrahman Munif. I really recommend that you read it, if world literature is your cup of tea.. An English translation exists, by Peter Theroux, and so does a German one. There might be a French one too, published by Sindbad/Actes Sud edition, but I couldn’t find … Read more
The Bedouin tribe of Al Murrah has been immortalized by Wilfred Thesiger‘s gripping classic “Arabian Sands” (1959). If you want to have a less romanticized account of the life of this South Arabian Bedouin tribe, then you ought to read this book, by Donald Powell Cole of the American University in Cairo. Yet Cole’s book was written in the early … Read more
[This is the third in a series of four posts on the Ma’anaghi Hadraji marbat of Ibn ‘Ufaytan. Click here and here to access the first and second posts.] We reached the village of Ibn ‘Ufaytan [update July 17 2008: the village is Buthat al-Taqch] in the early afternoon, after having taken a dirt road that … Read more
The following piece appeared in Al Khamsa Arabians III (2008) as a box, and is reproduced here to answer this important question. “Certificates of origin (singular hujjah, plural hujjaj) of horses written in the Arab world follow a clear and uniform pattern that seldom varies. The first part of these certificates is always a religious … Read more
A hujjah (plural hujaj) is usually a certificate of authenticity for Arabian horses. But it can be much more than that. Some hujaj offer a detailed snapshot of the lifestyle and mindset of its authors. The hujjah of the Blunt desert import Meshura is a case in point. Take a look at its translation, here. It will be … Read more
We don’t know for sure, but it is possible to list a number of hypotheses. One hypothesis has to do with the lifestyle of the Bedouins who created these strains. Bedouins were nomads who roamed the steppes of Arabia searching for food and water for their flocks. Migrating Bedouin clans and families crossed paths around wells and pastures, mingled there … Read more
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 … Read more
If anyone of you is in the mood for some serious reading about Bedouin tribes in modern day Arabia, then William Lancaster’s The Rwala Bedouin Today is the book to read. I found it a rather easy read for an academic book that delves deep into into anthropological theory.  It describes in detail how the Rwala creatively used … Read more
Anyone interested in objective (vs. romanticized) knowledge of Bedouins in the 20th century needs to read this book. The author, Jibrail Jabbur, a Syrian, was born at the turn of the twntieth century in a town on the fringes of the desert, near Palmyra; he studied in Princeton, NJ, and went on to become a Professor of Arabic literature at … Read more