One of the Western travelers to write about Arabian horse strains was the Swiss Johann Ludwig Burkhardt. His Notes on the Bedouins and Wahábys: Collected During His Travels in the East were only published in 1831, but were based on information collected in the Hijaz between 1814 and 1815. Burkhardt died in Cairo in 1817. His book featured this anecdote: “The favourite mare of Saoud, the Wahaby chief, which he constantly rode on his expeditions, and whose name, Keraye, became famous all over Arabia, brought forth a horse of uncommon beauty and xceellence. The mare, however, not being of the khomse, Saoud would not permit his people to use thatfine horse as a stallion; and not knowing what to do with it, as Bedouins never ride horses, he sent it as a present to the Sherif. The mare, Keraye, had been purchased by Saoud from a Bedouin ofthe Kahtan Arabs for fifteen hundred dollars.” This account ties the strain of Kuhaylan al-Kray, a branch of the Krush strain that was present with the ‘Ajman Bedouins at the time of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript (ca. 1850), to the Qahtan Bedouins from a very early date. It corroborates the information which ‘Ubayd al-Hafi al-‘Utaybi…
[This article was last revised on June 26] My dive into the Abbas Pasha Manuscript — that bottomless treasure — for approximates dates of the beginning of the main strains of Arabian horses continues. The approach remains the same. After the Dahman Shahwan (ca. 1280 CE), Hamdani Simri (ca. 1670) and the Hadban and Harqan strains (both ca. 1650), now is the turn of the Krushan. The Krushan strain is the subject of Chapter 11 of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript. This my translation of the opening testimony: Al-Hamidi Al-Dawish, ‘Abd al-‘Aziz al-Dawish, Husayn Ibn Farz, and Mutlaq al-Dawish, a man advanced in age, were queried in the presence of a crowd from the Dushan and the Mutayr about the Krush. Which of the Kahaayil does she go back to? ?Who did she originally spread from? The aforementioned reported: “She is a Kuhaylat ‘Ajuz; she is the first of the Kahaayil; she was was named Krush after Ibn Karshah of Qahtan, and al-Ghandur after al-Ghandur of the Buqum. She is a precious strain, [they are] authenticated and blessed horses. She first spread from Ibn Ramthayn of the ‘Abidah of Qahtan. The Sharif Abu Srur al-awwal asked for her from Ibn Ramthayn,…
This morning I received my copy of Judi Forbi’s latest book “Ansata Hejazi: Born to Rule” in the mail. It is a tribute to one of the best stallions she ever bred, Ansata Hejazi, a Dahman Shahwan. His owner Mohammad al-Marzouq showed him to me at his stud in Kuwait in 2012, along with more than a dozen of his daughters. I wrote an article in this book upon Judi’s request, about the historical origins of the Dahman Shahwan strain. I showed how it was – by far – the oldest attested Arabian horse strain, and I traced it back to north eastern Yemen in the XIIIth century AD. I also found that Shahwan was an historical figure, a Bedouin leader from the ‘Abidah tribe who played a prominent role in supporting the military conquests of the Rasulid dynasty of Yemen between 1270 and 1290 AD. It is original research based on evidence from three types of sources: a set of four Yemeni chronicles from Rasulid times; analyses of oral Bedouin epic folk tales, consisting of various versions of the “the epic of the Dayaghim” as recorded by Alison Lerrick in Central Arabia and Nino Van Reisen in Jordan in the 1980s, and in Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals from…
I mentioned earlier that Shahwan of Dahman Shahwan fame was an historical character. I am now happy to report that I found a solid, dated historical reference to this Shahwan in a book by Mamluk-era chronicler Abu al-Mahasin Taj al-Din Abd al-Baqi ibn Abd al-Majid al-Yamani (born in Mecca in 1281 AD — died in Damascus in 1343 AD). The book is called “Bajhat al-Zaman fi Tarikh al-Yaman“, in short, “History of Yemen”. It is a chronicle of historical events in Yemen before and during the time of the author, who appears to have lived at the same time as Shahwan. The mention of Shahwan of ‘Abidah (of Qahtan) occurs in page 95 of the book, under the events of the year 678 Hijri (1279 AD), under the title of “Account of Muzaffar’s takeover of Dhofar, Hadramaut and the city of Shibam“. This Muzaffar is King al-Muzaffar Abu al-Mansur Shams al-Din Yusuf, second king of the Rasulid dynasty of Yemen. Muzaffar ruled Yemen and its dependencies from 1249 to 1295 AD. The account is as follows (my translation from Arabic): “Account of Muzaffar’s takeover of Dhofar, Hadramaut and the city of Shibam: the cause for this was that the warships of Salem son of Idris al-Habudhi…
He was obviously the owner of the bay Dahmah Najibah which went to the Abbas Pasha stud, and was the dam of the stallion Jerboa (“Jerbou”) the sire of Shueyman, who was in turn the sire of Helwa dam of Bint Helwa, etc. etc.His bay Dahmah Najiba of the Ibn Aweyde is one of the very very few horses described int he Abbas Pasha Manuscript with modern descendants today. The information about her is well summarized here in the Al Khamsa Roster. One minor correction is in order: According to the Al Khamsa Roster, translations of lists of Abbas Pasha horses published by Prince Mohamed Aly Tewfik [p89] confirms the acquisition of a bay Dahmah al-Najib mare, “mother the mare of Sami: owner Ibn-‘Uwaytah, father Duhayman.” It seems to me, reading the relevant entry in the Abbas Pasha Manuscript, that the “mare of Sami”, dam of the bay mare of Ibn Aweyde, should instead read the “mare of Shafi” and that would be her owner Shafi Ibn Shab’an, leader of the Bani Hajar of Qahtan, and the cousin of Ibn Aweyde. This mare is mentioned twice in this as “the mare of Shafi” in this entry. It looks like Prince Mohamed Aly…
