In the same vein as this note in 2014: Fadlallah Jirjis, a Syrian Christian from the area of Wadi al-Nasara, and a close friend of Dr. Iskandar Qassis, owned a precious Hamdaniyat al-Simri mare from the Qassis herd. He would never be tired of repeating that she was from the breeding of ‘Ajaj (Ajaaaaaaj as he would say it) ibn Shibib, one of the Sba’ah leading Shaykhs. She was a bay daughter of Sahab, the beautiful bay Ma’naqi Abu Sayfayn head stallion of Qassis; her daughter Zabia, was by Qassis’ other stallion, Kharuf, a Ma’naqi Zudghum. Ma’naqi Abu Sayfayn and Ma’naqi Zudghum are the two most precious branches of Ma’naqi Sbayli, the first from the Fad’an and the second from the Sba’ah.
While perusing old handwritten notes I found this bit of information, from a conversation with Radwan Shabareq: “Dr Iskander Qassis had four Krush mares which he got from Abu Husayn Khattab (the premier horse merchant and expert in Syria in the 1950s) who in turn got them from his father who had in turn obtained them from Mijhim ibn Mhayd. They were from the Krush of Al-Sane’, which was the best Krush marbat of the Fad’aan (woul ne3m).”
One reason I enjoy keeping this blog is the unexpected encounters that I had the chance to make through it over its nearly five years of existence. One such encouter was the one with Obeyd al-‘Utaibi (“a.k.a Pure Man”) a ‘Ataiba Bedouin of Saudi citizenship who maintains the spirit of old Arabian Bedouin horse breeding — as opposed to the new Arabian horse breeding spirit largely prevailing in the Gulf today, which is not based on old Bedouin knowledge and practices and is basically just mimicking Western practices, minus the West’s knowledge (there are exceptions, of course). Another was the encounter with the Tahawi clan (Yehia, Mohammed, and of course Yasser) a couple of years later. Great things happened as a result of both encounters, knowledge gaps were filled, missing pieces of puzzle put together, and in the Tahawi case great progress was made on the preservation of the few remaining asil mares they have. The latest encounter of this type took place when Jibril Kareem Melko of the UK contacted me recently. He is the grandson of Mrs. Nazeera Qassis who was the niece of Dr. Iskandar Qassis. Dr. Qassis was the foremost preservationist Syrian horse breeder in the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, a well of…