Photo of the day

I took this photo of the Asil stallion Khalid (Mahrous x Khalidah) in Aleppo, Syria in the mid-1990s, at the farm of Mustapha al-Jabri.  Khalid is a half-brother to the stallion Basil, the subject of an previous post by Joe Ferriss.  Both Khalid’s sire and dam are desert breds.  Notice the excellent legs and the strong sinews on this horse. Khalid’s dam, Khalidah, is a Saglawiyah Jadraniyah from the horses of Hulu al-Hulu, the leader (Shaykh) of the ‘Adwan Bedouin tribe, and traces to the glorious marbat (tribal stud) of Ibn ‘Amud of the Shammar tribe.  His sire is a ‘Ubayyan Suhayli (a branch of ‘Ubayyan Sharrak), also from the Shammar. According to Mahrus ibn Haddal, who was Shaykh of the al-‘Amarat tribe in the 1920s, Ibn ‘Amud  obtained his original mare in a ghazu (tribal raid) against the al-Frijah section of the Ruwalah tribe.  Ibn Haddal’s testimony is given in Khairi al-‘Azzawi’s great book on the tribes of Iraq (in Arabic). Other accounts I have gathered from recent conversations with Bedouins have the Saglawiyah Jadraniyah of the marbat of Ibn ‘Amud (or Saglawiyat ‘Ibn ‘Amud for short) trace to the ‘Anazah tribe in general, of which the Ruwalah is a part of. To me Khalid is the quintessential Asil stallion: powerful but graceful, strong but…

More about Basil, the Asil Kuhaylan al-Mimrah

Basil, the masculine grey stallion pictured in Joe’s entry below was one of the first acquisitions Syrian Government Stud as it began operating in the mid 1990s.  Basil, born in 1985 at the stud of Mustapha al-Jabri in Aleppo, was not  Bedouin-bred, but both his sire and dam were. He was by Mahrous, a ‘Ubayyan Suhayli from the Shammar, then Mustapha’s head stallion, out of Hallah, a chestnut Kuhaylah Mimrahiyah also from the Shammar. Basil’s dam Hallah, pictured below at al-Jabri’s farm in 1996, was arguably the best of Mustapha’s herd, which consisted of 100-plus mares; Mustapha owned her dam and her sister as well.  Basil joined his sire as a herd stallion for Mustpaha before he was gifted to the Government.   Abdul-Qadir Hammami, a veteran horse-merchant and one of the sharpest experts on desert horses I have come to meet, picked Hallah, her dam and her sister for Mustapha’s stud.  Next week’s “Strain of the Week” series will be about Kuhaylan al-Mimrah. It will discuss Hallah’s family, among other families belonging to this ancient strain.