This handsome stallion, Regatta CF (MV Reflection x Frill by Adrian out of Trill by Tripoli) was bred by Craver Farms and is now owned by Mike and Cindy Pollman of Blu Skai Farms.
This handsome horse, very reminiscent of the some of the horses found in Syria today was presented at the 2007 Al Khamsa Convention in California. His name is Bah-Rani LF (Ibn Don Carlos x Persephone CF by Regency CF) and he traces to Shilla (Letan x Freda by Obeyran) and further back to Galfia, the Hamdaniyah Simriyah imported by the Hamidie Hippodrome Society to the USA in 1893. Photo also by Christine Emmert, who is certainly very talented.
Video of AAS Al Humrah, a Hamdani Simri gelding of desert bloodlines bred by Edie Booth’s Antique Arabian Stud.
A nice photo of a son of two desert-bred imports. Letan is by *Muson, a Kuhalyan al-Musinn of the Ruwalah, out of *Jedah, a Hamdaniyah Simriyah of the marbat of Ibn Ghurab. Both *Muson and *Jedah were imported from Northern Arabia by Homer Davenport in 1906. My Wisteria has 25 crosses to him, and her daughter Wadhah 37 crosses. Now compare him with another Hamdani Ibn Ghurab, Mobarak born some 80 years later, at the stud of Abd al-‘Iyadah al-Dar’an Ibn Ghurab of the Shammar Bedouins, and notice the similar body structures:
From reader Monique in the Netherlands comes this picture of the impressive dark bay Hamdani Simri stallion Monar (Kheibar x Aaghigh by Haddad). Click here for his pedigree, which is unusually long and detailed from an Arabian from the Middle East. Below is also a picture, also from allbreedpedigree.com, of his very typey great-grandsire Arras, an Ubayyan Sharrak, with Mary Gharagozlu up.
Recently, I have been re-reading a lot of the old articles RJ wrote for Arabian Visions magazine, to refresh my memory as I start working on an Al Khamsa project on rare lines (more on this later). One of my favorite RJ articles is “The Blunts and Crabbet Stud: An Abbreviated History and Description of the Breeding Program“, from the time Crabbet Stud was founded in 1878 to Lady Anne Blunt death in 1917, including the dam lines that were represented at Crabbet across 40 years of breeding: In 1917, “the desert mares still represented at Crabbet at the end of Lady Anne’s life were Basilisk, Jerboa, Dajania, Queen of Sheba, Meshura, Rodania, and Ferida. However, the Jerboa line had died out in tail-female.” So, six of the Blunt’s desert damlines were still represented in 1917. Also, “of the Ali Pasha mares, the 1917 catalog details that […] the blood of the families of Sobha, Bint Helwa, Bint Nura, Makbula and her daughter Kasida, ran strong in the herd, with all but the latter having provided sires to the stud.” Four damlines from the Ali Pasha Sharif mares were still there in 1917, for a total of ten damlines. It would be…
I just saw this nice photo of Michael Bowlings’ black mare Almohada, a Hamdaniyah Simriyah of ‘Davenport’ bloodlines. I don’t know where the black gene in ‘Davenport’ horses comes from, but I will make I ask Michael next time I talk . Ambar Diaz tells me this mare has a really nice 2009 colt.
*Samirah is a Hamdaniyah Simriyah from the stud of the House of Saud in Najd, which was imported to the USA by Albert Harris in 1921. She has a very thin line that was the focus of a number of courageous, almost desperate preservation efforts over the last fourty years. The result is that the tail female line still goes on, albeit barely. A first line tracing back to *Samirah through her daughter Koweyt was discussed earlier, here. The second line to *Samirah is through her other daughter Kerasun, by the desert-bred stallion *Sunshine. *Sunshine was also from the Saud studs, and was imported in utero to USA in 1931 by Albert Harris, along with his dam *Nufoud, *Samirah, and two other mares. Kerasun in turn had two daughters, both bred by Albert Harris: Kaleta (by Alcazar) and Karamia (by Kulun, a Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz stallion from really old bloodlines tracing to *Nedjme). Through Kaleta runs a very thin line high in desert bred blood straight from Najd and the Syrian desert, with the arrows indicating a mother-to-daughter link: Kaleta –> her daughter Faleta (by Ibn Fadl, another Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz and a son of the desert, his dam being *Turfa) –> Faleta’s…
Amr Allah al-Hafi is my three year old stallion of my breeding, a desert bred Hamdani Simri, sired by al-Sarim (#1820 in the Saudi Arabian Stud Book) and out of al-Majmulah (#3164 in the same).
