Amr Allah al-Hafi is my three year old stallion of my breeding, a desert bred Hamdani Simri, sired by al-Sarim (#1820 in the Saudi Arabian Stud Book) and out of al-Majmulah (#3164 in the same).
This morning Troy Patterson of Texas sent a few pictures of a yearling colt of his. The colt is by the Ubayyan stallion Zairafan (Alwal Bahet x Maarah by Taam-Rud) and out of the Canadian-bred Hamdaniyah Simriyah mare Saideh (Bahri x Qaisumeh by Qaisum). Below is one such picture. In the USA and Canada, these horses are called BLUE STAR (with the caps). While I don’t adhere to this denomination (BLUE STAR = no recorded Ma’anaghi strain in the pedigree), and don’t buy into the underlying assumptions (e.g., recorded Ma’anaghi blood = not pure) behind such a denomination, I love these horses, and value them for what they are: real horses straight from the heart of Arabia Deserta, straight from the stables of the House of Saud. The antecedents of these horses were in their original desert homeland as late as the 1960s. I feel that horses such as this yearling would bring new strength and stamina to many of the older lines of asil Arabians (e.g., the Egyptian lines).
This is Nauwas, a chestnut mare born in 1967. Her sire is the Hamdani stallion Al-Khobar (Ibn Fadl x *Al Hamdaniah), and her dam is the desert-bred mare *Muhaira, a ‘Ubayyah from the horses of Prince Saud ibn ‘Abdallah ibn Jalawi Aal Saud. Her pedigree is interesting because the sire line is Egyptian, and all the mares are desert-bred imports to the USA from Central and Eastern Arabia. Fadl sired the stallion Ibn Fadl, out of the desert-bred mare *Turfa; Ibn Fadl in turned sired Al-Khobar (photo below), out of the desert-bred mare *Al-Hamdaniah (the “bloody shouldered mare”, who was featured in one of the first entries of this blog); the beautiful Al Khobar sired Nauwas, out of the desert-bred *Muhaira. You can’t get better bloodlines than these, so noble, and so close to the source. I love this photo of Nauwas. It blends two of the characteristics of the true Arabian mare: the sweet, soft look of a new mother; and the strength of a war mare. This is a mare I wish I had seen, and owned. PS: I just noticed, after publishing this post that Nauwas bears some resemblance in her body structure, her ears, and the…
I bought back the stallion Taj al-Muluk after having sold him at age 2. His strain is Ubayyan al-Suyayfi, his sire is the old Hamdani stallion Haleem (Saudi Arabian Stud Book #862); his dam is al-Hafna (#1915 in the same), a daughter of al-Barraq and Ghazwa. Here is a recent 6 minute video, the stallion looks at his best as of minute 2.30. You can see a video of his sire Haleem by clicking here.
There have been interesting discussions along many of this blog’s topics over the past two weeks, and I am having a hard time catching up with all of these. I owe readers a number of new entries on these topics, and I will get to these in the next week. Jaspre, a son of Roda Still, how many of you knew that there was still a thin tail female to *Roda out there? I vaguely remember reading somewhere that Margaret Shuey bred a daughter from her, Sunny Acres Fantasy, by the very handsome stallion Ibn Hanad, but did not know that this line was carried on until now. Check out the pedigree of this young (2005) mare, for instance. True, the line is now diluted in a sea of new Egyptian breeding, but if that’s the only way to keep these old lines alive, why not… (you’re getting an insight on some of my biases here) Anyway, isn’t it amazing to see that line managed to survive? I wonder if this was by chance, or if there was a concerted effort to preserve it.. There is even a chance of a nicer, more diverse female line to *Roda having survived,…
Just felt like posting this photo of the stallion Dhahran (Sirecho x Turfara) when he was at the Sheets’ Arabian Stud Farms (ASF). The photo is from the collection of pictures the late Billy Sheets gave me. Dhahran’s tail female goes back to the mare *Turfa, a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz from the horses of the House of Saud, stationed at their stud in al-Khurmah, and gifted to the King of England, who then sent her to Canada during WWII, where she was bought by Henri Babson of Chicago. An absolute favorite of mine, *Turfa is a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz, sired by a Ubayyan al-Hamrah, as per her registration information in the Arab Horse Society Studbook of the UK, Volume VI [Correction: as per the letter sent by Brigadier Gen. Anderson, then Secretary General of the UK’s Arab Horse Society, to Henry Babson]. Everything else that has been said about her strain being ‘Ubayyan is completely unsubstantiated, as I will try to shoe in a next entry. The blood of *Turfa is just so precious. I really feel that the more *Turfa in a horse, the better the horse, as the fine specimen pictured below show. Both are 25% *Turfa.
