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 who have nothing to do with horses anymore are relying on it as a bargaining chip to ask for favors from the Saudi royal family, or to ascertain their social status (things along the lines of: “Your Highness, my ancestor gave your ancestor a precious mare, they were close, it is written in the horse book, so now I need… from you in return”). However great the legacy of Judith Forbis as a breeder of Arabian horses of the show type has been, her most enduring legacy, IMO, is to have made this book available to Western audiences. Page after page, the information in the Manuscript debunks many Western misconceptions about Bedouin horse breeding. Really, the only thing missing from the book is an index of the individual horses, strains and Bedouins mentioned. Check out this quote, page 439 [notes between brackets are mine]: “The Sheikhs of Subayah [actually, Subay’, a Bedouin tribe…
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. 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 the best mares ever imported to the USA from the Middle East, in my opinion.
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.
Think of this new “Lost asil tail females” series as an obituary section in a newspaper.. I know there is no point in grieving over what is lost, but it’s a good reminder of how lucky we are to have what we still have. The series starts with *Nedjme, just because “she was given the position of the first registration in the stud book of the Arabian Horse Club of America, […] an indication of the regard in which she was held by Arabian horse breeders in this country of her day” (Craver and Craver, Horses of the White City). *Nedjme was one of the horses the Ottoman Hamidie Society exhibited at the 1893 Chicago World Fair. She is registered as a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz by a Saqlawi Jadran. However, evidence from a letter J.R. Dolbony (who was involved with the Hamidie Society, perhaps as an performer in the Ottoman exhibition) to Homer Davenport, mentions that her dam was of the Sa’dat al-Tuqan strain, from the Wuld Ali Bedouins and her sire of the Nkhayshi strain, from the Hssinah tribe, which is certainly more interesting. Whatever the case, *Nedjme was the pick of the Hamidie Society horses, and fetched the highest price when the…