Summer Day Camps
Going Green
Pony Parties
Riding Lessons
Equine Sales List
Tack for Sale
Purebred Arabian Horses
Half Arabian Horses
Pinto Arabian Horses
Crabbet/CMK Archive
Why Buy Crabbet?
Spotted Saddlehorses & TWH
Equine Health
Everything about Breeding
Congratulations!
A Tribute to the 4H of Geauga County
A Tribute to Hallelujah
Our Story
Horse Links
Losing Ground to Development
Land Use Issue in Ohio
Guest Book
Coloring Book
Story Books on horse breeds
WIW Farm Through the Seasons
The Baxter Black Corner
Site map
© Diatom Graphics
|
Windt im Wald A Wind in the Woods Geauga County, Northeast Ohio since 1995 |
 |
WHAT'S
IN A
NAME?
(Page Two)
Page One
©1998 By
MICHAEL BOWLING
(with
particular thanks to Margaret Dickinson Fleming)
used by permission of
Michael Bowling
(with added photos)
(Bint) Yamama with Hilal
|
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)
|
|
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 | ||||
|
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. Back to Part One |
 Mesaoud 1887 (Aziz x Yemameh (grey))
|
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
