(with particular thanks to Margaret Dickinson Fleming)
used by permission of Michael Bowling
(with added photos)
(Bint) Yamama with Negma
Names in 19th-century Egypt do not appear to have
been the hard-edged entities we would like them to be; Ali
Pasha Sherif himself first comes to our attention, buying
horses at the auction put on by the heirs of Abbas Pasha,
as "Ali Bey." Who would realize at first glance that "Ibn
Yemameh al-Saghir" on Ali Pasha's own 1889 sales list is
the same horse as the great Blunt sire MESAOUD?
Not only did the same horse (or person) appear under different
names, the same or very similar names could be used for
different horses. Different names may be spelled similarly,
or the same name may be Westernized differently; the potential
for spelling differences of transliterated Arabic names
is almost infinite. The convention used varies not only
with the native language of the writer but with the scholarly
tradition to which s/he subscribed, and with the brand of
Arabic native to the speaker or writer being transcribed
(Susan K. Blair, personal communication).
Arabian mares appear to have suffered from a particular
lack of nomenclatural precision. The same name might routinely
be used for several generations of a dam line, or for a
set of full and half sisters, or indeed for mares even more
nebulously connected (cf Cadranell, "The
Banat Nura of Ali Pasha Sherif"). How many mares
named with some variation on "Yamama"—"Dove"— actually lived
in Egypt in the 1890s? There were at least two.
The Khedive Abbas Hilmi II was 17 years old and at school
in Vienna when he succeeded his father Khedive Tewfik as
ruler of Egypt in 1892. The story of Abbas Hilmi II and
his relationship to British colonial power is a sufficiently
complex subject to qualify in its own right as a historical
specialty, but the last Khedive also figures in Arabian
breed history. On his return to Egypt to take up the position
of ruler of that country, he began to breed Arabian horses,
in the tradition of his great-grandfather Abbas Pasha I.
One of his first acquisitions, the Ali Pasha Sherif mare
YEMAMEH, had already produced the Blunt sire MESAOUD. Wilfrid
Blunt in his diary mentions that on 11 January, 1896 he
"[t]ook Anne and Judith to Koubbah to see the Khedive.
He…showed us his stud. He has got together some nice mares,
but nothing quite first class, except two of Ali Pasha Sherif's,
one of which is our horse Mesaoud's dam, a very splendid
mare, with the finest head in the world. He has bred some
promising colts and altogether the thing is well done."
Wilfrid and Lady Anne Blunt also bought a mare named YEMAMA
in 1892. According to the original GSB registration for
her son IBN YEMAMA, she was "stated to be an Abeyah,
a bay mare brought from a desert tribe, through a Tiaha
sheykh, to Mohammed Thabit, Sheykh of the Sualha tribe,
in the Sherkieh Province, for Ali Bey Shahin, son of Shahin
Pasha, and purchased from Ali Bey Shahin." YEMAMA produced
at Sheykh Obeyd from 1893 through 1904, taking time off
for adventure in 1897—she served as Wilfrid Blunt's mount
on his eventful last desert journey. YEMAMA's named offspring
at Sheykh Obeyd were the grey 1893 mare YASHMAK by *SHAHWAN,
and the 1902 and 1904 bay full siblings IBN YEMAMA and BINT
YEMAMA by FEYSUL. YEMAMA was given away in 1906, aged 21;
her only link to modern pedigrees is through her grandson
IBN YASHMAK, taken to England in 1904 and returned to Egypt
in 1920.
*Nasr 1918 AHC 889
(Rabdan El Azrak x Bint Yamama)
Negma at age 32 (Dahman x Bint Yamama)
Jasir 1925 (Mabrouk Manial x Negma)
*Aziza 1926 (Jamil x Negma)
Khafifan 1916 (Mabrouk Manial x Negma)
Imp. to Poland 1924 by Count Potocki
Mahroussa ca.1920 (Mabrouk Manial x Negma)
*H.H.Mohamed Ali's Hamama 1927 AHC 887
(Kawkab x Mahroussa)
BINT
YAMAMA produced three foals which bred on: the full
sisters NEGMA and AROUSSA by DAHMAN AL AZRAK and
their three-quarters brother *NASR by DAHMAN's son
RABDAN AL AZRAK.
