Another rare set of photos, these of the Dahmat ‘Amer mare Ridaab also a the farm of Basil Jad’aan — with a young Basil holding her. She has a nice colt by Marzuk that year. Her sire was the Dahman ‘Amer stationed at the Military Housing in al-Hasakah in North-East Syria, and her dam one of the two Dahmat ‘Amer mares of Khidr al-Dairi of Ma’daan near Day al-Zur. Both sire and dam Dahman ‘Amer, but from different branches, the sire from a Jubur strain, but taken in war by them from the ‘Ajarrash clan of the Shammar ca. 1935, and the dam from a Sba’ah strain. Back in 1992, she was already the last Syrian mare from this precious strain, but her line survives today, thirty years later.
فرس شقراء كحيلة الخدلية يعود مربطها الى عضيب الوقاع السبيعي ابوها الصقلاوي الجدراني من خيل دريعي الاحدب من عشيرة شمر ابو امها المعنقي السبيلي حصان الشويطي من خيل النجرس من عشيرة العقيدات
Manua was bought in Homs by Prince Shcherbatov in 1900, on the second trip that he and Count Stroganov made to Syria, but went to Stroganov’s stud in Russia, rather than Shcherbatov’s. Her sire was a Hadban Enzahi; her dam was from the Sba’ah and sired by a Kuhaylan al-Ajuz horse. From Abeyan sherrak strain. Bay mare imported. Born in 1891 at Hajji Mohammed Khudur, mugkhtar of Babaa Amur village, near Homsa. Sire bay stallion from Khadban Yenzekkhi strain, born at Gomussa’s Bedouin (of Sebaa Anaze) and was sold by the said Bedouin to Fellakh Ibrahim Aga from Ashaee tribe in northern Syria. Dam – bay mare from Abeyan Sherrak strain, purchased by Hajji Mohammed Khudur in 1882 from Bedouin Uakhadj Ibn-Suan from Moadja tribe (of Sebaa Anaze); its sire was from Kekhaylan Adjus strain. Purchased personally by Prince A.G.Scherbatov in Homsa city in 1900 from Hajji Mohammed Khudur and imported to Russia. While in Arabia, she foaled twice. 1900 covered by grey stallion from Dagkhman Umm-Amr strain in Homsa. The stallion was born in Bedouin tribe Gomussa (of Sebaa Anaze) and bought from them by Ibn-Faras, who lived in Homsa. Stud Book of Arabian horses with their pedigrees present…
Kehayley was foaled in 1893, and imported to Russia by Prince Shcherbatov in 1900. Kekhaylan Adjus strain. Bay mare imported, born in 1893. In 1895 was secretly bought by Akhmet Beg (citizen of Hama town) and Bedouin Simran from Kkhrissa tribe (of Fedhaan Anazeh) from Bedouin Jaetnee from Abadat tribe (of Sebaa Anaze). Sire of Dagkhman Umm-Amr strain. Bought personally by Prince A.G. Shcherbatov in Hama city from Akhmet Beg in 1900 and imported to Russia. Stud Book of Arabian horses with their pedigrees present in Russia In 1902 she foaled a colt, Dervish, by Dachman. Photo sourced from the History of Russia in Photographs.
Hassan (below) was one of Count Sergei Stroganov’s homebred Arabians, foaled in 1896 out of the imported mare Hamra and by the stallion Sherrak. Hassan’s dam Hamra was foaled in 1884; she was bred by the Sba’ah Anazah and sired by a Kuhaylan Nawwaq. She was brought to Russia in 1888 for Count Stroganov by Sheikh Nasr Ibn Abdallah. Between 1891 and 1902, she produced six fillies and two colts, by the stallions Sherrak, Sottamm el-Kreysh and Arnab. Sherrak and Sottamm el-Kreysh were both desertbred imports; Arnab was a son of two imports, Emir-el-Arab and the mare Anaze. Sottamm el-Kreysh was a Saqlawi Jadran, named for his breeder, the Sheikh of the Bani Sakhr. Emir-el-Arab was a Kuhaylan Krush, bred by Muhammad Ibn Smeyr, Sheikh of the Wuld Ali of the Anazah. Photo of Hassan sourced from the History of Russia in Photographs.
I am very impressed with this young lad. And I thought his half-brother and close Ma’naqi Sbayli relative Shaykh was already a winner! Shaman looks more “old Egyptian”, Shaykh more “Crabbet”. Hard to choose between the two. They both speak well for their sire, Tamaam DE, who met an untimely death last year. Photos by Rosemary and Terry Doyle.
Cherifa is a foundation mare of the breeding program of the French colonial stud of Tiaret, Algeria. From Algeria, the line has spread to France, Poland and elsewhere around the world. Cherifa is particularly well documented. She is entry #1333 in the French Stud Book: bay, born in 1869 in the desert, imported to Algeria around 1875, died in 1878, strain “Chouimi-Sebayé”, acquired from “Farhan ibn Hudaib of the Sbaa Enezah”. The information on her Bedouin owner is significant. French importation records often mangled the spelling of the names of the strain, breeder or tribe. They sometimes gave their imported horses the strain of the sire instead of that of the dam. In this case, the owner was none other than the paramount Shaykh of the Sba’ah tribe, Farhan, son of Ma’jun son of Sallal son of Barjas son of Sahu son of Mu’di son of Hudaib. Lady Anne Blunt met him during her first trip to the desert three years after the French purchased Cherifa. She details her encounter with him in her journals entry for April 5, 1878, and writes that he was 22 or 23 years old (so born ca. 1855). Farhan ibn Hudaib was also photographed…
The 1983 stallion Mas-huj stood at the farm of Basil Jadaan near Damascus for one season, when this photo was taken. Basil gave a copy of the photo to Hazaim Alwair who published it online for some time. Mas-huj was from the city of Hama, from an old lineage of Ubayyan Sharrak tracing to the Sbaa tribe. I remember Mashuj well, from seeing him in Hama year in year out during the late 1980s and early 1990s at the farm of Fuad al-Azem. His sire was a Saqlawi Jadran of Ibn Zubayni from another old Hama lineage (that of the family of al-Khani). He raced in Beirut under the name of Zad al-Rakib. My father recalls seeing him — the Saqlawi — pull a cart on the streets of Beirut in the early 1980s after his racing career was over. I was in the car apparently but too young to remember.
