2020 Roster Proposal: Gamal El Din by Joe Ferriss

2020 Roster Proposal

Gamal El Din, by Joe Ferriss

Gamal El Din was first identified to westerners in the Royal Agricultural Society Stud Book Vol. 1 (1948 English version) on page 58 as the sire of *Saema RAS#50. *Saema was imported to the US in 1950 by Queen Mother Nazli Sabri (mother of King Farouk). *Saema’s dam is Bint Dalal, a 1926 grey mare bred by the RAS. Bint Dalal’s sire and dam, Hamran (BLT) and Dalal Al Zarka (APK), are already Al Khamsa horses. The RAS Stud Book states as follows: “Gamal El Din, a race-horse belonging to Ahmed Bey Abu El Fotouh.” No other information was provided about him.

We know Ahmed Bey Abu El Fotouh (aka Ahmed Effendi Abu El Fotouh) as the owner of the Al Khamsa Foundation Horse El Nasser (RAS) when that horse was in Egypt and the provider of El Nasser to the RAS. Ahmed Bey Abu El Fotouh (or Futuh) was among the top 20 principal race winning owners in Egypt during the racing season 1939–1940 according to the Egyptian Jockey Club records. He was also a racing steward at both the Heliopolis and Alexandria Racing Clubs in 1945 and hence a prominent and respected figure in the Egyptian racing scene.

It was not until 2011, during the Al Khamsa contacts with remaining Tahawi breeders in Egypt, that an interview was conducted with the very aged Shaikh Tahawi Sa’eid Mejalli al-Tahawi. This interview was conducted by Yasser Ghanim Barakat al-Tahawi and his cousins Yehia Abd al-Sattar al-Tahawi, and Mohammed Mohammed Saoud al-Tahawi. Yasser provided the summary of the meeting posted on December 6, 2011 on Edouard Al Dahdah’s Daughter of the Wind blog. His text appears below:

New information on the Egyptian stallion Gamal El Din

Posted on December 6th, 2011. As part of the working group on the horses of the Tahawi, which Edouard mentioned in a recent post, I wanted to share with you brand new information about the Egyptian stallion Gamal El Din.

The information was obtained when Yehia Abd al-Sattar al-Tahawi, Mohammad Saoud al-Tahawi, and myself, recently recorded a one hour video with one of the very old Tahawi horse breeders, Shaikh Tahawi Sa’eid Mejalli al-Tahawi, who was born around 1904, and is 107 years old today. He still has an amazing memory for his advanced age, and is one of the old Bedouin breeders, and a great horse expert, following his father Shaikh Sa’ied Mejalli al-Tahawi.

In this interview, he shared many exciting details about the old Tahawi horses such as “Dahman Abdullah Saoud” which he saw himself when he was young. “Dahman Abdullah

Saoud” was the sire of the race horse Barakat (also a Dahman, but from another line), among others, and is today represented in modern Egyptian pedigrees through his great-granddaughters Fulla, Futna, and Bint Barakat.

Shaikh Tahawi Sa’eid Mejalli al-Tahawi also spoke about lady Anne Blunt and her frequent visits to the Tahawi clan, and about the horses she bought from them. These horses are referred to by Lady Anne Blunt in her writings as “The First Attempt” at putting together a stud of Arabian horses at Sheykh Obeyd Gardens.

The old Shaikh also spoke about the several Royal Agricultural Society horses that came from the Tahawi clan, and he also confirmed what is already common knowledge, which is that the vast majority of the horses at the race track were also Tahawi horses.

He spoke about the famous Tahawi race horse Soniour, who was also by “Dahman Abdallah Saoud”, and who was hence Barakat’s half-brother. Today, Soniour is represented in the pedigree of the stallion Ibn Ghalabawi. He also talked about Renard Bleu, a son of Barakat with an unmatched racing record. There is a nice photo of Renard Bleu in the book of Ali al-Barazi, a copy of which I have with me.

The surprise came later in the interview when he mentioned that he had known and seen the race horse Gamal El Din, which was owned by Ahmed Abu al-Futuh (Futuh Bey), and he provided full details about him.

It turned out that Gamal El Din was by Barakat our of a Kuhaylah Khallawiyah, and that he was bred by Shaikh Abd al-Hamid Rageh al-Tahawi, who also bred the three Tahawi mares Fulla (Folla), Futna and Bint Barakat, which were sold to Hamdan stables. So Gamal El Din would be a close relative to the mare Futna (Ibn Barakat x a Kuhalyah Khallawiyah), who was from the same strain as him, and from the same Tahawi breeder.

Gamal El Din was used by Egypt’s Royal Agricultural Society in the 1940s. He has seven offspring in the AHA Datasource, one stallion and six mares all born in 1945, of which only one mare *Saema (x Bint Dalal) bred on in modern lines. *Saema was imported by the Queen Mother of Egypt to the USA in 1950, where she was the progenitor of a line of Egyptian horses that is increasingly successful in the show ring today.

Among her descendants is the 2001 black stallion HU Sheikh Imaan (Imaann x Niema Nile by Shaik Al Badi), a great-grandson of *Saema in the tail female, and a greatgreat-grand son of Gamal El Din. His lines are increasingly

popular today. [Note: HU Sheikh Imaan’s pedigree also includes the ancestor *Ibn Farhan, imported by the Queen

Mother, but he is not a part of this proposal as research is ongoing for him.]