It is not certain whether NEGMA was bred by the Khedive
Abbas Hilmi or by Prince Mohammed Ali; Lady Anne
Blunt records BINT YAMAMA as "expecting a foal"
in December 1908 and with "a nice filly foal" at
foot in January 1911, and it is tempting to suggest
these were NEGMA and AROUSSA. On the other hand
Prince Mohammed Ali's letters in the 1930s, while
they are not entirely consistent on the impression
they give of NEGMA's age, may be read to imply that
she was foaled as early as 1906, which would make
Abbas Hilmi her breeder.
NEGMA is represented in modern pedigrees by her sons KAFIFAN
and JASIR, and daughters MAHROUSSA, ZAHRA, *AZIZA
and *RODA. There are thin lines to AROUSSA and ZAHRA
through EAO breeding, and all of MAHROUSSA's known
progeny came to Brown or Babson; besides the two
"HHMA"- named mares they include the likes of the
Van Vleet sire *ZARIFE, and those two major Babson
influences *FADL and *MAAROUFA.
*AZIZA produced the influential sires AZKAR and JULEP and
also left a substantial female influence through
her daughters by KENUR, *CZUBUTHAN and *RAFFLES.
*RODA was the dam of sons including HALLANY MISTANNY,
JASPRE and TUT ANKH AMEN; her dam line is more extensive
than that of *AZIZA, through two daughters each
by AGWE, *RAFFLES and IBN HANAD.
*NASR was a respected sire at Traveler's Rest, influential
today through numerous daughters and his prominent
son SIRECHO. Traveler's Rest is responsible, too,
for the only surviving (at least within registered
Arabians) descent from KAFIFAN: his line persists
only through *MATTARIA. JASIR was for many years
the head sire at the Marbach Stud and his name is
widespread today in international pedigrees.
In a 1907 journal entry Lady Anne Blunt records
a visit from Moharrem Pasha and a discussion regarding YEMAMA,
"that bay mare Moharrem Pasha sold to us—to which the
Pasha replied 'O! that mare, the Jellabieh I had from Ali
[Pasha] Sherif!" Later in the same entry "Ghania's
long tale about Yemama having passed through several hands
on her way from the desert is all a fabrication!!!"
This reads as though Ghania had been Moharrem Pasha's agent
in the 1892 sale of YEMAMA. The answers to other questions
that come to mind (eg, how Ali Bey Shahin comes into the
story, and why Moharrem Pasha is not mentioned in the mare's
GSB provenance) are not clear at this time.
Abbas Hilmi II was deposed by the British in 1914 and from
that time lived in exile and never returned to Egypt. Most
Arabian horse enthusiasts today are probably more familiar
with the name of the last Khedive's younger brother. Prince
Mohammed Ali Tewfik continued to breed Arabians at his Manial
Stud in Cairo for nearly 20 years after Abbas Hilmi went
into exile. The Manial Stud provided foundation stock to
the Royal Agricultural Society, to the Inshass Stud of the
Prince's cousin King Farouk, and to breeders in Poland,
Germany and the U.S. The Prince's name is enshrined in our
stud book as a prefix to two of the mares he sold to W.R.
Brown. HAMAMA 418 and *HAMIDA 509 already were registered,
so the two Egyptian imports with the same names became *H.H.
Mohammed Ali's HAMAMA 887 and *H.H. Mohammed Ali's HAMIDA
889.
Prince Mohammed Ali's most esteemed line of horses was
founded by the grey BINT YAMAMA, bred by his brother. In
a 1933 letter to General J.M. Dickinson of the famed Traveler's
Rest Farm in Tennessee, the Prince wrote that he had exchanged
a black gift stallion from Sultan Abdul Hamid II of Turkey,
plus 200 pounds, "to get [Bint] Yamama, wich [sic] was
in the possession of one of my brother's people."
