Getting *Layya into the list of Al Khamsa Foundation Horses was not easy. There were a lot of rumors about the Hearst importation from the very beginning. Many people here in the USA, believed that H. Pharaon, who sold most of the horses to Hearst, was a crook, and that the horses were not Asil, but mongrels. These persistent rumors meant that the descendents of the 14 horses of the Hearst importation stayed out of the radar screen of the US purist breeding community for years. For instance, they never made it to Jane Ott’s Blue Arabian Horse Catalog (new website!). Skepticism about *Layya was not limited to US breeders. Some people in the Middle East wondered how Pharaon could have parted with such a precious mare. Also, people took it for granted that the Khamis family of Rayaq, Lebanon, who bred *Layya, would never sell a mare from their prized Shaykhan strain to Pharaon in the first place. Of course this is contradicted by the fact that George Khamis, who at one time was staying in the USA for health reasons, wrote the pedigree of *Layya in his own handwriting (I will ask if I can share a jpg of…
In 1947, American billionnaire and press magnate W.R. Hearst (of Hearst Castle fame) sent a party of several people, including his stud manager Preston Dyer, and the photographer J. Williamson, all around the Middle East in search of Arabian horses for his San Simeon stud. They toured Egypt, Arabia, Syria and ended up buying 14 horses from the racetrack of Beirut, Lebanon, most of them from Henri Pharaon. Pharaon was then president of the SPARCA (Societe Pour l’Amelioration de la Race Chevaline Arabe), which managed the Beirut racetrack. He was also Minister of Foreign Affairs of the newly independent Republic of Lebanon (my home country). If you want to known more about the Hearst importation and its circumstances, check this article out. One of the horses Preston brought back to the USA was the grey mare *Layya, the subject of this entry and a couple others to come. According to papers given by *Layya’s Lebanese breeder Georges Khamis to Dick Skinner of the Hearst Stables, *Layya (which he writes Leah) was a “Shikeh” by strain, by the stallion “Kayan” out of the mare “Naileh”. Khamis’s handwritten pedigree of *Layya provides somes details about *Layya’s ancestors. All of these are Asil Arabians that lived in…
These days, I have been enjoying reading excerpts of Hisham Ibn al-Kalbi‘s “Ansab al-khayl fi al-Jahiliyah wa-al-Islam wa-akhbaruha” in my spare time. This roughly translates as “The genealogies and accounts of horses in the era before Islam and after the rise of Islam”, and is commonly known as “Kitab al-Khayl” (the “Book of Horses”). This precious work was written more than 1,200 years ago (yes, twelve hundred years ago) by one of the most prolific and knowledgeable medieval Islamic historians and genealogists. Every one of the 140 books Ibn Al-Kalbi (757 AD -819 AD) wrote is now lost, except two books that miraculously survived: the “Book of Horses” and the more famous “Book of Idols“. A manuscript version of the “Book of Horses” was published in Arabic, first in 1946, then in 1964. If you happen to read Arabic and live in the USA, here is a list of a few libraries where you can find a copy. I xeroxed mine from the Georgetown University Library. Another manuscript version was also translated to French and published by E.J. Brill Publishers in Leyden, Germany, in 1928. The “Book of Horses” revisits the stories of the most famous horses in pre-Islamic times (before 610 AD)…
In the interest of practicality and of getting things done, I suggest the following simple framework to assess the eligilbility of desert Arabian horses in any future Global Asil Horse Registry (GAHR). It consists of three levels of eligibility in the form of concentric circles [Jane Ott’also had three levels: BLUE STARS, Blue Lists, and Sublists, but mine are different]. There are specific eligibility criteria attached to each level of course, and a lot to say about who has the privelege of fixing these criteria, but lets hold on to that thought for later. Note that these criteria apply for those Arabian horses of desert bloodlines, currently living in Arabia Deserta (Syria, Jordan, Saudi Arabian, Iraq, Bahrain, Qatar, Yemen, Libya, United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Oman and Lebanon). So, here goes: Level A: These are the purest of the pure, and include any or all of the following criteria: – the ones there is a broad consensus about in their place of origin – the ones we are fairly certain (as certain as one can be in an oral culture) can be traced back to a long time – the ones bred by the owner of the strain – the ones kept in relative isolation – the ones not…
The idea of an international registry for Asil Arabian horses has been gaining momentum over the last few years, not only within Western Asil breeeders’ circles, but among Arab breeders as well. Such a registry is long past due and would be the purists’ answer to WAHO. Several Western organizations have come close to establishing such a registry. The largest effort so far is that of the Asil Club, which in addition to bloodlines represented in Western breeding [Egyptian bloodlines, various bloodlines from the USA, the Asil remaining lines from Crabbet in the UK, Weil-Marbach in Germany and Babolna in Hungary] also includes the horses of the Royal Arabian Studs of Bahrain and those of the Saudi Arabian government stud of Dirab. In the 1970s, the Asil Club has also considered adding the Tunisian horses to its list, and is currently considering adding the Syrian horses (more on this move later, and what I think of it). Then there is Al Khamsa. While their roster is not the most inclusive (indeed, they tend to consider only those horses whose descendants came to the USA or Canada), it is without a doubt the most serious effort at researching the horses’ background and establishing their authenticity. Most recently, the Institute for the Desert Arabian Horse has been…
The entries on the French Asil Arabian horses continue to generate a lot of interest. To some, the photos of classic specimen of Arabians horses were like an eye opener, shedding light on Asil breeding in a country that has imported hundreds of desert bred stallions and mares from Arabian, and set up large-scale breeding ventures that go on in three other countries (Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco). Some of the comments I received go a step further, and ask practical questions, for example about what can be done to save the remnants of these horses, before it is too late. Here is a lead: While I was still based in France, I tried to lease one of the last Asil mares, Bucolique (Besbes x Berthe by Irmak), a gorgeous 1981 bay mare of the Jilfan Dhawi strain, and the dam of many racehorse champions, with the aim of breeding her to Rubi de la Mouline (Ilamane x Hamma by Raoui), a 1983 chestnut stallion of the Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz strain . Her owner, Jean-Marie Baldy, of the Haras du Cayrou in the Cantal area of central France, was willing to lease her, and the owners of Rubi de la Mouline were also willing to…