Yesterday, I spent some time reading the story of al-Kuhaylah al-Harqah in the Abbas Pascha Manuscript (not the English version of Forbis and Sherif, but rather the large excerpts in Hamad al-Jassir’s Usul al-Khayl al-Arabiyyah al-Hadithah). The story of al-Harqah is remarkable for its simplicity (it’s not hard to follow), its conciseness (relative to other strains’ long-winded accounts in the Manuscript), its consistency (most witnesses interviewed relate the same story) and its comprehensiveness (from the originating Kuhaylat ‘Ajuz down to the mares that went to Abbas Pasha). For all these reasons it could serve as a case study of how strains changed hands and moved from tribe to tribe in Bedouin Arabia. The story is also remarkable as an account of how strains names are formed, an account of several Bedouin customs and traditions, and it can also be used to reconstruct a rough chronology. I would like to document all this at some point. Here’s a summary of how the strain got its name: A Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz mare was part of the ransom the Shammar (then all staying in the Jabal Shammar) asked the captured Sharif of Mecca to pay in return for his freedom; a descendant of this mare (still a Kuhaylat…
Now that I have read the Abbas Pasha Manuscript — the equivalent of the Bible for Arabian horses — from cover to cover a fair number of times, I have learned that all Kuhaylan ‘Ajuz horses originate from two wellsprings: the Sharif of Mecca in the Hijaz, and the major tribe of Qahtan, and more specifically the Qahtan sub-tribe of ‘Abidah in Wadi Tathlith (SW Saudi Arabia). I don’t know yet what the connections between these two sources are. The story of al-Harqah (originally a Kuhaylat ‘Ajuz) is illustrative of the horses that came out of the Sharif of Mecca.
A few days ago, I began a thread on the early story of strain of Kuhaylan Abu ‘Arqub, as it was mentioned in the ‘Abbas Pasha Manuscript. The information is reconciled from two slightly different sources: first, my notes from the English translation of the Manuscript (a copy of the book is in my father’s library in Beirut); second, from the book “Usul al-Khayl” by Hamad al-Jasir, which contains excerpts of the original Manuscript in Arabic (and a xeroxed copy of which was given to me by my friend Hazaim Alwair). The story of Kuhaylan Abu ‘Arqub involves central Arabian tribes such as the Qahtan, the Bani Khalid and the Mutayr, as well as the House of Saud, who were major breeders of the strain in the 1850s. The Manuscript’s account of the strain stops around this time. There are conflicting accounts of what happened to the strain after that, but what is clear is that the strain reappears in areas of the desert further to the north, with the “northern” tribes of the Bani Sakhr in today’s Jordan and the Hadideen in today’s central Syria. More recently, and according to author Khalid Bakr Kamal in his book “the Arab Horses”…
When I purchased my first copy of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript, I was surprised not to find a mention of the well-known strain of Kuhalyan Abu ‘Arqub (fem. Umm ‘Arqub). Its absence was particularly puzzling since it was listed as one of the ten favorite strains of the viceroy of Egypt Abbas Pasha Hilmi I. Upon taking a closer look however, I found it, “hidden” under the inconspicuous strain of Kuhaylan al-Fajri, which I had never heard of before. Here is what the Manuscript has to say about this strain of Kuhaylat al-Fajri or Umm ‘Arqub, around 1850, which is when the manuscript was compiled: — it goes back to Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz, and is ‘to be mated in the darkest night’ (which means that the tribe could use males from the strain as stallions). — it is of a precious stud (or marbat in Arabic). — it is originally of the ‘Abidah sub-tribe of the great Bedouin tribe of Qahtan (where a lot of the best and most ancient strains seem to have hailed from — stay tuned for a list of these ‘Abidah strains). — it passed from the ‘Abidah to a man of the Bedouin tribe of Bani…
Click on the YouTube link below to listen to a story and poem (in Arabic) about ‘Arar ibn Shahwan, the original owner (ra’i) of the marbat of Dahman Shahwan. The audio was prepared by Sa’d al-Hafi al-‘Utaybi. ‘Arar is the from the very noble and ancient Dhayaghim clan of the Abidah section of the Qahtan Bedouin tribe. The poem records an episode of the Dhayaghim saga, when this clan and others left their original home of Wadi Tathlith in Southern Arabia after a sequence of severe droughts, and moved northwards to settle in the mountains around the central Arabian town of Hail, which were then inhabited by Tai tribes and were known as Jabal Tai. There the Dhayaghim and other southern clans merged with some Tai tribes to form the core of the Shammar confederation, which gave Jabal Tai it’s new name: Jabal Shammar. By the way, the Ibn Rashid ruling clan of the Shammar of Jabal Shammar traces to the Dhayaghim clan.