Julep #1678 (Gulustra x *Aziza)
Azkar 1938 AHC 1109 (Rahas x *Aziza)
*Zarife1928 AHC 885
(Ibn Samhan x Mahroussa)
*Fadl 1930 AHC 896
(Ibn Rabdan x Mahroussa)
*Maaroufa 1931 AHC 895
(Ibn Rabdan x Mahroussa)
Rodasr 1938 AHC 1591
(*Nasr x *Roda)
This exchange can be roughly dated to
1908; Lady Anne Blunt's published Journals and Correspondence
record that she saw the black stallion from the Sultan in
December of 1907, while a year later a daughter of YEMAMA
[sic] is among "the principal mares." The same mare
is mentioned in similar terms again in January of 1911;
in February 1912 she is accounted the second best of the
mares, and parenthetically "the dam Yemama owned by the
Khedive is dead."
Ten Manial Arabians of BINT YAMAMA's descent in the direct
female line were used for breeding in Poland, in Germany
and in this country (imported by W.R. Brown and Henry Babson).
This breeding element is a widely influential one in international
pedigrees; to pick a few names at random, KONTIKI, BEN RABBA,
KHEMOSABI and many horses of the Al-Marah and Shalimar programs
carry this Manial breeding. It is behind the majority of
horses bred from Germany's Weil-Marbach lines. There is
also a strong tradition of breeding straight Egyptian Arabians
carrying more or less of BINT YAMAMA's influence (see Sidebar:
The BINT YAMAMA Influence Summarized).
General Dickinson, on buying four of the Manial Arabians
imported by W.R. Brown, had noticed a discrepancy in their
strain designations, compared to that of KAFIFAN, a stallion
from the same family which Prince Mohammed Ali had sold
to Count Potocki of Poland in 1924. The Brown imports were
given as Jellabi or Kehilan Jellabi; KAFIFAN, in the original
(first edition) Polish Arabian Stud Book (PASB), was registered
of the strain "Saklawi Djedran." General Dickinson
later bought from Poland the KAFIFAN daughter *MATTARIA,
and in the summary of her ancestry supplied by the Polish
registration authorities (the source would have been the
records of the Potocki family) KAFIFAN also appears as "of
the Saklawi family."
Asked to comment on this apparent contradiction, Prince
Mohammed Ali stated, not that PASB was in error on the strain
of KAFIFAN, but that "[t]he Kehilan-Jellabi are descending
from the Seglawi-Jedran." This is a somewhat ambiguous
statement; an Arabian horse of any strain may "descend"
from horses of any other strain if they are not in its direct
female line. If this statement refers to the strain-determining
dam line, it runs counter to the conventional descriptions
of strain evolution, in which the other strains are said
to arise from, and originally to be named as substrains
of, the Kehilan Ajuz. Furthermore, strain designations are
not expected to change in this way over the course of a
few years (from 1924 to 1932) and outside the tribal breeding
system.
Prince
Mohammed Ali puts more emphasis on the fact that BINT YAMAMA "is
a descendant of the stables of Ali Pasha Sherif, who bought his
horses from my grandfather Prince Ilhami, son of Abbas Pasha I…the
strain of these horses is in our family since 80 years…" It
may not be reading too much into this to suggest the Prince is telling
General Dickinson that, whatever their strain name, the origin of
this family is unimpeachable. On the record which survives, Lady
Anne Blunt's efforts to record precise pedigree relationships among
her Arabians of Ali Pasha Sherif origins may have been the exception
rather than the rule. More often her contemporaries appear to have
accepted a horse of named strain, "of Ali Pasha Sherif" or
"from the stud of Ali Pasha Sherif," as sufficient, and indeed
unsurpassable, provenance.
The Prince added in the same letter that the stud records
of his brother Abbas Hilmi II had been confiscated at the time the
latter went into exile. While these records may well languish yet
in some British archive, there has to date been no suggestion that
they were ever recovered. If Prince Mohammed Ali changed his mind
about the strain designation of this line of horses, his decision
clearly was not based on information from his brother's stud records.
Still less can any subsequent ideas about the BINT YAMAMA pedigree
have been based on the relevant stud records.