Pure man just sent me this small photo of the masculine stallion Al Fateh, a Ubayyan from Saudi Arabia, by the stallion El Basheer, a Suwayti, out of the Ubayyah mare Al-Sayida. I like this horse.
… and this is Mazfufah (Haleem x Ma’zufah), who is Matrubah’s full sister. Matrubah was featured in an another post I wrote earlier today. Pure Man, who sent me Mazfufah’s picture, also told me the two mares are almost total look-alikes. Of course, one needs to recognize that Matrubah’s picture was taken by a professional, while her sister’s was taken by an occasional photographer, and shows the mare in an ungroomed condition.
Now this one is asil. This is al-Sakb, a desert-bred Hamdani from Saudi Arabia, bred and owned by Pure Man. His sire: Suhayl, an Ubayyan; his dam: Wajjabah, a Hamdaniyah, by the stallion al-Harir, an Ubayyan out of Wassamah, by Qays, a Suwayti.
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 fox.” “He” refers to the poet’s horse, of course. Below is a picture of an Arabian wolf (Canis Lupus Arabs) from the Saudi Arabian desert reserve of Uruq Bani Ma’arid.
This magnificent white stallion is not a show horse but a desert bred stallion that took part in a halter competition organized in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia. His name is Ruzayq, and he was sired by Haleem, a Hamdani. Ruzayq stands at the Saudi government stud in Dirab. He traces to Saqlawi mares bred by the Bani Sakhr tribe (now settled in both Jordan and Saudi Arabia). The Shaykhs of this tribe, Aal Fayiz, were famous for their Saqlawis. Thanks Pure Man for forwarding this beautiful photo. What a horse. What a HORSE.
I have written a lot about the Kuhaylan Krush strain recently, more particularly on the branch of that strain that has been associated with the Dawish leaders of the Mutayr tribe. The mares Dafina (to the UK in 1926) and probably El Kahila (to Egypt in 1927) are both representatives of this branch, and so are the three Blunt imports to Sheykh Obeyd: the mares Aida, and Jauza and the stallion Krush. Below are two modern day representatives of that famed strain. The two mares Sharidah and Ma’yufah were bred at the stud of Prince Turki Ibn Fahd Ibn Muhammad Aal Saud in Najd, Saudi Arabia, then exported to the Nujaifi stud in Mosul, Iraq. PS — I wonder what an mtDNA test would show, if samples from these two mares were compared to the Dafina and El Kahila lines, or to some of the Krush Al-Baida horses with the Shammar Bedouins in Syria. The latter are known to trace to the “white Krush” of Ammash Raja al-Dawish of Mutayr, through a mare that had gone to Ibn Rashid. Read more about the Krush of Shammar in Syria here.
Strain: Ubayyat al-Suyayfi.
Another picture of the masculine Hamdani stallion Haleem, a senior stallion at the Stud of Prince Turki ibn Fahd ibn Muhammad ibn Abd al-Rahman Aal Saud at Zurayq, near al-Kharj in Saudi Arabia. Prince Turki’s grandfather Muhammad is the brother of King Abd al-Aziz, the founder of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. You’ve already seen a video of Haleem here.
