After the early 1930s the BINT YAMAMA
horses were universally referred to the Kehilan Jellabi
strain. In later editions of PASB the strain of KAFIFAN
was changed to Kehilan. No hint of a connection between
Prince Mohammed Ali's [BINT] YAMAMA and YEMAMEH, the dam
of MESAOUD, was ever suggested, and a substantial tradition
grew up that BINT YAMAMA was a daughter of the Sheykh Obeyd
YEMAMA, sometimes even to the point of suggesting BINT YAMAMA
had been bred at Sheykh Obeyd.
Speculation is fruitless but also inevitable. Perhaps BINT
YAMAMA was known to be half-sister to, or from the family
of, "Lady Anne Blunt's horse" and this came to be
taken as a reference to one of the Blunts' several Jellabi
horses from Ali Pasha Sherif (besides YEMAMA there were
MERZUK, KHATILA, MAKBULA, KERIMA, KASIDA, FEYSUL, JELLABIEH
and MANOKTA), rather than to MESAOUD. Possibly the existence
of a "BINT YEMAMA" daughter of the Sheykh Obeyd mare had
become known in some circles, although access to Lady Anne
Blunt's stud records was strictly limited after her death.
That name belongs at Sheykh Obeyd to a bay mare without
a grey parent, foaled in 1904, who left Egypt for Greece
in 1906; she cannot have had anything to do with a grey
mare some 10 years older who appeared in 1908 in the Manial
Stud.
Prince Mohammed Ali also commented that [BINT] YAMAMA "was
a beautiful mare and produced till her age of 25." If
her last foal was the 1918 colt *NASR—there is no record
of a later one—then this implies she was foaled in 1893,
the same year as YASHMAK, so they could not have been out
of the same dam anyway. If BINT YAMAMA produced a foal after
*NASR then she was foaled later than 1893, when the bay
YEMAMA was in the possession of the Blunts and her time
is fully accounted for. The bay mare had some unnamed colts
between YASHMAK and IBN YEMAMA, but no fillies until the
BINT YEMAMA of 1904.
This was where matters stood on the 1986 publication of
Lady Anne Blunt's Journals and Correspondence. Lady
Anne's writings make it clear that she and Prince Mohammed
Ali were on visiting terms and she repeatedly listed the
mares, with their strains, that he possessed. Not only is
no animal of the Kehilan Jellabi strain mentioned, but it
is flatly stated that among his best mares is "the Seglawieh
Yemama (daughter of the old Yemama, dam of Mesaoud),"
and again that her dam was "Yemama owned by the Khedive."
These statements contradict over 50 years of accepted pedigree
tradition, but it is worth noting that Lady Anne Blunt's
is the only contemporary reference we have to the matter.
Not only was she writing at the time these horses and breeders
were living, but she took particular interest in Arabian
horses of Ali Pasha Sherif ancestry, in horses related to
her own, and in the strains and origins of the horses which
her contemporary breeders showed her.
Feysul 1894 (Ibn Nura x Bint Bint Jellabiet Feysul)
Merzuk 1887 (Wazir x a Kehailan Jallabieh APS)
Makbula 1886 (Wazir x Bint Bint Jelliabiet Feysul)
sold to Russia in 1900. Her 1900 filly at side is Kibla
by Mesaoud. (See MB's article "Mares
at Grass" for a photo of Kibla as a mature mare)
Kasida 1891 (Nasr [APS] x Makbula)
Kerima1897 (Aziz x Makbula)
Yemama Bay
Yashmak 1893 (Shahwan x Yemama (bay))
Ibn Yashmak 1902 ( Feysul x Yashmak)
Table:
Yemama Bay and Yemameh Grey
Name
Color
DoB
Breeder
Produced for
Yemameh
gr
pre-1880*
Ali Pasha Sherif
Ali Pasha Sherif,
Abbas Hilmi II
Yemama
b
1885
Ali Pasha Sherif
[?Moharrem Pasha],
Lady Anne Blunt
*her first known foal was
a full brother to Mesaoud, aged 4 in January1884
The Science
Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) codes for some of the
proteins of the mitochondria, the "energy furnaces"
responsible for cellular respiration. Mitochondria
reside in the cell's cytoplasm, not in its nucleus,
so mtDNA is transmitted independent of chromosomal
inheritance. In the nature of mammalian reproduction,
the sperm cell's mitochondrial contribution is swamped
by that of the vastly larger egg cell, and so mtDNA
is inherited for practical purposes through the
female line, uninfluenced by the sires used over
the generations.
A part of the research program at the Veterinary Genetics
Laboratory of the University of California at Davis
involves the development of techniques for analyzing
mtDNA. An advantage of mtDNA testing is that, in
sharp contrast to nuclear genes, it can be applied
even at many generations' remove to address questions
of maternity, provided direct female line descendants
of the animals in question are available. A scientific
manuscript surveying the usefulness of mtDNA comparisons
for use in Arabian horse parentage testing is in
preparation.
In 1998 it became possible to address this
pedigree relationship with the techniques of molecular biology
(see Sidebar: The Science). Mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) had
already been used to reject the hypothesis that the coat
color incompatibility in DOMOW's registered parentage could
be explained on the basis of a foal switch in 1913. Sequences
from the mtDNA of tail-female descendants of DOMOW matched
those of other *WADDUDA descendants, and were different
from those of *BUSHRA and *ABEYAH descendants, these being
the other dam lines from which fillies were available to
be switched with DOMOW.