When I first opened Volume One of the Syrian Studbook some twenty five years ago, the first thing that struck me was the very limited number of horses that traced to the Sba’ah Bedouin tribe. After all, this powerful and wealthy tribe which is part of the larget ‘Anazah confederation spent its summer quarters in the area directly east of the city of Hama in central Syria. As a result it was familiar to Western travelers and government agents who took off from Aleppo, Damascus or Beirut, in search for Bedouin Arabian horses. Another result of this geographical location was that many of the early desert-bred imports to the West and Egypt, which form the antecedents of many of today’s Arabian horses, hailed from the Sba’ah tribe. Major Roger Upton, for instance, spent some time with Sba’ah leader Shaykh Sulayman Ibn Mirshid in 1874, and bought horses like Kesia, Yataghan and Haidee from his tribesmen. Similarly, Lady Anne and Wilfrid Blunt visited with Beteyen Ibn Mirshid a few years later and some of their best known early desert imports were bred by the Sba’ah: Queen of Sheba, Meshura, Azrek, Pharaoh, Dajania, Hagar, etc. Some of the horses imported by Homer…
Zenobia, born in 1977, was one of the prettiest asil mare in Lebanon, my father’s favorite horse, and a notoriously difficult producer. A ‘Ubayyah Sharrakiyah tracing to the marbat of Ibn Thamdan of the Sba’ah, with a regal pedigree that was linebred to Mach’al, the foundation stallion of Lebanese asil breeding. She left no asil progeny, and my father sold her in 1992 at the age of 15. Sire: Achhal, a son of Mach’al; dam: Bint Su’ad; sire of dam: Wazzal, another son of Mach’al; dam of dam: Su’ad; sire of granddam: al-Jazzar; dam of granddam: Mash’al’s sister, a daughter of Shaykh al-Arab.
This is the latest mare to join my herd, along with her 15 year-old daughter who is also black (not that it matters). Juans Aana (El Reata Juan x Suuds Juli Aana by PRI Saqlawi Suud) is a Ma’naqiyah Sbayliyah, going back in tail female to Haidee imported by Major Roger Upton from the Gomussah Bedouin tribe of North Arabia in 1874. The mare is 25 years old, so don’t mind the sway back at her venerable age. That’s how the Gulastra sire line horses age, including the great Gulastra himself. A great-great-grand-daughter of Gulastra in the sire line with three additional crosses to him in the pedigree (and also to *Aziza, *Roda, *Zarife, *Fadl, etc). Her eyes are huge, and I love the prominent facial bones, the sloping shoulders, the clear legs and the long neck. I have high hopes to get this mare in foal to one of my stallions before it is too late.
I so like this photo of the 1985 black Ma’naqi Sbayli mare Suuds Juli Aana (PRI Saqlawi Suud x Julyana ZHS). The muzzle, the jaws, the look in the eye (reminiscent of a mare from Cal Raswan’s pictures of desert horses, don’t remember which one), and again, that overall air of a wild animal. In the second photo, the same mare looks like a tank. A desert background would be mor fitting for these photos.
The Tahawi preservation breeders have the last (with her dam) asil Kuhaylat al-Kharass filly, by a Straight Egyptian stallion from US lines and out of the desert mare. I have not seen her yet, but from the photos Yasser took, she seems quite something. There was only one horse from that strain, an aged stallion, in the Syrian Studbook and he died a while ago. There was an old mare from the same strain in the Lebanese studbook, but she died too. The strain is originally from the Sba’ah ‘Anazah, where it was much prized and sought after especially for racing. It is well represented in the sire and dam lines of many of the Hearst imports. It was also the strain of Proximo/Jadaan, the personal mount of the head of the Fad’aan Jadaan Ibn Mhayd, seen by the Blunts in their second desert journey in 1881 (Lady Anne spelled the strain as Kuhaylan Akhras) and bought by them in India where he had been sold for racing. Proximo failed to produce anything at Crabbet (not very fertile), and was eventually sold to Poland yet at some point it was considered likely that the Crabbet foundation mare Nefisa was his…
Mohammad Mohammad Osman Faysal Abdallah Saoud al-Tahawi sent me this beautiful photo of his grandfather Faysal on a Ubayyat Ibn Thamdan mare, taken around 1955. I like everything about this photo: the whitewashed tombs in the background, straight out of the Arabian Nights, the mud brick walls and the mud houses and the oasis, the old Shaykh on the mare, and the electric pole as a lonely testimony of creeping modernity in a scene that could otherwise have taken place a thousand years ago. And the mare of course: look at that perfect specimen of a desert mare: the full powerful croup, the walk, the carriage of the neck, and the long head so full of character. The strain above all: Faran Ibn Thamdan of the Sba’ah Bedouins was the owner of one of the three or four best strains of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak in North Arabia, a strain which produced some of the best foundation horses of the Arabian breeding program on my home country of Lebanon some fifty years ago. More about the strain of Ubayyan ibn Thamdan later, once I am done staring at this picture.
I have written time and again that this horse was one of my all time favorites, judging from pictures only. I own a daughter of his full blood-sister, Dakhala Sahra (Plantagenet x Soiree by Sir), and I am trying to breed her through ET. I hope something good will come out.
Also from Teymur comes this photo of the 1981 Turkish Arabian mare Almimruhiye.16 of the precious Kuhaylan al-Mimrah marbat of the Shaqfah family in Hama, Syria. The hujjah of her ancestress in the tail female, the original Almumruhiye is on the WAHO website, under “General Interest” then under “Turkish Stud Book Report”, and is reproduced below. She was purchased in the Syrian city of Hama in 1936 at the age of 5. Allah Almighty said in his precious book Q’uran ‘The love of passion that comes from women and children has attracted mankind, as well as accumulated gold and silver treasures, pedigreed horses, livestock and crops.’ The Asil Horses are blessed and valued for that Allah Almighty mentioned them many times in his precious book. The Republic of Turkey purchased from Hama by the help of Ali Saif Aldeem from the people of Hama some Asil Horses. Among them is the chestnut Kehaileh Mimrehieh, her family tree is shown above. We witness that her fourth grandmother the bay is the mare of Hilal Bin Adnan from the Sbaah (Anezeh) and her father is Ma’anagi Sbeli. At Anezeh, she gave birth to the chestnut Kehaileh Mimrehieh whose father is the Ma’anagi Sbeli,…
Teymur sent me this photo of the phenomenal 1921 grey asil Kuhaylan Krush stallion known in Lebanon as Krush Halba, and in Turkey as Baba Kurus. He was the foundation stallions for both countries asil Arabian horse breeding programs, even his line does not survive in Lebanon anymore, and is holding on by a thread in neighboring Syria. Teymur can tell you more about this horse’s performance in Turkey. Meanwhile, here is an excerpt from the diary of Dr. Ahmed Mabrouk’s of the Egyptian Royal Agricultural Society on this horse: “At Beirut I found a Krush, a nice grey horse who won 17 races. This horse out of El Nowagia by Krush belongs to Saad el Din Shatila Pasha. The sire of the Krush horse which I bought was sold a few years ago to the Turkish government …it is worth mentioning that in the only 3 stables I visited in Beirut, I saw about 30 offspring of the famous stallion Krush ….”. The Kuhaylan Nawwaq stallion named Kroush, who was imported by the same Dr. Mabrouk to Egypt for the RAS and sired a number of horses for the RAS, including the mare Bushra and the stallion Tamie’, was a son…
Arnault Decroix from France sent me this photo of two yearling fillies, daughter of his excellent Syrian asil stallion Dahiss Hassaka (Al-Ameer Dahiss x Ogharet by Marzouq, out of Hanadi), a Kuhaylan al-Nawwaq from the marbat of Shaykh Abd al-Jalil al-Naqashbandi, a leader of the Sufi Naqashbandi mystics of the Euphrates valley. Dahiss Hassaka (photo below) was bred by Radwan Shabareq and later imported to France. I owned his grandsire Dahiss, as well as a sister of his dam, “Zahra” who was by Dinar out of Hanadi. A head shot of hers was published earlier, you will find it if you scroll down.