Don’t know who took this beautiful, sweet, human-like picture of the Hamdaniyah Simriyah mare Fragrance CF, bred at Craver Farms in Illinios, and owned by Michael Bowling of California, but the photographer was certainly inspired. I just couldn’t help stealing the picture from the Davenport Conservancy website. Fragrance traces to *Galfia, imported to Chicago by the Ottoman Hamidie Society in 1893, but otherwise descends from horses brought from the Syrian desert by Homer Davenport in 1906. To learn about the horses of the Hamidie Society, click here.
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 in the following year, in 1932). Thee of the four mares left asil descendants here in the USA, and two of these have tail female descendants: *Nufoud and *Samirah. *Nufoud’s descendants, which include some of my favorite horses here in the USA (that is, LD Rubic and Belladonna CHF) were already featured in an entry sometime last year. Let us talk about *Samirah’s here. Two of her daughters left asil progeny: Koweyt by Alcazar, and Kerasun by *Sunshine, the latter being *Nufoud’s son, imported to the USA in utero. The mare Koweyt produced a daughter, Konight, by the Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz stallion Kaniht (Katar x Niht). Kaniht in turn produced the mare Amira Moda, by a Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz from another line: Fa-Turf (*Fadl x *Turfa). According to the Al Khamsa Roster, there are only three asil mares left from this branch of the *Samirah’s family, all…
This is Popinjay (Banter CF x Persimmon by Brimstone), a 1992 Hamdani Simri tracing to Schilla, and at Maria Wallis’ in Texas. On these horses being Hamdani Simri as opposed to Saqlawi al-Abd, read here. I am trying to organize a breeding that involves him, and will tell you all about this exciting venture once it has materialized (fingers crossed).
At last I get to see a picture of Bossa Nova (Iricho x Bassala by Masbout), thanks to Adrien Deblaise who sent me this one today. Bossa Nova, of the Jilfan Dhawi strain that traces to the mare Wadha from the Fad’aan tribe, was bred by the French government stud of Pompadour, by Iricho, an asil imported from Anatole Cordonnier’s breeding in Tunisia, out of Bassala, an asil imported from the Tiaret government stud in Algeria. Bossa Nova, together with the Hamdaniyah Simriyah mare Ablette (photo below, by Sumeyr x Attique by Meat), was deemed the “best”, “purest”, and “most classic” mare in Pompadour” by master-breeder Robert Mauvy. Now I see why.