This is old Nader, a senior stallion at the Dirab government stud in Saudi Arabia, a Hamdani Simri by Eidan (# 263 in the Saudi Studbook) out of Nadra (#400). Nader is from that same Hamdani line that was kept at the Royal Saudi stud of al-Kharj, and from which several of the 1960s desert-bred imports to the USA (*Amiraa, *Halwaaji, *Rudann) trace to. Notice that this would mean that these imports are Hamdani Simri, too as a result. Only the Hamdani strain information was available before. Pure Man (translated from Arabic by Edouard)
A previous entry (here) on the strain of Kuhaylan Krush al-Baida mentioned the mare Dafina, a 1921 Kuhaylat al-Krush, sent by King Abd al-‘Aziz Aal Saud to Lady Wentworth of the UK in 1927, through Mr Gilbert Clayton, the British Representative in what was not yet called the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Dafina was apparently bred by the Mutayr tribe, and sired by a Kuhaylan al-Krush from the same marbat. An asil line tracing to Dafina in the tail female survived until at least the mid 1950s, when the last asil mare was bred: this was the oddly-named and heavily inbred Foum Tattoene (by Flame of Reynall x Yaronda by Flame of Reynall), born in 1954. Had it survived, this precious line would have also safeguarded rare lines to the Blunt desert imports Jilfa (a Jilfat Sattam al-Bulad from the Shammar), Ashgar (a Saqlawi Ubayri from the Shammar), and Meshura (a Saqlawiyat ibn Derri from the Anazah). Below is another picture of the regal Dafina, from an old article on the Krush strain, (fraught with faulty assumptions, by the way, including the wrong assumption that the Lebanon-bred Krush Halba is the Blunt Sheykh Obeyd desert stallion Krush):
What you have below is a very precious and informative document: It is clipped from an Arabic horse magazine article, a scanned copy of which was sent to me by Pure Man. It sheds light on Arab royalty’s regular practice of sending each others horses as gifts. The letter, from King abd al-Aziz Aal Saud of Saudi Arabia, to Shaykh Hamad ibn Issa Aal Khalifa, ruler of Bahrain, mentions the former’s awareness with the latter’s loss of the treasured Dahman strain. It also mentions that the father of the King of Bahrain had once offered a Dahmah mare to the father of the Saudi King. Finally, it offers to send the daughter of that mare, by a Hamdani stallion, to the rule of Bahrain as a replacement. You can read a short account of that story here. The letter starts with the usual blessing, “In the name of God Most Merciful and Compassionate”. To the left, there is the number of the correspondence item, and the date of the correspondence. Only the year is legible: 1356 Hijri, which is our 1936. To the right, in elaborate calligraphy, there is the mention: “The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Diwan [Office] of his Majesty the King.”…
… and this is Ruzayq (Haleem x Zahria), one of the Suwayti [May 16th correction by Edouard: Ruzayq is not Suwayti but a Saqlawi originally tracing to the horses of the tribe of Bani Sakhr] stallions at the government stud in Dirab. Those of you who have been following this blog over the recent weeks are already familiar with Haleem the Hamdani stallion in the video. For an additional picture of the stallion Ruzayq, click here, and scroll down.
One more nice picture coming through “Pure Man” is that of Al-Jahfaa, a desert bred mare from Saudi Arabia. She is a Suwaytiyah by strain, by the Suwayti stallion El Bashir and out of the mare Al Hanfaa.
I am honored to introduce “Pure Man” as the latest addition to the growing list of the “Daughter of Wind” guest bloggers. Of all the distinguished ladies and gentlemen who have contributed (and still contribute for some) to this blog from time to time, “Pure Man” is the one I know least. In fact, I know about him just as much as most of you do. I know that he is a citizen of the Kindgom of Saudi Arabia, that he breeds desert-breds (real ones, not Egyptians labeled as “desert Arabians” for marketing purposes), and that he hails from the one of the largest, most noble and most powerful Bedouin tribes of Najd. I know he has the courage and the intellectual honesty to speak his mind, and that he is a straight shooter. I know that he comes from a civilization _ the Bedouin civilization – where being politically correct is certainly less valued than being honest and true to ones beliefs. His name and the name of his tribe will not be disclosed here, to protect him, unless he chooses otherwise. His opinions – and I do not necessarily agree with all of them — and his style have…
This is Ahazeej, an asil desert-bred Ubayyat al-Suyayfi from Saudi Arabia. Sire: Qais (by Safeer x Mohret Qais by Bahar), a Suwayti; dam: Azheeq, a Ubayyat al-Suyayfi.
“Pure Man” told me about Jafil (El Basheer x Hadha), an asil Arabian stallion from Saudi Arabia, of the ‘Ubayyan al-Suyayfi strain (that’s how it’s pronounced by the way) that was gifted to a European Royalty. He doesn’t know the name of the King, but thinks it’s either the Netherlands or Belgium or Luxemburg. If someone from any of these countries happens to read this entry (Patrick?), it would be great if they could look him up. I would also try looking in Denmark and the othern nordic kingdoms. It would be great news if Jafil, who was bred by Prince Turki ben Fahd ben Mohammad, would be made available at public stud. If anyone knows about Jafil, please feel free to let us know.
By now you know where the photos come from. This is Al-Hazim (Al Wadah x Khuzama) from the King Abd al-Aziz Arabian Horse Center in Dirab, Saudi Arabia. His strain is Kuhaylan Abu Arqub. By the way, the photo of Al-Hazim’s sire Al Wadah, also an Abu Arqub, grace one of the volumes of the Asil Arabian Club, which means that the Dirab horses horses have the European label “Asil”. “Pure Man” can you tell us where the Abu Arqub horses of Dirab came from?