The family of Adrien Deblaise has one of the largest rare equine books collection in Europe, and certainly in France. From time to time, he sends me scans of precious photos, for which I am very grateful, like this photo of the splendid desert-bred war mare Hadialeh, a Kuhaylat al-Ajuz purchased from the Sba’ah ‘Anazah Bedouins by a Hungarian mission in 1903. I don’t have more information on this importation, but I am sure Adrien can say some more to that, and it may be of one of the missions with which Fadlallah El Hedad was associated. The mare sounds like she is from the Khdili marbat of Kuhaylan al-Ajuz, judging from her name. This is the same branch of Kuhaylan which both Carl Raswan and Lady Anne Blunt refer to as “Hedeli”. Click on the image to enlarge it.
Ameenah was the foundation mare for all the Kuhaylan al-Mimrah horses currently in Syria. They all trace to her in the tail female. She was bred by the Tai Bedouins, from a marbat that had belonged to the Shammar, and which traced all the back to the Muwayni’ clan of the Sba’ah Bedouins, who own the strain of Kuhaylan al-Mimrah. If a Kuhaylat al-Mimrah cannot be traced back to the clan of Ibn Muwayni’, then she is not a Kuhaylat al-Mimrah. That’s because the original man known al-Mimrah belonged to the Muwayni’ clan. The Muwayni’ clan, one of the noblest of the ‘Anazah confederation, were such famous breeders of Arabian horses that they were known as ‘ahl al-khayl’, the “people of the horses”. Nahar Ibn Muwayni’ is one of the Bedouin witnesses in the ‘Abbas Pasha Manuscript. Ameenah was sired by the “first horse of Juhayyim”, a Kuhaylan Hayfi who was used by Juhayyim al-Mitkhan of the Tai as his breeding stallion (he later stood a Kuhaylan al-Krush at stud, and this was the “second horse of Juhayyim”); her dam was sired by the “second horse of ‘Ebbo”, a Saqlawi Jadran of the strain belonging to Dari al-Mahmoud of the Shammar,…
In a few days, Al Khamsa will be in a position to announce a very good news concerning the last remaining asil horses of Tahawi bloodlines. In the meantime, I am sharing with you this 30 year old photo, which Yehia al-Tahawi, a member of Cairo’s Jockey Club and otherwise a breeder of Straight Egyptian Arabians of modern Tahawi lines (Fulla, Futna, and Bint Barakat), sent me of his father Sheykh Abd al-Sattar ‘Eliwa al-Tahawi with his asil Kuhaylah Tamriyah Ammoura (‘Darling’ in Arabic). Ammoura traces to a desert bred K. Tamriyah mare imported to Egypt by Sheykh Quwayti’ Smayda al-Tahawi from the ‘Anazah Bedouins in the Syrian desert. Her sire is a Hamdani Simri horse called “Ibn Damas” bred by Mohammed Fergani El-Tahawy, and tracing back to a Hamdaniyah Simriyah mare imported from the Sba’ah Bedouins. Yasir Ghanim who supplied all this information from his cousin Yehia also tells me Ammoura has an asil granddaughter that is still alive today. This news is a great ray of hope for the Arabian horse in general and for the Kuhaylan Tamri strain in particular, of which this mare would be the single remaining representative, as far as I know.
In the XIXth and early XXth century, there was a famous and well-respected marbat of Dahman ‘Amer with Ibn Hemsi of the Gomussah clan of the Sba’ah Bedouins. The Blunts purchased two horses from that strain: Dahma, which they bought from “Oheynan Ibn Said” of the Gomussah (who had bought her from Ibn Hemsi), and Rataplan, which they bought from India. Ibn Hemsi’s was the only marbat of Dahman ‘Amer among the Sba’ah. The horse to which the Blunt mare Hagar was in foal when they bought her on Jan. 4, 1878, was also from the same horses, because Hagar was still owned by the Sba’ah when she was bred to him (she was taken in war from the Sba’ah by the Ruwalah in the winter 1877/78, says Lady Anne, and then purchased by a Mawali Bedouin from the Ruwalah). It is also very probable that *Wadduda’s sire, also a Dahman (no marbat mentioned), was or traced to the horses of Ibn Hemsi. The Syrian horsebreeder, Ali al-Barazi, reports in his book this old Bedouin saying about a Dahman ‘Amer stallion which stood at stud with Ibn Hemsi, who used to charge one gold pound to breed from him: ‘”al-dhahab ‘ind Ibn…
I recently received some fresh news from Muhammad al-Tahawy who maintains the fascinating website of the Tahawi tribe with a large section dedicated to their horses. Muhammad directs me to one of the sections of the website, where he is regularly uploading photos and documents of original horses purchased by the Tahawi from Syria, mainly from the central city of Hama, a major horsebreeding center near the pastures of the Sba’ah Bedouins. Here is one such photo, reproduced with his permission. This is the legend on the back of the photo, and my translation follows: “This mare, a Kuhaylat al-Mimrah, now in Hama at the Iskafi [‘the shoemaker’, not clear whether it’s a reference to the owner’s surname or his profession], and she is the daughter of the grand old mare, whose owner was offered 800 gold pounds and refused to sell her, and she [i.e., the dam] is currently with him.” The information on the back of the photo does not tell us who the owner of the dam was, but we know this from another source: in his book “the Arab horse”, Hama native and racehorse owner Ali al-Barazi talks about the Kuhaylat al-Mimrah mare of Mukhtar [Mumtaz,…