Don’t ask me how this ancient line made it into the 21st century. It’s a near miracle. Lady Anne Blunt imported the Hamdani Simri mare Sobha (Wazir x Selma) from Egypt in 1891, from a certain Mahmoud Bey who got her dam from the Abbas Pascha collection. Sobha’s line was one of the most represented lines at Crabbet Stud, after Rodania’s and Dajania’s. It produced a stallion at the first generation: Seyal (Mesaoud x Sobha), despite the latter’s grey color (the Blunts were not big on greys). Lady Anne also used Sobha’s other son Antar at her Sheykh Obeyd Stud in Egypt. Seyal’s sire line is still in existence today: Seyal -> Berk -> Ribal -> Ghadaf -> Jadib -> Ibn Gulida -> Omagh -> Dib -> Huntington Doyle, a chestnut 1990 stallion I saw at the Doyle Ranch in Oregon last August. But that’s not what I wanted to talk about here. Sobha had a daughter at Crabbet, Siwa (by Ahmar), who had Somra by Daoud, who had Safarjal by Berk. Safarjal was Lady Wentworth’s gift [purchased Thanks for the correction RJ] to Musgrave Clark of the Courthouse stud, which I wrote about in an earlier entry. Clark bred Safarjal to…
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…
I finally got to meet Carol Monkhouse at the Al Khamsa Convention in Oregon. Carol was visiting from the UK, with her husband Terry Lee. She has a couple mares, Maloof Habiba (Maloof Habibi x Maloof Sahara by Subani) and Maloof Hadiya (Parnell x Devlin), and their offspring, which she keeps at the Doyle ranch, in Alfalfa, Oregon. I had corresponded with Carol some fifteen years ago, after a mutual friend, Tzviah Idan, had introduced us to each other, at at time all three of us happened to be looking at remaining old Blunt lines (i.e., no Skowronek, who is so ubiquitous as to have his own Wikipedia page) around the world. I was delighted to finally meet her in person. We had identified the 1978 asil stallion Arabesque Azieze (Hansan x Orilla by Oran) in New Zealand (last asil Wadnan al-Khursan stallion in the West, also last asil line to Oran); some asil descendants of the 1950 mare Rozina (Saoud x Ruth II by Bendigo) in South Africa, by the asil Kuhaylan al-Mimrah stallion Gordonville Ziyadan (more on this precious line later, it is still there); the two asil Courthouse Hamdani Simri full sisters Sappho and Sceptre (Bleinheim X Selima by Bahram, more on those twi later as…
Thanks Edouard for posting that picture of Al-Awar. I agree with you that he is much more impressive in person than in photos which explains my difficulty in getting a good photo of him at the Racing club in Aleppo, nearing dark time in November 1996. When a horse makes a good impression on me, I have great difficulty in wanting to take a photo because I want to spend every moment looking at the horse to record what I see in my mind, and taking photos requires me to think about the camera and capturing something quickly, which is an intrusion on the live experience, possibly missing an important moment. This is why in the 1970s we mostly took horse movies (before video) and usually Sharon was taking the movies as I was looking. But Al-Awar is truly a horse that one needed to see in person. Even as an aged horse, his wonderful expression and temperament, light free movement as he was being ridden in front of us, and the rich sheen of his deep chestnut coat resembling some rare earthen stone, was unforgettable. In his harmonious presentation, I was reminded of Homer Davenport’s quote about “nothing to…
Before I move to discussing the two stallions just imported from Syria to France, and following the posting of Shahm’s photos a couple days ago, I want to share with you a couple pictures of the second stallion, Mahboob Halab, a 4 year old Shuwayman Sabbah from the marbat of the Jarbah leading family of the Shammar tribe. Both photos are courtesy of Jean-Claude Rajot, who owns Mahboob. The above one was just taken in France, and the one below in Syria, about 6 months ago, before the horse’s importation. Desert bred horses heavy on the blood of al-Aawar, the Hamdani ibn Ghurab stallion, are very slow to mature, according to Radwan Shabareq, al-Aawar’s last owner. They typically reach full maturity at 8 years old.
