The end of the concept of “fit for breeding”
An interesting trend common to both Syrian and Bahraini Arabian horses is the disappearing of the old Bedouin concept of “Shubuw” or “Yishabby”. The concept means “fit for breeding” or “good for breeding”. Before the 1980s in Bahrain, and the 2000s in Syria, there was a distinction between the strains that were considered “fit for breeding” and the strains that were not. Within Syria, there was no broad agreement on which strains were “fit for breeding” and which were not, as each region, each tribe, even each group of people had their own opinion on the issue, but the concept did exist and was part of the conversation about Arabian horses. I recall that back in the 1990s a Syrian breeder could be chided for breeding his mares to a Sa’dan, a Rishan, a Rabdan or a Da’jani stallion. Today the distinction has become moot, and all strains are being bred from in both countries — for now.
Is this partly because of the greater ease of communication that things like mobile phones have brought, so it is much quicker to get the history of a strain and verify the ancestry of a horse from the relevant people? I imagine the last twenty years of email, social media and the ubiquity of mobile phones aren’t the only things playing a rôle in the changing attitudes, but presume that they have had an impact.
Maybe. I think it is more the dearth of good stallions. When people see a good stallion prospect (say, a race winner) from a strain that is not traditionally bred from, they just breed from him instead of breeding from a lesser good horses from a shubuw strain.
A bit like the story of ibn Muhaysin’s Hamdaniyah in Prince Mohammed Ali’s book, then, the part where he says on p. 44:
“According to their story, they ascertained its pedigree and found it was a Hamdaniyah, but what strain of Hamdaniyah they do not know. Its horses they would not at first use for mating, but later on when horses became rare, and the Hamdaniyah horses proved excellent, they began to mate them.”
Exactly.
It does sound as though it’s the old lines of separation that are breaking down, so that the horses and their community of keepers/breeders are coming to be seen as one. I agree, the increased ease of communication must have contributed to that.
Is “Yishabby” possibly the origin of Homer Davenport’s “chubby”?
Yes, Edouard has told us that.
yes. Yushabby (not Yishabby sorry for typo) is the verb, “he is fit for breeding”. In spoken Arabic that first syllable is muted, almost silent. Shubuw is the noun, “fitness/fit for breeding”.