The Tahawi website maintained by Mohammed al-Tahawy is a wonderful resource of original testimonies about the horses that this Bedouin clan bred throughout the XXth century. A few months ago, English translations of some of the hujaj (Arabic certification documents) of some of the foundation horses acquired by the Tahawi were featured on this website, as part of the collective effort of getting the three Tahawi mares of Egypt’s Hamdan stables accepted in the roster of Al Khamsa, Inc, the North American preservation organization. Here is a translation of another one of these original documents; this one is not a hujjah but rather a letter written to a member of the Tahawi tribe: To our beloved brother Faysal Abu Abdallah [al-Tahawi] may God protect him, Greetings and salutations, and longings to see your beautiful face, and after that, I would like to congratulate you on the advent of this holy month [of Ramadan], may God make you witness its advent again in health and well-being. You had asked us about the lineage of the colt, and in accordance to your demand, we are writing to you about the lineage of his dam and her ancestors, and that of his sire and his ancestors. The dam of the horse is al-Dahmah…
This is the second item in the series on rare, uncommon Arabian horse strains, after the strain of Hazqan Misrabi, featured earlier. This time I will mention the strain of Kuhaylan al-Shaykhan, feminine Kuhaylat al-Shaykhah. This is one of the most respected branches of Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz, and the Sba’ah tribe possessed a couple marabet from that strain. As far as I know, the last Kuhaylat al-Shaykhah mare in Arabia Deserta was with Dr. Iskander Kassis of Aleppo. I believe she came from the Sba’ah or the Fad’aan, like most of Kassis’ horses. Kassis was one of the Middle East’s foremost master breeders in the 1940s, 50s and 60s, and had a collection of the some of the rarest and most precious strains of desert-bred, asil, Arabian horses. Radwan Shabareq, who saw that mare in his youth, tells me she had the most elegant and fine neck he had seen on a mare. In the West, the strain is represented in the asil descendants of the desert-bred mare 60-Adjuse, imported by Mikhail Fadllallah al-Haddad to Babolna, Hungary. According to Haddad in his travel journals, she was bought from the “Anazeh El Sbaa Mseni (?)” tribe, her sire a “Kuhaylan Adjuze”, her dam a “Schecha”.…
Arnault Decroix send me this picture of his very promising 2005 stallion Dahess Hassaka (al-Ameer Dahess x Oghareet by Marzouk out of Hanadi by Krush Juhayyim), which was bought from Radwan Shabareq and imported to France in 2009. An asil Kuhaylan al-Nawwaq from the very old marbat of the Naqashbandi sufi mystics of the Middle Euphrates valley, Dahess Hassaka is the paternal grandson of my Dahess and is now being used as a stallion by Arnault. Click on the photo to enlarge it.
The asil stallion Ghalion-6 is by Ghalion (Morafic x Lubna) out of 25 Amurath-Sahib (Amurath Sahib x 221 Kuhaylan Zaid by Kuhaylan Zaid out of 11 Siglavy Bagdady II). He traces to the mare 60-Adjuze, imported from the Arabian desert by Austro-Hungarian Empire official Fadlalla El Hedad. Adjuze was reportedly bred by the Sba’ah Bedouins, her sire being a Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz and her dam a “Schecha”, the transliteration of which is “Shaykhah”. “Shaykhah” is either a mare’s name or a strain’s name, depending on the context in which it occurs. In that case, it is likely to the strain of the mare, the full strain being Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz al-Shaykhah, a lesser-known strain primarily owned by the Sba’ah and Fad’aan Bedouins.
This horse should have been mine, years ago. Actually, he was about to be mine, and he somehow slipped between my fingers by going to greener pastures. I first encountered him on a hot summer afternoon in 1996, while on a visit to the Aleppo Equestrian Center, with friends Radwan Shabareq, Kamal Abdul-Khaliq, and my father, Salim al-Dahdah. We had come to see a famous Arabian mare, owned by a man of the leading clan of the Shammar, the Jarba clan, with the intention of buying her. She was a celebrated mare in the desert, and I have featured her several times on this blog. The Aleppo Equestrian Center is located inside a gated compound; a paved road takes you from the main entrance to the stables and the administration offices uphill. Paddocks and jumping competition arenas are in the middle of the compound. As the four of us were walking up the paved road to the stables, the afternoon sunrays pounding on our heads, I was faced with this un-real image of a light grey Arabian stallion, tethered to the paddock fences, with a majestuous yet very gentle attitude, one that welcomes and inspires awe at the same time. I thought to myself: “I didn’t know they had…
This photo of the stallion Rock (Ragie x El Charsaa by Gezeier) with proud owner Shaykh Sulayman ibn Abd al-Hamid ibn ‘Ulaywa al-Tahawi was taken from the Tahawi family website. I am so grateful to Bernd Radtke for among other things, his sharing with me the pedigree of Rock’s daughter Bombolle (Rock x Maskerade), which has allowed to reconstitute Rock’s pedigree. Rock’s strain is Kuhaylan al-Kharass, and his tail female traces to the Kuhalyan al-Kharas marbat of the Sba’ah Bedouins. Kuhaylan al-Kharas is a flagship strain of the Sba’ah, and is the strain of the Blunt import Proximo, among other well known Arabians of Lebanon and Syria. Rock’s pedigree is heavily linebred to the two strains of Dahman ‘Amer (from the marbat of Jarallah Ibn Tuwayrish) and ‘Ubayyan Sharrak (from the marbat of Abu Jreyss).
This photo was sent by a horse merchant in Syria to one of the Tahawi clan leaders in Egypt, bto probe his interest in purchasing the horse. Here is what figures on the back of the photo: “Photo of the Saqlawi Jadrani horse, his sire is ‘Ubayyan of the horses of Ibn Samdan and his dam a Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah of the horses of the Sba’ah” A couple noteworthy observations: 1. The marbat of Ibn Thamdan (mispelt Samdan on the back of the photo) is one of the most respected and authenticated marabet of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak among the Sba’ah tribe. It survived in asil form in Lebanon until the late 1950s. 2. Notice the resemblance of the horse in the photo with the Blunt mare Basilisk, who was from the same strain and the same tribe.
