A blog on desert arabian horses, past, present and future
This fascinating article (in Arabic) reveals that King Abd al-Aziz Aal Saud, upon founding the Kingdom of Najd, Hijaz and its dependencies (which in 1932 became the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia) entrusted the responsibility of representing his Kingdom before other Arab countries to members of the Agheylat corporation (see below about them). This makes a lot of sense … Read more
I have written about the 1982 “war mare” LD Rubic (Plantagenet x Tarrla by Tarff) several times on this blog. She is the kind of mare I wish I had owned or bred. She is a great-grand-daughter of the desert bred mare *Nufoud, a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz from the Saud royal studs. *Nufoud was imported to … Read more
 Lebanese-American Amin Rihani (1976-1940) was a man of many talents. He is best remembered as the man who introduced free verse into Arabic poetry. He was also one of the early figures of the Arab literary movement known as “kuttab al-mahjar” or  “writers of the diaspora” to which Khalil Gibran and other Arab-American intellectuals … Read more
In 1931, Chicago businessman Albert Harris imported four desert-bred mares from Arabian ruler Abd al-Aziz Ibn Saud with help from the Lebanese poet Amin Rihani. The mares were obtained through Mohammad Eid al-Rawwaf, Consul of the Sultanate of Najd and Hijaz in Damascus (this Sultanate would take the name of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia … Read more
A previous post gave me the occasion to mention Zanoubia, which is something I have been looking forward to for some time now. Zanoubia was my first mare. Rather she was the first mare from my father’s horses in Lebanon that I considered mine. She did not make it in my recent top ten of the best Asil mares ever bred; … Read more