One of my favorite photos from Volume 1 of the Arabian Stud Book of Bahrain is that taken by Danah Al Khalifah of this bay Shawafan/Shawaf stallion. Fortunately, his line carries on in modern Bahraini horses. The same stallion appears in another photo (below) that appeared in Danah Al Khalifah’s “Living Treasures of Bahrain”, below. The two photos are part of the same series, and must have been taken minutes apart. Shawaf is in the middle of the picture (between the two street lights), preceding the same gray and two bay stallions as in the photo above.
I wrote about H.R.P. Dickson’s 1949 book “The Arab of the Desert” in an earlier blog entry about the Ubayyan strain of Ibn Jalawi. This entry is about about the horses of the rulers of Bahrain, in the context of Dickson’s mention of specific Arab leader being famous for keeping a certain strain of Arabian horses, their rabat or marbat: Every Shaikh of standing is supposed to always keep his rabat, i.e. a mare or mares from which he breeds a certain particular strain. He gets name and prestige by doing this. […] The Shaikhs of Bahrain similarly keep the Roman-nosed Shawaf (Kuhailan) breed. Kate referred me to this quote a few weeks ago. Several things struck me about it. First, how Dickson, who collected information for his book between 1929 and 1936, primarily associated the Bahraini rulers with the Shawaf strain rather than the Jallabi strain for which they are usually better known. Second, how Judith Forbis, who visited the royal studs of Bahrain in March 1970, forty years after Dickson (or his informants) made their observation, essentially echoed him about both the look and the status of the Shawaf strain. In her 1971 seminal Arabian Horse World article…
This morning Jeanne Craver reminded me of this picture of the Bahrani stallion Shawaf (BHRSP3), a stud at the mounted police, of the ancient and precious Shawafan strain. It is in the first volume of the Bahrain studbook, which I left behind in Lebanon some twenty years ago.