A blog on desert arabian horses, past, present and future
Below is a photo of the grey mare Sabine, foaled in 1900, who is presumably the daughter of two of M. Portalès’ imports. The picture comes from the article, ‘Les chevaux du midi’, printed in the 27 October 1907 Le Sport universel illustré. Mossoul’s entry in volume 11 of the Stud-Book français (1894) says he … Read more
Kate found another Western source citing early Arabian horse strains: Prince Hermann Puckler Muskau (1785-1871), in the 1830 . Kate did the research for this entry. “Amongst the thousand tribes that inhabit Arabia and the desert, almost every one has its race and its particular denominations, and, naturally, their opinion differs as to their value … Read more
A search for horses of the strain of Sa’dan (Sa’adan/Saadan) Tuqan in the Abbas Pasha Manuscript, using two different spellings of the name, Tuqan and Tawqan, yielded three mentions, all pertaining to the same horse, which was owned by the Mutayr: The first is on page 439 and occurs in a testimony by Shafi ibn … Read more
Saadey (below) was a Sa’dah al-Tuqan, foaled in Arabia in 1892, and purchased from Abdallah el-Khamud by Prince Shcherbatov in 1900. At the state stud at Derkul, Saadey was covered by the imported stallion Sem-Khan (purchased in Cairo), but did not produce a foal. In 1902 she gave birth to a filly, Elvira, by the … Read more
Zarifa (below) was bred by Count Stroganov from his imported stallion Sherrak, out of the mare Ghazu. Zarifa’s dam Ghazu was a grey mare foaled in the desert c. 1879/1880, sired by a Dahman ‘Amer. Stroganov purchased her on his first expedition to Syria, in 1888, from the Sba’ah. She produced seven foals in Russia, … Read more
Below are two of the mares that Prince Aleksander Shcherbatov bought on his second expedition to Syria. Djerifa (above), a Sa’dah al-Tuqan mare bought in Deir. From Saadan Togan strain. Red mare, imported, height 2 arshins 2 ¼ inches. The horse was born in 1895 in Mesopotamia, at Bedouin Yedjaefee Ibn-Sakhu ‘s of Agkhedaat tribe. … Read more
There appears to have been a senior stallion at the Sa’ud Royal Studs in the 1940s of the strain of Obeyan el Seifi (correct spelling Suyayfi, a strain well referenced in the Abbas Pasha Manuscript); he is the sire of several mares and one stallion sent as gifts to King Faruk of Egypt. One of … Read more
Teymur sent this picture of the other foundation sire of the Turkish Arabian breeding program, the 1928 bay stallion Sa’d (Kuheylan Cietni x Kuheyletul Sade Tukan), also known as Baba Saad, a Kuhaylan Sa’dan al-Tuqan, by a Kuhaylan Ju’aytni. He was Turkey’s most famous racehorse.
The Abbas Pasha Manuscript [1993, edited by J. Forbis and G. Sherif], which is essentially the transcription by Abbas Pasha’s envoys of Bedouins’ testimonies about their horses, is the foremost primary source on the Bedouin-bred Arabian horse available today. Its hundreds of testimonies is the precious remnant of an oral culture, now long gone. No wonder modern Saudi families and clans … Read more
One more picture from AHA Datasource, this time of Samh, another son of two Hindi imports, *Daham and *Bint Attebe. This is how people liked show horses to look like in the 1950s.
This picture is from the AHA Datasource online, and shows Nazira, the daughter of two 1949 Hindi imports, *Daham, and *Dalal.
Another of the Hindi imports of 1949 from Lebanon was *Bint Attebe (Attebe x Yumna), bred by Subhi Hindi. Â She was Grand Champion mare at the All Arab Show in Estes Park, Colorado in 1958, and US Top Ten mare in 1959, where she beat one of the recently imported Nazeer daughters.. Definitely one of … Read more
AHA’s Datasource has some nice photos of the 1949 Hindi imports. Here are a couple of the handsome Sa’dan Tuqan stallion Daham (Shaykh al-Arab x Muna). His sire Shaykh al-Arab was featured on this blog, a couple years ago, and was the cornerstone of Lebanon’s asil Arabian horse program in the 1940s.