The Tahawi family website in Arabic is a gold mine of original information on the asil horses of Egypt’s Tahawi tribe. Here’s what I found today on this website concerning the horse Barakat, who is the paternal grandsire of the three foundation mares Folla, Futna, and Bint Barakat [my own annotations in between square brackets]: “The stallion Barakat is the son of the old Dahman, the stallion of ‘Abdallah Saoud al-Tahawi which was bought from the ‘Anazah Arabs in 1322H (1898 AD), and the origin of this Dahman stallion is from the Dahmat ‘Amer mare of Jar Allah ibn Tuwayrish, and his sire is a Saqlawi Jadran [Note from Edouard: This is the same horse whose hujjah was reproduced and translated in an entry below]. As to the dam of the stallion Barakat, she is the mare of Mnazi’ ‘Amer al-Tahawi, and she is Dahmat Shahwan“. Further above on the website there is the mention that “the Dahman horses of Mnazi’ ‘Amer al-Tahawi are from the horses of Ibn Maajil of Syria.” The information on Barakat’s dam is extremely interesting. Not only because it allows us to go one generation back in the pedigrees of the three Hamdan stables foundation mares: Folla, Futna, and Bint Barakat.…
Mustafa al-Jabri is a longtime Syrian breeder of desert Arabian horses from Aleppo, Syria, and a beloved family friend. Mustafa’s stud near Aleppo, which has up to 100 mares and two dozen stallions, is one of the most highly regarded studs in Syria. Over the past decades, Mustafa spent extensive amounts of time with Bedouins and those familiar with them, and collected a large compendium of stories, some in verse, some in prose about Arabian horse strains, Bedouin feats and deeds, and the relationship of Bedouins with their horses. Mustafa’s family is now working on putting these stories in writing in Arabic, for education and awareness raising purposes. Below is one of these story from Mustafa, which I translated from the original Arabic, and which Mustafa and his family graciously agreed to share: One day Dham al-Hadi al-Jarba the Shaykh of the Shammar tribe went hunting with one of the men from his tribe, a Bedouin known as Wati al-Ghishm (as an aside: Wati means lowly and vile, and it was a Bedouin habit to give their children rough or negatively connotated first names to draw the evil eye away from them ; they would keep positively connotated first names to…
Robin Weeks is spoiling me with photos of horses she owned, which happen to be horses I like a lot, and I am on a roll. Here’s a couple of pictures of the Ma’naqiyah Sbayliyah mare Soiree (Sir x Sirrulya by Julyan) in old age. She was bred by Jeanne Craver, and later owned by Robin Weeks. A favorite mare of mine, as you can tell from the several blog entries about this family. By now I think it’s time I shared with you the news that I am working with Kathy Busch of Kansas City, MO, on leasing a 25 year old chestnut daughter of Soiree which she owns. Her name is Dakhala Sahra (Plantagenet x Soiree by Sir), she was also bred by Jeanne Craver, and she is all I am thinking about these days. She’s been treated at the vet clinic recently for a minor uterus infection, and she’ll be ready to be bred over the next couple weeks via artificial insemination. I am still looking for the right stallion for her, with ‘right’ in this case including ‘ready to collect from and ship’ in addition to the other meaning it has for me. By the way,…
If you haven’t already done so, check out the overview article by the late Carol Lyons, on “Drissula, One of a Kind”. Born in 1941, Drissula (Sultan x Ydrissa by Antez) is the only asil progenitor for the Ma’naghi Sbayli line of *Haidee, who was bred by the Sba’ah Bedouins and was imported to the UK in 1874. I already mentioned my soft spot for this strain. Some thirty five years ago, when my father asked the late Moussa de Freije, one of the foremost Lebanese authorities on Arabian horses, about why he held a particular M’anaqiyah Sbayliyah mare in such high esteem, the response of the French-educated Mr. de Freije was: “She is a Bourbon-Parma”, in reference to one of Europe’s most noble and blue-blooded dynasties. While all Ma’naqi Sbayli horses eventually go back to one marbat (Bedouin stud), that of Ibn Sbayyil of the ‘Ajlan clan from the Rasalin section of the Sba’ah Bedouin tribe, who acquired the orginal Ma’naqiyah Hudrujiyah and, in time, gave her his name, not all Ma’naqi Sbaili marabet which subsequently branched out of his marbat were held in equal esteem. Even within the same tribe, levels of prestige and reputation associated with each marbat varied over time, and the fortunes of each marbat…
I am a big fan of the breeding program of Terri Somers at Royal Blue Arabians in New Jersey. Terri is the owner of the striking grey Ma’naghi Sbayli stallion RB Bellagio (photo below, in harness, by Arabi Fadh Onyx x Sirrunade by Faaryan), and has been breeding classic and athletic horses of this Ma’naghi Sbayli strain for some years now (check out her story here). Her horses trace all the way back to Haidee, the Ma’naghiyah Sbayliyah mare of Sulayman Ibn Mirshid, the leader of the Bedouin tribe of Qumusah – no less. Haidee was bought by Major R. Upton and taken to the UK in 1874; her daughter Naomi was then exported to the USA in 1887 where the line bred on. The young stallion [okay, Terri tells me he is a gelding not a stallion. Tood bad] pictured below is one of the most promising yet bred by Terri. His name is GTS Hawa El Adhar (RB Bellagio x SS Fajulya by PRI Saqlawi Suud) and his pedigree is a tapestry weaving together several 1960s American Arabian breeding programs the likes of Jane Ott’s, Charles Krausnick’s and Joseph Zoran (note the four crosses to Julyan and hence Gulastra, and the multiple crosses…
In 1874 and again in 1875, Captain Roger Upton traveled to the Syrian desert and purchased a number of Arabian horses from the Bedouin tribe of Sba’ah, which he imported to Great Britain. One of the mares he bought for a Mr. Sandeman, was the Ma’naghiyah Sbailiyah Haidee. Another was the mare Kesia (I), which he bough for a certain Mr. Henry Chaplin. Kesia (I) was a Kuhaylah Nawwaqiyah, sired by a Kuhaylan Nawwaq, bred by the Qumusah section of the Saba’ah Bedouin tribe, which owns the marbat. The head of the Qumusah, Shaykh Sulayman Ibn Mirshid put his seal on the mare’s hujjah, which makes this mare very precious. Kesia (I) came to Great Britain in foal to a desert-bred Saqlawi al-‘Abd stallion, and produced a filly Kesia (II). The dam and the filly are two of the few mares of the Nawwaq strain to have been imported to a Western country – another one is *Malouma. The tail female of Kesia II no longer exists in asil breeding anywhere. However, her great-grandson Segario (Nimr x Shabaka, out of Kesia II) is still represented in asil pedigrees in the USA, where his dam was imported from Great Britian by Colonel Spencer Borden. Today, the blood of Kesia survives in…
I love this old photo of the stallion *Houran, a Kuhaylan Tamri, imported by Homer Davenport to the USA in 1906. The horse is standing so proudly, his neck beutifully arched, and his gaze fixing a far-reaching point on the horizon. Tood bad *Houran only left one daugher in asil USA breeding (the Ma’naghiyah Sbayliyah mare Bint Nimnaarah). *Houran was sired by a Hadban Enzahi stallion of the ‘Anazah tribes, some branches of which were home to many Hadban Enzahi marabit, such as Hadban Mushaytib, the most respected. By the way, have you seen the updated site of the Davenport Conservancy? It has a series of seminal articles by Charles Craver, which I am never tired of re-reading.