Before the new information provided by Shaikh Tahawi

Sa’ied Mejalli al-Tahawi surfaced, almost nothing was known about him, other than the mention on page 29 of the book

“RAS History” that “Gamal El Din was a good racehorse, and was owned by Abu El-Fotouh Bey”. Now, thanks to the testimony of the old Tahawi Shaikh, we know the strain of

Gamal El Din (K. Khallawi), his sire Barakat (for which we have a hujjah, and about which we already knew a lot), and his breeder Shaikh Abd al-Hamid Rageh al-Tahawi, one of the most respected breeders of Asil Arabians in Egypt.

After an hour of talking, Shaikh Tahawi Sa’ied Mejalli al

Tahawi became tired, and we stopped the interview. He was also having some difficulty hearing all our questions. So the best thing we could do was to let him tell his own stories and not interrupt him, and this is how the information on Gamal

El Din appeared.

Here is a photo [opposite] of the elderly Shaikh, with my cousins Yehia Abd al-Sattar al-Tahawi (in the middle) and

Mohammed Mohammed Saoud al-Tahawi on the right.”

Best regards, Yasser Ghanim Barakat al-Tahawi ###

Based on the information provided from the interview with Shaikh Tahawi Sa’ied Mejalli al-Tahawi and combining it with what has been learned from the Tahawi regarding the previous Hamdan Stables Tahawi mares accepted by Al Khamsa, Gamal El Din’s pedigree is as follows:

Thanks to Karen Kravcov Malcolm for furnishing this very rare photo of *Saema with Mrs. Godward from the Oakland Tribune, 4/19/51.

a Saqlawi Jidran of Ibn Zobeyni Dahman of Abdallah Saud al-Tahawi a Dahmat ‘Amer of Jar Allah ibn Tuwayrish Barakat

a Dahmat Shahwan of Mnazi’ Amer al-Tahawi

Gamal El Din, a c1935 Kuhaylan Khallawi bred by Shaikh Abdul Hamid Rageh al-Tahawi

a Kuhaylah Khallawiyah of Abdul Hamid Rageh al-Tahawi

In summary: This pedigree above is as close as one can get to the previously accepted Tahawi mare Futna; therefore Gamal El Din deserves to be recognized as a Foundation Horse by Al Khamsa because Gamal El Din in *Saema’s pedigree is essentially the same provenance as all the Tahawi horses already accepted by Al Khamsa. ~ Joe Ferriss, November, 2019.

I still remember her well....

Sirecho

Sirbana 1959 grey mare

Habbana *Nasr

*Exochorda

Ibn Fadl

Bint Habba Rabdan (Dahman El Azrak x Rabda) Bint Yamama (Saklawi I x Yemameh) Aiglon (D.B. x D.B.) Leila (D.B. x D.B.) *Fadl (Ibn Rabdan x Mahrousa) *Turfa (D.B. x D.B.) Fay-El-Dine (*Fadl x *Bint Serra) Habba (*Fadl x *Bint Bint Sabbah)

Istill remember the excitement when she arrived at our farm in 1975. Although we already had Arabians and part-breds, Sirbana was our first Al Khamsa mare. I already knew her pedigree thoroughly and drove all the way to New Mexico to see her. She was in foal to an imported Crabbet stallion, the resulting foal of which the owner wanted to have back, and thereafter she was ours to do as we wished. It was a cold misty Saturday morning in late November when Sirbana stepped off of the van from the long trip. I took the lead line to lead her up our very long narrow drive, too narrow for the big horse van to turn up. The hauler said she was the nicest Arabian he had ever hauled and he wished they all were like her. Although nearly 17 years old, she was completely sound and moved freely. She walked like a predator, strong, confident, gently moving her head from side to side observing everything that was a part of her new home. Her curvy body seemed to flow like a dancer gracefully up the drive. She was confident and immediately trusting of me. Yet she radiated a sense of quiet dignity with deep, dark, contemplating eyes. Most of all she was all of the wonderful things I had read about her ancestors and the stories further back of the legendary bedouin horses in her pedigree. Sirbana was also one of the founding mares of the Babson-Sirecho-Turfa breeding group which began in 1959, the year she was born. Though there were not many of these around, we had travelled and seen quite a few of them. It was an ideal combination of old Egyptian and desert breeding. Unfortunately times have changed and there are fewer of these Babson-Sirecho-Turfa horses left. We stopped breeding a long time ago so we can’t add anything else to this group. Hopefully a new generation will come to understand the merits of this splendid group. It would be a shame to lose this combination, for they represent many of things that the Arabian was admired for year after year, century after century. How fortunate were we to have enjoyed some of these!

We continue to advertise and support the Khamsat magazine because it is here that the horse of centuries can be found. As a researcher and writer, I not only saved my Khamsats from the beginning, but I also refer back to them for information. Often this information is found not only in the articles but also in the advertising. So with pride we continue to support the only magazine of its kind, the Khamsat, and we encourage others to do so also.

We welcome your call or visit. Brownstone Farm Since 1972 Joe & Sharon Ferriss 1059 Lukesport Road • Quincy, MI 49082 Tel. (517) 639-4443 • e-mail: ferrissjs@dmcibb.net