The string of beautiful photos through “pure man” continues. I am glad readers are enjoying it, because one of the main objectives of this blog is to make the case for the desert Arabian horse in its homeland today, and a picture is worth a thousand words. This is ‘Ajibah, a Hamdaniyah, daughter of Haleem. Haleem was featured in a video in an earlier post.
I finally had a chance to look at the lengthy section on the strain of al-Shuhayb in “Kitab al-Usul”, which is Saudi historian Hamad al-Jasir’s edition of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript (the copy of Khayd al-Din al-Zarakli). Al-Shuhayb is the strain of the beautiful mare Sarkhah featured here. I will provide you with a detailed account at some other point, but for now suffice it to say that Kuhaylan al-Shuhayb is a branch of Kuhaylan Ibn Wabera (rather, the two are one and the same strain), and that the strain belongs to the ‘Ajman Bedouin tribe. The strain originated with the Sharifs (descendents of the Prophet) of the Yemeni region of al-Jawf (Jawf al-Yaman), which is as far south in the Arabian Peninsula that Arabian horses can get. It’s so nice to see that this strain is still in existence.
Another photo coming through “pure man” is that of the beautiful asil Arabian mare Al-‘Aadiyah (Al Wadah x Afaf), from the King ‘Abd al-‘Aziz government stud of Dirab, in Saudi Arabia. Al-‘Aadiyah is a Kuhaylah Umm ‘Arqub by strain. I recall reading somewhere that this particular strain had been owned by the Saud Royal Family for a long time. Other, separate branches of the strain are still present in Syria too. Enjoy!
Since we are talking about Ubayyan al-Suyayfi, here are a couple pictures, also from Pure Man, of another stallion from this srain. This is Taj El Melook, by Haleem (Saudi Stud Book #862) who was featured here, and out of Al Hafna (Saudi Stud Book #1915). Since we are talking about Ubayyan al-Suyayfi, here are a couple pictures, also from pure man, of another stallion from this srain. This is Taj El Melook, by Halem (Saudi Stud Book #862) and the horse feature here, and in this video, and out of Al Hafnaa (Saudi Stud Book #1915).
Today is a happy day. Over the past few days, a string of photos and videos has been coming from “Pure Man”, with awesome images of desert Arabian stallions. I mean, real desert Arabian horses. Born there, raised there. A delight to watch as they move and prance. “Where are the mares?” I thought. Well, here they are. This is one of the most beautiful desert mares I have ever seen. Some months ago, I put in a list of my 10 ten favorite mares, a list that had taken years to coalesce in its present form. That was before I see this picture of Sarkhah (Qais a Suwayti x Sahwah a K. al-Shuhayb), a stunning Kuhaylat al-Shuhayb from Saudi Arabia. This mare instantly skyrocketed on top of my all time favorites. Wow. I confess knowing close to nothing about the strain of Kuhaylat al-Shuhayb. I know that the late Saudi Arabian erudite Hamad al-Jasir, in his original Arabic edition of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript (the Khayr al-Din al-Zarakli copy, not the Gulsun Sherif copy; sorry to get so technical on you guys, but this matters) has dedicated many pages to Kuhaylat al-Shuhayb, or al-Shuhaybah. I never bothered to read the section on al-Shuhaybah,…
Below is the hujjah (authenticity certificate) of the desert-bred stallion Taamri, imported to the USA by Sam Roach in 1960. Hujjah translation mine (cf. Al Khamsa III, p. 216). In the name of God, the Most Merciful and Compassionate, City of Riyadh, Region of Najd Kingdom of Saudi Arabia 12 Rajab 1376 corresponding to February 12th 1957 I, the undersigned, Mutlaq al-‘Atawi, supervisor of the Royal Stables of the Horses of his Royal Highness King Saud Ibn ‘Abdul ‘Aziz, declare that the following pieces of information are true The horse “Tamri” and his characteristics are as follows: The color of his body is “Tamri [“date-colored”, from ‘tamr’, date]; and his mane and tail are red; and he has a star and a white spot on his forehead, and a thin line of white hair on his left shoulder, and a small line of white hair toward the end of his mane; and a dotted line of white hair on both sides of his belly, exactly on the place of the strap, and a white hoof on his rear hind leg; as to his other hoofs, they are dark-colored, and he has a marking in the shape of an _] in the…
Three desert-bred stallions from Najd, a Kuhaylan (called Namar), a Hamdani (called Robban), and a Ubayyan (called Hardane) are featured in this recent Youtube video. I wonder what marbat of Kuhaylan Namar is from.
