In my book The Arabian Horses of Abbas Pasha: New Discoveries: The 1860 Abbas Pasha Sale List and Other Original Documents (Ansata Publications, 2022), with Kate McLachlan and Moira Walker, I showed how the strain of the Blunt mare Basilisk and hence that of her female descendants, including the Pritzlaff mare Rabanna and her own descendants, is actually Saqlawi Marighi. I made this discovery using two surviving original Arabic sources: the Abbas Pasha Manuscript, and the hujjah (Arabic certificate) of the Blunt mare Meshura, a close relative of Basilisk’s in the female line. The Abbas Pasha Manuscript was translated into English by Gulsun Sherif and beautifully published by Judith Forbis (Ansata Publications, 1993). The Arabic manuscript was then acquired by officials of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and published in Arabic under its original title Usul al-Khayl al-‘Arabiyah. An image copy of the hujjah of the Blunts’ mare Meshura was originally published in the book of her daughter Lady Wentworth, The Authentic Arabian Horse (1945). I published an English translation of it for the first time on this blog in May 2008 (link here), before publishing a slightly revised translation in my book in 2022. In summary, both primary sources…
This morning Lyman Doyle bred Kinza to Jenny Krieg’s magnificent Bashir Al-Dirri for a 2024 foal. They are from two different branches of the Basilisk female line: Bashir traces to the Peraga branch (*Mirage x Slipper), of which he is the last asil representative, while Kinza traces to the better represented Rabanna (Rasik x Banna) branch. Both stallion and mare blend Crabbet (i.e., Doyle), Babson (i.e., old Egyptian) and Pritzlaff (i.e., new Egyptian lines) seamlessly, so they should be a good match. Of course, Basilisk is from Ibn Dirri’s branch of the Saqlawi Marighi strain, as I have shown in the new book “The Arabian Horses of Abbas Pasha”. Below, a recent natural shot of Bashir, from Lyman. He truly is a magnificent horse.
Kate found this “new” photo of the early Crabbet mare Bozra, by Pharaoh out of Basilisk. Both sire and dam were desert-bred, and both of the strain of Saqlawi ibn Dirri — a branch of the Saqlawi Marighi, itself a branch of the Saqlawi Ubayri (not Jadran). This mare would not be out of place in North-Eastern Syria today. The picture comes from Volume 1 of The Standard Cyclopedia of Modern Agriculture and Rural Economy, edited by R. Patrick Wright, and published in 1909, says Kate.
Seven years after this post, it’s time to say goodbye to Ginger (DA Ginger Moon, photo below). She went to Bev Davison, who had been keeping her for me for some time. Bev now has quite a collection of horses with high percentage Abbas Pasha blood from the dam lines of both Gulida and Rabanna, where Ginger will fit in nicely. She also has Ginger’s younger full sister, DA Moon Dancer, who at 21 is yet to produce a foal . It was very rewarding to have owned Ginger. She is a grand mare, with style, power, distinction, a long slender neck, deep jowls, soulful eyes, and an unmatchable shoulder-withers complex. She has produced several good foals over the past years, in addition to those she’s had for her breeder Sheila Harmon, who sold her to me. Ginger came to me with a 2014 black colt by Sheila’s good Babson stallion Serr Serabaar; I gave the colt to Chris Yost who’s been training him for endurance racing. He has grown into a fiery black stallion (video here). Chris also owns the colt’s full sister, DA Ebony Moon. Together they finished the Tevis Cup in 2013 (photo below). I then…