My father took these two photos of the grey Lebanese stallion Malek in the mid 1980s, at the farm of Husayn Nasir in Rayak, Lebanon. Malek (Achchal x Bint Ghazwane by Ghazwane) was the last stallion of Lebanese breeding that did not trace to the infamous Iraqi-born part-bred Arabian racehorses thath flooded the Beirut racetrack in the 1950s and 1960s, and ultimately led to the demise of the Lebanese Arabian horse breeding, after they were crossed with Lebanese (and some Syrian) asil Arabian mares. Malek was used mostly on non-asil part-bred arab mares tracing to these Iraqi stallions, and bred only one asil mare: a bay 28 year old Tuwaysah mare from Syria, which we owned and which traced to the horses of the ‘Anazah tribe. That old mare settled, and her daughter was my favorite mare while I was growing up. I recall hearing that Malek ended his life pulling a cart in the northern Lebanon city of Tripoli. His strain was Saqlawi Jadran from the horses of the Dandashi landlords of Tall Kalakh, in Western Syria. This wealthy and powerful clan of chieftains of Kurdish origins, who had the title of agha were the premier asil Arabian settled (i.e., non-Bedouin) horse breeders of Syria.…
I have always felt considerable sadness whenever an Arabian horse strain dies out. With it, part of the rich and colorful history of this breed vanishes forever. I can’t really say why, but to me it feels just like losing the last copy of a rare manuscript. Most of the best-known and most important Arabian strains are still represented today in asil form, and we are lucky to have them. A number of really significant ones were lost in Arabia Deserta over the last fifty years. These include Kuhaylan Tamri (known to US breeders as the strain of the Davenport import *Houran), Kuhaylan al-Kharas (the strain of the Blunt import Proximo), Kuhaylan Harqan (the strain of the grandsire of the Ali Pasha Sherif stallion Mesaoud) and Kuhaylan Om Soura. Until last week, I thought Kuhaylan Abu Junub was one of these. Kuhaylan Abu Junub is a strain I have always been interested in. There are some indications it is somehow ‘related to’, in a way I am not yet in a position to explain fully, to Ma’naqi, Jilfan, and Frayjan, all of which are ultimately Kuhaylan branches as well. It is on the list of Abbas Pasha’s ten favorite strains,…
Below is one of the first photos I took, at age 12 in 1990 or 1991, with my father’s Nikon. The mare in the picture is Tahirah, then a 25 year old ‘Ubayyah Sharrakiyah from the marbat of the Saffaf family of Hama. Hama is an ancient city in central Syria, just west of the Syrian desert, and as such was the main marketplace for the Sba’ah Bedouin tribe, which was famed for its many marabet of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak (‘Ubayyan al-‘Awbali, ‘Ubayyan al-Usayli’, Ubayyan Ibn ‘Alyan which by the way is Queen of Sheba’s marbat, ‘Ubayyan Ibn Thamdan,’Ubayyan Ibn Duwayhiss, ‘Ubayyan Labdah, etc). The Saffaf family were in close business contact with the Sba’ah Bedouins, from whom they obtained a number of desert-bred mares. One of these mares was Tahirah’s maternal grand-dam, a chestnut ‘Ubayyah Sharrakiyah, bred by Ku’ayran al-Amsa’, a Bedouin of the Rasalin section of the Sba’ah tribe. She was by a famous Ma’naghi Sbayli stallion, then the herd sire for the Rasalin section. Tahirah’s sire was a Kuhaylan al-Krush, also from the Saffaf family, who owned a Krush marbat as well. Her dam’s sire was a Hamdani Simri, also from Hama. Tahirah has many of the features…
Adrien Deblaise breeds Arabian horses of Tunisian, Moroccan and Algerian bloodlines in Western France. His father Philippe was a bookseller that specialized in equine literature. Philippe’s inventory contained one of the largest collections in France books on horses in general and Arabians in particular. Below are pictures of two of Adrien’s mares: B’Oureah Marine (by Ourki x Bismilah by Irmak), and Qhejala (by Fawzan x Jelala II by Abouhif). B’Oureah is shown here competing for a 60 mile endurance race (which she won). She is a Jilfat Dhawi by strain, tracing to the mare Wadha imported by the French government from the Fad’aan tribe in 1875. Qhejala traces to Cherifa, a Shuwaymat Sabbah imported by the French from the Sba’ah tribe in 1869. Note the resemblance between Qhejala (who is 75% Egyptian) and the Babson (a group of asil Arabians of Egyptian bloodlines) broodmatron Fada (Faddan x Aaroufa by Fay El Dine). Fada’s rare photo below is from the late Billy Sheets’ photo collection.
He was by Prince Hal x Sirrulya. Photo from Jeanne Craver
Some time last year, this blog featured the precious asil Kuhaylan al-Mimrah line to the mare Baraka (Ibn Manial x Gamalat) which has been flourishing in South Africa. The series of postings on Baraka and her descendents attracted a lot of attention from South Africa and Namibia, and is by far the most popular thread on this blog. Now is the time to feature another asil line that has survived in South Africa, and which carries crosses to desert-bred lines that are extinct almost everywhere else around the globe. That’s the line of the mare Rosina (Saoud x Ruth II by Bendigo), a 1950 Kuhaylat al-Rodan exported by H. V. Musgrave Clark to South Africa in 1953. The line is a tail female to Rodania, an 1869 desert-bred Kuhaylat Rodan imported by Lady Anne Blunt in 1881, and one of the most influential mares in Arabian (and asil) horse breeding. What’s so special about this line, will you ask? Kuhaylan al-Rodan asil horses are all over the place. Well, first of all, the absolute majority of Rodania tail female horses are within what is known as “Straight Egyptian” breeding, a sub-set of asil breeding which has branched out into a category – and…
Since I am back talking about Ma’naghi Sbayli stallions (see yesterday’s short post on RB Bellagio), I thought I’d bring up a picture of the stallion Dakhala Sabiq (Prince Hal x Sirrulya by Julyan), a 1975 stallion bred by Jeanne Hussong, when she was just about to become Jeanne Craver. A coouple of years ago, I was seriously considering to buy a daughter of Sabiq’s sister Soiree (Sir x Sirrulya): Dakhala Sahra is a lovely 1985 chestnut mare by Plantagentet out of Soiree, and is owned by Crista Couch. Perhaps I should have made a move. Dakhla Sabiq and RB Bellagio who was featured below, are closely related, since their respective dams Sirrulya and Sirrunade are sisters, both out of Jane Ott’s broodmatron Sirrulla (Sirecho x Drissula). Unfortunately, Sabiq never had the opportunity to be used as a stallion I have always had a soft spot for Ma’anaghi Sbayli stallions. It dates back to the time I read a story by Ali al-Barazi, an old-time Syrian horse breeder, about one of the last ghazus (Bedouin raids), in the early 1940s. That was just before the French, who were ruling over Syria at the time, put an end to all raiding activity and imposed peace…
One of my favorite stallions on the US East Coast is RB Bellagio (Arabi Fad Onyx x Sirrunade by Faaryan), an asil Ma’naghii Sbayli tracing to the desert-bred mare Haidee, bred by the Sba’ah tribe and imported to the UK in 1874. His maternal grand-dam is Miss Jane Ott’s famous Sirrulla (Sirecho x Drissula by Sultan). The back of his pedigree is really interesting which one of the very few crosses to the stallion Sultan (Ibn Nafa x Exochorda, and hence Sirecho’s half brother), another cross to Antez, and plenty of linebreeding and inbreeding to Haidee. RB Bellagio is owned by Terri Somers of New Jersey, who also owns a number of Ma’naghi mares that trace to Haidee, but also to the Blunt’s Ferida, another desert bred from the Shammar tribe. Terri has a nice website that has all sorts of information about RB Bellagio and his harm of Ma’naghiyat. By the way, don’t you think there is a similarity with the picture of the desert-bred stallion *Mirage, below?