Part 1 introduced the young stallion Menjad Maram al-Baida, whose sire and dam were imported from Syria to France. Some people would refer to this horse as a “Straight Syrian”. I don’t like this phrase, nor any term with “Straight”. Others who know more than I do don’t seem to like it either. [Incidentally I wonder whether the descendants of the Arabian horses imported to the USA by H. Davenport would qualify. And the Tunisian, Algerian and French horses too. All these folks imported most if not all their horses from Syria]. We had left off with Manjam’s maternal great granddam Marwah, a Saqlawiyah Jadaniyah straight from the marbat of Ibn Amud, arguably the most authentic desert-bred marbat of Saqlawi Jadran in the second half of the twentieth century. More about this marbat in a subsequent entry dedicated to this strain. I first saw Marwah at Basil’s in 1990, when I took the (rather poor) picture above. A very small mare (you can tell from the way her handler is holding her bridle in the picture), with a strong girth, high withers, a very short back, a flat croup, a round hindquarter, she conveyed an overall appearance of roundness and sturdiness that was reminiscent of the descriptions I had read of…
Western Arabian horse breeders are relatively familiar with the Arabian horse strain of Kuhaylan al-Krush (also known as Kuhaylan Krushan) through a variety of sources. A specific branch of this strain, Krush al-Baida (“the white Krush”) will be the subject of the sixth part of the “Strain of the Week” series (which, by the way, is starting to look like a “Strain of the Month” in disguise). For now, I’ll start the discussion with a brief resfresher of the encounters between Arabian horse breeders and the more general Krush family (beyond Krush al-Baida). Feel free to pitch in with feedback in the comments section of this blog post if you noticed that I omitted a reference or more, or visit this site, which also offers an overview (with pictures) of the main Krush lines around the world. The early fame of Kuhaylan al-Krush was certainly associated with the quest of the Egyptian Viceroy Abbas Pasha I for Asil horses from this strain. Several sources (or perhaps one source that was quoted several times, will look that up later) tell us that Abbas’s quest eventually failed, and that Bedouin owners of Krush mares refused to sell them, or give them…
A lot of “Photos of the Day” these days.. it is easier to keep a quasi daily writing routine when posting a photo with a short comment, as opposed to posting in the “Strain of the Week” series, which requires me to access research material, old and new.. Don’t take this as a sign of laziness however, it is just that work has been keeping me busy recently, or busier than usual. Today’s photo is about La Tisa, a gift from Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud, (then Sultan of Najd and Hjaz) to Charles R. Crane, a noted Arabist and philantropist, and of the two main actors of the King-Crane Commission, which was to have such an impact on post-World War One Middle Eastern politics. La Tisa was imported to the USA in 1931. A year later, the Sultanate of Najd and Hijaz became the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Crane had helped the USA secure some of its earliest oil concessions in Saudi Arabia, so if you are feeling the heat at the gas pump and ran out of people to blame, you can just blame it on him.. Joking aside, the gift of that mare was probably a small “thank you” gesture from Ibn Saud to Crane, for brokering some of these oil deals.…
According to the Abbas Pasha Manuscript, Kuhaylan al-Mimrah was one of the favorite strains of Abbas Pasha, the man who ruled Egypt from 1848 to 1854. The Manuscript contains an interesting account of the history of the strain. Unfortunately, it assumes a good deal of prior knowledge of Arabian medieval history, without which the story’s full significance cannot be grasped. Here is a summary of the account in the Manuscript: the strain is one of the most ancient Kuhaylan strains. Its history can be traced back to the time of a certain ‘Ijl ibn Hulaytim, “from the ancient tribe of Aal Mughirah”. The Kuhaylah of ‘Ijl was lost to the Qahtan tribe during a raid, and a mare tracing to this Kuhaylah was taken from Qahtan by al-Maryum, a Bedouin of the Suwayt ruling clan of the al-Dhafeer tribe. It became known as Kuhaylat al-Maryum after his name. The strain then went from al-Maryum to al-Mimrah, a Bedouin of the Saba’ah tribe, and there it became known as Kuhaylat al-Mimrah. This may look like your standard story of Bedouin horses constantly changing hands, and changing strains in the process, but it isn’t. The mention of ‘Ijl ibn Hulaytim is very…