My friends Jean-Claude Rajot and Louis Bauduin have been breeding Arabian horses for a long time. They are the students and friends of the late Robert Mauvy. Robert Mauvy is, simply put, the Westerner who came the closest to understanding the Arabian horse and to breeding it as its original custodians, the Bedouins of Arabia, bred it. Forget Carl Raswan, forget Abd al-Qadir al-Jazairi of Algeria, forget Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfik of Egypt. Only Anne Blunt, in the later years of her life, equalled Mauvy’s ‘art of breeding’. While Mauvy is little-known outside of France and North Africa– despite his longtime connections with some of the fathers of the Asil Club movement in Europe, such as Foppe Klynstra, I am certain that his fame will skyrocket when an English translation of his small yet gigantic book “Le Cheval Arabe” will become available. This masterpiece was my Arabian Horse Bible, from age 10 until today. One of the key teachings of Mauvy, as laid out in his book, is that the Arabian horse, like all things living (plants, animals, and even humans) is the outcome of the environment in which it is bred. If you take it out of its original environment, it will live certainly live…
This is old Nader, a senior stallion at the Dirab government stud in Saudi Arabia, a Hamdani Simri by Eidan (# 263 in the Saudi Studbook) out of Nadra (#400). Nader is from that same Hamdani line that was kept at the Royal Saudi stud of al-Kharj, and from which several of the 1960s desert-bred imports to the USA (*Amiraa, *Halwaaji, *Rudann) trace to. Notice that this would mean that these imports are Hamdani Simri, too as a result. Only the Hamdani strain information was available before. Pure Man (translated from Arabic by Edouard)
This document recently appeared on one of the discussion threads below. For those of you who know the Abbas Pasha Manuscript in its English edition, this is just the first page in one of the original Arabic editions.. This is a quick and dirty translation (writing from work, gotta go home soon), without the Quran verses in the reversed triangle: “Warning/advice about breeding/mating horses; I say, about stallions to be mated; the first to be mated (yushabbi) is Duhayman Shahwan from the strain (rasan) of Kunayhir, and Duhaym al-Najib; the second is Kuhaylan al-Mimrah; then al-Saqlawi al-Jadrani and it is from three branches, the dearest of which is the strain of al-Simniyyat, then the strain of al-Sudaniyat, then the strain of al-Abd; followed by the strain of al-Saqlawi al-Ubayri and al-Marighi, which are the same strain; and following that, Hadban al-Nzahi which consists of six strains: the first (ie, the best) is Hadbat al-Munsariqah; the second is Hadbat Mushaytib; the third is Hadbat Jawlan; the fourth is Hadbat al-Fard; the fifth is Hadbat al-Mahdi; the sixth is Habdat al-Bardawil which is not to be mated; following that is Kuhaylan al-Tamri; and after that, Shuwayman al-Sabbah; and after that, Hamdani Simri al-Khalis; and…
Recently I became aware of the existence of a young bay stallion of desert-bred stock that was bred in France, where he is now standing at stud. The name of this young stallion is Menjad Maram al-Baida, and his strain is Saqlawi Jadran (photo below, from his owners website). Menjad was bred by Mrs. Chantal Chekroun, and sired by the black stallion Mokhtar out of the bay mare Hijab. Both Mokhtar and Hijab were owned by Basil Jadaan in Damascus, Syria, then by Mrs. J. Menning to whom Basil gave them, and are now owned by Mrs. Chekroun. Mrs. Chekroun sold Menjad to Sophie and Dominique Balthasar of the Haras de la Lizonne, and still retains a full sister. A sketchy pedigree of Menjad looks like this: Awaad (S. Shaifi x Mumtazah) Mokhtar …
A previous entry had discussed how the young children of Shammar Shaykh (and prominent Syrian politician) Mayzar Abd al-Muhsin al-Jarba lost the ownership of their father’s prestigious marbat of Kuhaylan Krush al-Baida strain upon the latter’s death (late 1960s? early 1970s?), and how the man Mayzar had entrusted with his assets took the horses for himself. That man was a Bedouin from the Faddaghah section of the Shammar tribe, by the name of ‘Iyadah al-Talab al-Khalaf, and was also known as al-Qartah. Al-Qartah bred Mayzar’s horses until the mid-1980s, continuing the practice of close inbreeding that Mayzar (and perhaps Mayzar’s father and grandfather before him) had been practising before. The grey Mumtazah was Iyadah al-Qartah’s main broodmare. Both her parents were bred by Mayzar Abd al-Muhsin al-Jarbah, and all four grandparents were from the same Kuhaylan Krush al-Baida strain. It’s not clear whether Mumtazah was bred by ‘Iyadah al-Qartah, or whether she was taken by him from Mayzar’s estate as a foal. An impressive mare with a crested neck not unlike the Godolphin Arabian (see my picture of her in old age, below), Mumtazah produced the bay mare Doumah, also by a Kuhaylan al-Krush (maybe a full brother), and the grey…