Ma’anaqi Zudghum is one of the most respected marabet of Sbayli, owned by a Bedouin of the Sba’ah tribe called Zudghum. Dinar’s sire, the Hamdani Simri al-Aawar, was pictured in an earlier entry. This photo was taken by my father at Mustafa al-Jabri’s stud in Aleppo, where Dinar, then a growthy two and a half years old colt, was on loan from his owner Zafir Abdul Khaliq. Back then (early 1990s, judging by the shirt I am wearing in the picture), Dinar was thought to have a ‘prettier’ head than your average Arabian horse from Syria, so breeders rushed to breed him to their mares even though he was still too young. It may have stifled his growth process. Again desert-bred horses in general and al-Aawar’s sons and daughters in particular take a longer time to mature, and in a hindsight, I think this one would have matured into a much better proportioned horse had he not been used so heavily at such a young age.
I recently shared with you my plan to propose the mare *Lebnaniah for inclusion in the Roster of Al-Khamsa horses as of 2010. The process is very thorough, usually involving several individuals putting their research skills together. It typically takes several years to complete. As part of this process, I will be sending the Al Khamsa Board original information about *Lebnaniah’s ancestors – information that was not available before. Much of this information is actually included in “Al-Dahdah Index” (don’t laugh), an annotated catalog of noteworthy asil and non-asil horses that were bred in the Middle East (Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Jordan, the northern Arabian desert, etc) throughout the twentieth century. I have already shared with you the entries on the stallion Shaykh al-Arab and Kayane. The “Al-Dahdah Index” is a living document, which I have been patiently working on for the past twelve years, and I update as often as I can. The information is based on oral and written primary sources from the Middle East — i.e., it is not extracted from books written by Western travelers, horse buyers, and other occasional visitors. I would like to see the “Al-Dahdah Index” published some day, but not before I add a couple thousand more entries. I think I’ll give it another…
Question : Quand a eu lieu la dernière razzia en Syrie ? Réponse : La dernière razzia a eu lieu en 1943, des Shammar sur les Sba’ah. Ils sont partis d’ici (Hassakè ou al-Hassakah) avec 100 cavaliers le matin. Ils sont tombés sur le campement Sba’ah distant de 40 miles, à midi. Tous les cavaliers étaient de retour dans l’après-midi. Question : Vous voulez dire dans la nuit ? Réponse : Non, non dans l’après-midi. Je me suis permis d’insister : mais vers les 8 ou 9 heures du soir ? Réponse empreinte d’un certain agacement : Non dans l’après-midi vers les cinq heures ! Voilà ce qu’aux yeux des Bédouins leurs chevaux pur sang sont à même de faire naturellement. Il est à noter qu’à l’heure actuelle cette moyenne horaire correspond à ce que l’on fait avec les 4×4 en dehors des pistes.
This morning I was talking to Jean-Claude Rajot over the phone and I asked him if he would agree to write on Daughter of the Wind. I didn’t think he would, but I still asked. He agreed. And I am happy he did. Jean-Claude, a French breeder of Arabian horses, is the president of USCAR (Union pour la Sauvergarde du Cheval Arabe). USCAR is a grassroots preservationnist organization of the old kind (the good kind), in many ways the French version of the US-based Al Khamsa. Jean-Claude was also a disciple and one of the closest people to master breeder Robert Mauvy, during the last 11 years of Mauvy’s life. Mauvy called Jean-Claude “mon fils” (‘son’). Jean-Claude and friend Louis Bauduin, USCAR’s vice-president, owned several of Mauvy’s horses. Their offspring now constitute the nucleus of their breeding programs. Mauvy’s teachings have had a most profound influence on me. His small book “Le Cheval Arabe” is my Arabian horse Bible since I was ten. One of the book’s photos features the stallion Cherif (by Saadi x Zarifa, by Matuvu), bred by Mauvy in 1967. A chapter of the book is dedicated to the nursing of Hamada (by Irmak x Shawania by Amri),…
Kuhaylan al-Mimrah: so where were we? In the last post about this strain, we had left it in the hands of the Muwayni’ section of the Sba’ah tribe, to which the Mimrah clan belongs. Today, the noble section of Al-Muwayni’ is split between Syria and Saudi Arabia but no longer owns horses from this famous strain. Sometime during the twentieth century (not sure when, but earlier rather than later), a branch of this strain passed to the al-Mazhur clan of the Shammar tribe, and then, about fifty years ago to the Jawwalah section of the Tai tribe, among which it could still be found until very recently. Below are photos of two fine specimen of the Kuahylan al-Mimrah of the Jawwalah marbat. The one above is a picture of Aminah (Hayfi Juhayyim x Kuhaylat al-Mimrah, by the grand Saqlawi ‘Ibbo, more on all these great old timers later), the founder of a prominent dynasty at Mustapha al-Jabri’s stud in Aleppo, Syria. The second is Za’rur al-Barari, a grandson of Aminah, and a stallion at Radwane Shabariq’s stud, also in Aleppo. Za’rur is the younger brother of the stallion Basil, which Joe Ferriss recently wrote about, here and here. Za’rur has been…
The dark chestnut stallion Shaykh al-‘Arab is one of the foundation stallions of the (now defunct) Lebanese Asil Arabian horse breeding. Born in the desert somewhere between Hims and Palmyra, he was bred by Rakan ibn Mirshid, Shaykh of the Gomussah section of the Sba’ah Bedouin tribe in the 1930s, then sold to Beirut for racing. His sire was a desert-bred Ma’naghi Sbayli, the stallion of ‘Awdah al-Mis’ir of Sba’ah, and his dam a ‘Ubayyat al-Usayli’, one of the best marabit (pl. of marbat, i.e., desert stud) of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak among the Sba’ah tribe. [Other equally good marabit of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak with the Sba’ah tribe ainclude ‘Ubayyan ibn Duwayhiss, ‘Ubayyan al-‘Awbali, ‘Ubayyan ibn Thamdan, and ‘Ubayyan ibn ‘Alyan, the latter being the strain of the Blunt import Queen of Sheba, then owned by Beteyen Ibn Mirshid, Rakan’s ancestor.] In Beirut, the horse was successfully raced by Henri Pharaon under the name of Shaykh al-‘Arab (a reference to his prestigious breeder), and then given to the Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture as a breeding stallion. Shaykh al-‘Arab’s sons and daughters became good race horses, so much so that veteran Syrian racehorse owner Ali al-Barazi recalled attending race in Beirut where the top…
