We
regret we were unable to locate a photo or drawing of Wazir,
a sire of significance just too important in the
pedigrees of Arieana's Arabians for us to overlook in our CMK
Heritage Notebook. And so, as the sire of *Shahwan,
the above-mentioned stallion, this page
seemed to be an appropriate page and place for mention of him
and his incredible influence.
Wazir
was one of the most celebrated stallions of Egypt. A direct son of the incomparable Zobeyni,
Wazir was a successful race horse, unbeaten except
for one race which he lost because he was run off the course. Wilfrid
Scawen Blunt and
Lady Anne Blunt saw Wazir for the first time at Ali Pasha
Sherif's stud on November 25, 1880, when the stallion was 18
years old, at which time Lady Anne wrote in her Journal that he had "...no
appearance of age." She saw him again on December 3, 1881,
and wrote: "Vizir is still there looking better than
any of the other horses....He is quite white (not
flea-bitten)." (Vizir was Lady Anne's spelling for
the same horse that comes down to us in our pedigrees as Wazir).
Wazir was
noted as a Sire of considerable merit whose get
were often of very high quality, and he continued to breed mares
until he died in 1890 at the age of 27. Among Wazir's get
or grandget used
or purchased by the Blunts for their foundation stock at Sheykh
Obeyd and in our pedigrees today at Arieana Arabians are: Merzuk, Sobha,
*Shahwan (pictured above), and Mahruss I.
The
strains of the Saklawi Jedran of Ibn Sudan and the Saklawi
Jedran of Ibn Zobeyni were highly favored by both Abbas Pasha
and Ali Pasha Sherif; Wazir combined both these strains.
We look to this as "The
Golden Cross" and find it purposefully and consistently repeated
in our
pedigrees; you can readily find it most often as the Zobeyni sireline
crossed on the Ghazieh tail female line. The success of the
merger of this particular sireline with this tail female line was recognized and perpetuated
early on by The Blunts through such horses as Bint
Helwa, Mesaoud, and Ghazala; we at Arieana Arabians repeated
this same cross when breeding Blitzen of Pico to our foundation
mares Haapey Pico and Gleeful
Pico. But to us they were not just
names on a sheet of paper but an honest effort to
replicate
those lasting ancestral qualities of beauty, athletic conformation, and
heart to excel at whatever task our horses are asked to perform
in the same tradition of those who came before.
Sources: Forbis, Judith. The
Classic Arabian Horse. Liveright, New York. 1976. pp.
163
Mulder, Carol June
Woodbridge. "A Brief History of the Founding of Crabbet
Stud." The Arabian Horse Journal, August
1, 1983.
Mulder, Carol June Woodbridge. Imported Foundation Stock of North American Arabian Horses Volume 2 (Revised Edition).
Borden Publishing Company, Los Angeles, California. 1993.
|