I first saw Mubarak in 1989 when an old truck disembarked a batch of three horses at the farm of Hisham Ghurayyib in Damascus, Syria. I was told that the truck had just come from the desert area of al-Jazirah, “Upper Mesopotomia”. It was my first encounter with Arabian horses born and raised in the desert. I was 11. My father was breeding Asil Arabians back then and I was familiar with the first generation offspring of desertbred horses, or horses born on the fringes of the desert, but I had never seen the “real thing”. My very first reaction was one of disappointment. Not only were the three horses – a black Kuhaylat al-‘Armush mare, a fleebitten Kuhaylat ibn Mizhir mare, and a chestnut Hamdani Ibn Ghurab stallion – tiny, they were worn out, and extremely thin. They feet were badly damaged, and the hooves were so overgrown that the poor horses could badly walk. Were these the “horses of the desert” (khayl sahraa)? My father had given me his Nikon and asked me to take photos of all the horses, while he was checking them out and asking about their origins. I took a rapid photo shot of the…
I love this picture, and I love this horse. Alwal Bahet (Jalam al-Ubayyan x Sindidah), an Asil Hamdani Simri, the son of two desert-bred horses imported from Saudi Arabia to the USA, is just magnificent. Click on his parents’ link to learn more about his background. I read somehere that this picture was taken a few days (hours?) before he died, at the venerable age of thirty.
Musette (b. 1932), a Saqlawiyah by strain, is a good specimen of the Asil Arabians bred by the French government stud of Pompadour in the first half of the twentieth century. She reminds me of some of the first and second generation offspring of the horses imported by Homer Davenport to the USA in 1906. She was by the desert import El Sbaa (strain: Ju’aitni) out of Musotte, who was by the famous Dahman (strain: Rabdan, sire: a Dahman) out of Mysterieuse. Mysterieuse was by yet another desert bred stallion, Enwer – a Ma’naghi, bred by the Shammar Bedouin tribe like Dahman, and like him imported to France in 1909 – out of Mysie. Mysie was by the desert-bred Beni Kaled, a chestnut Hamdani, out of the imported desert-bred mare Meleke. Meleke was imported to Pompadour in 1891, a Saqlawiyah by a Ma’naghi, himself by a Hamdani Simri (or by a Hamdani Simri by a Ma’naghi, the French importation records are ambiguous). This precious line has unfortunately completely died out by the 1940s, and only survives in the middle of the pedigrees, through the Asil stallions Matuvu, and Minos. Matuvu (by El Sbaa out of Manon, by Dahman out of Mysterieuse), stood at…
Algeria was a French colony from 1830 to 1848, and an integral part of France from 1848 till its indepedence in 1962, following one of the bloodliest colonial wars. The conquest of Algeria by France was extremely long and arduous, and could only completed by 1900, when the latest of the Tuareg chiefs (ethnic Berbers, not Arabs) surrendered to French troops. Horses were a major factor in the conquest and stabilization of Algeria. In 1877, the French Ministry of War (the equivalent of a Department of Defense), established a breeding stud near the town of Tiaret, in the mountains of central Algeria. The objective of the “Jumenterie de Tiaret”, which later became the “Haras de Tiaret-Chaouchaoua“, was to produce Arabian stallions, which were sent to local stallion depots, where they were used on Barb mares. The result was a sturdy Arab-Barb cavalry horse. Hundreds of Arabian stallions and dozens of mares were imported to Tiaret (and its equivalent in neighboring Tunisia, Sidi-Thabet) from the deserts of Arabia and the racetracks of Egypt and Lebanon. Depending on the expertise of the horse-buying commission and its budget, imports ranged from the outstanding to the mediocre. Overall, Algeria received much better quality desert-bred imports than Tunisia or even France. Outstanding genitors included: Bango, a grey Ma’anaghi…
This morning I stumbled on an article I had written on the stallion *Al Mashoor some six years ago. I wish I could find the time to research and write more of this stuff..