Addressing this Ali Pasha Sherif question demonstrates
how the technique can be applied another 20 years or more
back in time. It was possible to compare mtDNA from the
three relevant families: direct female line descendants
of 1) BINT YAMAMA; 2) BINT HELWA (attributed to the female
line of MESAOUD and so of his dam YEMAMEH); and 3) MAKBULA,
of Ali Pasha Sherif Jellabi origin (only one source of this
family is recorded, the mare known as JELLABIET FEYSUL from
Ibn Khalifa of Bahreyn, although the exact interrelationships
among the Jellabi horses are not clearly stated).
In short, the
mtDNA of the BINT YAMAMA descendants matched that of the
BINT HELWA horses, and both were different from the MAKBULA
descendants. Based on this testing, the conclusion is that
BINT YAMAMA was indeed half-sister to MESAOUD, and not from
the dam line which produced MAKBULA.
Postscript:
Names and Identities
It is important to remember that the
nature and identity of Prince Mohammed Ali's mare have never
changed; she has throughout been the same horse she always
was. What has "evolved" over the decades is our knowledge
about her.
Both
Prince Mohammed Ali and Lady Anne Blunt refer to our subject
mare and her dam by the same name, but the export pedigrees
uniformly give her as "BINT YAMAMA," and her dam as "YAMAMA,"
a daughter of "WAZIRIEH" or "WAZIREH" from the stud of Abbas
Pasha. This YAMAMA now appears to be identical with the
dam of MESAOUD, the mare Lady Anne Blunt refers to in her
stud records as YEMAMEH.
Since
the 1920s YEMAMEH's dam has been known as BINT GHAZIEH,
but it may be that she had what might be called a "personal"
name (BINT GHAZIEH is a description, "daughter of Ghazieh,"
as much as it is a name, and as with the Banat Nura, might
have been a generic term for any mare of the GHAZIEH family).
In fact MESAOUD's second dam's name may actually have been
"WAZIRIEH."
This
could be a reasonable name for a sister to WAZIR, as this
mare was; further, this gives a possible origin for the
confusing reference in Lady Anne Blunt's journal to MESAOUD's
dam as sister to WAZIR, which seems improbable on chronological
grounds (Peter Upton, personal communication): on a hasty
reading, the dam's name WAZIRIEH might look like a reference
to YEMAMEH herself as sister to WAZIR. Unfortunately the
relevant page of the document in question apparently has
not survived for comparison with the journal entry.
The
mtDNA identity of the descendants of BINT HELWA and BINT
YAMAMA has one further very interesting direct implication.
The pre-stud-book pedigrees of the Ali Pasha Sherif and
Abbas Pasha Arabians are properly referred to as traditional
beliefs. They are not documented pedigrees as would be the
case for horses whose parentage is published in a stud book.
It appears that the mtDNA results actually link the descendants
of two GHAZIEH daughters: HORRA, second dam of BINT HELWA,
and WAZIRIEH or BINT GHAZIEH, second dam of BINT YAMAMA.
This strongly implies an actual existence for GHAZIEH and
reinforces the reality of at least this particular set of
traditional pedigrees.
Ghazieh 1897 (Ibn Nura x Bint Horra
<Aziz x Horra<Zobeyni x Ghazieh>)
Bint Helwa 1887 (Aziz x Helwa<Shueyman x Horra<Zobeyni
x Ghazieh>)
Ghazala 1896 (Ibn Sherara x Bint Helwa)
Hamasa 1902 (Mesaoud x Bint Helwa)
Hazzam 1911 (Berk x Hilmyeh
<Ahmar x Bint Helwa>)
Johara 1880 (Aziz x Helwa)
scientific papers:
Assignment of maternal lineage using mitochondrial nucleic
acid sequence in horses, J.A. Gerlach, A.T. Bowling, M. Bowling
and R.W. Bull. 1994. Animal Genetics 25: Supplement 2:31.
Mitochondrial D-loop DNA sequence variation among Arabian horses,
A.T. Bowling, A. Del Valle and M. Bowling. Animal Genetics, in press.
Verification of horse maternal lineage using mitochondrial DNA sequence,
A.T. Bowling, A. Del Valle and M. Bowling. Journal of Animal Breeding
and Genetics, 115 (1998), 351-355.
Sources:
Unpublished pedigrees and other documents from the files of
Traveler's Rest Farm, courtesy Margaret Dickinson Fleming
The General Stud Book
The Polish Arabian Stud Book
The Arabian Horse Families of Egypt, Colin Pearson with Kees Mol
"The Banat Nura of Ali Pasha Sherif," Robert J. Cadranell II (The
CMK Record XI/2)
Egypt and Cromer, Afaf Lutfi Al-Sayyid
Journals and Correspondence 1878-1917, Lady Anne Blunt, edited by
Rosemary Archer and James Fleming
My Diaries, Wilfrid Scawen Blunt
Secret History of the English Occupation of Egypt, Wilfrid Scawen
Blunt