In 1909, a French government commission led by Inspector Quinchez bought 24 desert-bred stallions from the Egyptian racetrack of Sidi Gaber in Alexandria. Of these, 17 went to Algeria (then a part of France), and the remaining 7 were distributed in government studs across mainland France. The seven were: Dahman, Meenak, Farid, Aslani, Hamdany El Samry, Latif and Maarouf. The magnificent Dahman, to which this blog paid a tribute some time ago, was no doubt the star of this importation. Dahman’s hujja – which I will translate for you soon – tells us that he was bred by the Shammar tribe, from a Dahman sire and a Rabda dam. He stood at Pompadour for twenty-some years, leaving behind many pretty Asil mares like Ninon (picture below), Melinite, Musotte, and Noble Reine, and some excellent stallions, one of which, Minos (x Melisse) was sent to the King of Morocco. Today Minos appears in many modern Moroccan pedigrees. If Dahman was the most striking, Aslani was the French breeders’ favorite. He originally came from the tribe of Bani Sakhr, by a Ubayyan and a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz. Quinchez had to pay the hefty sum of 8,000 Francs to snatch him away from Alexandrian trainer and racehorse owner Michaelides – the same individual who…
The series of articles on the Ma’naghi Hadraji strain – the fourth in the “train of the Week” feature – is not over yet. There is at least one more post I want to write. Yet I feel the urge to talk about something else for a change, so I thought I’d introduce you to the strain of Kuhaylan al-Dunays. Kuhaylan al-Dunays or Kuhaylan Dunaysan is now extinct in Asil Arabians in tail female, and this has been the case for about 30 years. In the late nineteenth century, the strain belonged to the Sba’ah Bedouin tribe, and stallions from that strain could be bred from [shubuw]. I don’t know where the Sba’ah got the strain from, and I don’t know who owned it within Sba’ah. All things for future research. Perhaps the most famous representative of this strain was the stallion Padishah, a chestnut Kuhaylan Dunaysan from the marbat owned by the al-Mi’rabi landlords of the northern Lebanon plain of Akkar. The al-Mir’abi were not Bedouins, but landowners of Kurdish descent, yet their stud was held in high esteem by Bedouins and townsfolk alike. The Dunaysan marbat was known as the marbat of “Dunaysat of ‘Uyun al-Ghizlan”, in reference to the village of same…
A previous post listed the strain of the desert-bred Asil Arabian stallion El Sbaa as Ma’naghi. That’s the strain France’s premier purist Arabian horse breeder Robert Mauvy attributed to him in one of his books. A manuscript note, found in El Sbaa’s file in the archives at the government’s Pompadour stud, and cited by Nicole de Blomac and Denis Bogros in their masterpiece “L’Arabe: Premier Cheval de Sang” (Paris, 1978), says otherwise. Note #1244, which bears the handwriting of Inspector Rieu de Madron, who imported El Sbaa at an Egyptian racetrack, can be roughly translated as follows: “According to the testimony of Barjas Ibn Nederi, the leader of the ‘Abdah tribe [one of the two main sections of the Sba’ah tribe] and of Nawaf al-Salih, the leader of the Hadidiyyin tribe, the Ju’aitni family to which El Sbaa belongs, is a branch of Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz, not a branch of the Saqlawi, as I had understood before. Horses from the J’aitni strain are very rare now. One needs to look for them among the ‘Anazah Bedouins who never left Najd.” So El Sbaa is of the Ju’aitni strain after all. Note that the confusion about the origin of the strain persists…
Look at the picture of the magnificent El Sbaa below: a French government commission led by M. Rieu de Madron purchased this Asil Ma’anaghi Sbayli stallion straight from the desert [correction: from Cairo, Egypt] in 1925. El Sbaa stood at the Stud of Pompadour, France, but he was ill suited for its humid climate, so he developed a form of asthma and died a few years later. He left too few offspring behind, including the stallions Nemer (out of Ninon), Khartoum (out of Kioumi), the full borthers Medard and Meat (out of Medea), and the dark brown stallion Matuvu (out of Manon). Nemer was exported to Poland, and Khartoum to Romania, where they both started famous racing lines that endure to this day (although not in Asil form). Meat was retained for the Stud of Pompadour, where he took over from his sire, and Matuvu was sent to the stallion depot of Blois, where only a handful Arabian horse breeders used him. Two Asil lines to El Sbaa survived well into the 1970s: one old French dam-line at Pompadour, and another Algerian dam-line with the French breeder Robert Mauvy. At Pompadour, the last Asil to carry a line to El Sbaa was the very typey mare Ablette (by…
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; she would have ten years ago, before I become acquainted with the wonderful Asil Arabians bred in the USA. Dad had bought her as a yearling in 1977 0r 78. At that time, he owned some 15 mares and a couple stallions, not all of them Asil. There were few Asil Arabians left in Lebanon, and Zanoubia was one of the them. She was a ‘Ubayyah Sharrakiyah from the horses of the Dandashi landowners of Western Syria, who were famed for the beauty and purity of their horses. The strain came from the Sba’ah tribe. A couple of the Dandashi horses made their way to Europe and the USA. The Dandashi were the owners of the 1880 black Babolna stallion O-Bajan, who’s left such an imprint on Asil breeding in Europe. They were also the breeders of the Saqlawi Jadran, sire of the Asil mare *Muha, imported by Ameen al-Rihani to the USA. That Saqlawi Jadran was a gift from…
As with many Arabian horse strains, Kuhaylan al-Mimrah takes its name from its owner. The Kuhaylat al-Maryum mare that came from the tribe of al-Dhafeer to tribe of the Sba’ah became known as Kuhaylat al-Mimrah, or Kuhaylah Mimrahiyah, after the Sba’ah Bedouin who owned her. The strain bred on at al-Mimrah’s, and was passed to his sons and grandsons. Of these, Subaylah al-Mimrah was the most well known for breeding it. Al-Mimrah (the people) is one of the many closely-related families that compose the larger Muwayni’ clan (click here for a genealogical table of this clan). The Muwayni’ is the leading clan of the Bayayi’ah section of the ‘Abdah tribe — itself one of the two branches of the Sba’ah tribe. The clan even assumed the leadership of the entire ‘Abdah, until a date in the 1880s when an armed incident with an Ottoman tax-collecting detachment resulted in its downfall and replacement by another rival clan. Still, the Muwayni’ enjoy special respect within the Sba’ah tribe and the general ‘Anazah, partly because of their past status, and partly because of their famous copper seal, one of ‘Anazah’s oldest. Around the time the Abbas Pasha Manuscript was compiled, the Shaykh of the Muwayni’ and head of the Sba’ah ‘Abdah was Nahar Ibn Muwayni’, whose close cousin was Za’aazi’ al-Mimrah. Za’aazi’ al-Mimrah was a fierce warrior who owned a…