A Bright Red Sun Over Egypt

"The Sun, the hearth of affection and life, pours burning love on the delighted earth."-Arthur Rimbaud

The EAO mare, Rayah, shines with a beauty so fierce, she is like the sun, when it is the strongest in the sky and you look for your pair of sunglasses to shield your eyes. She has a very strong body, with a very nice shoulder, well-muscled forearms that are proportionately longer than her cannons and a full hindquarter.

Rayah  is a daughter of the stallion Hafeed Anter, a son of Wahag, out of the Alaa el Din daughter, Basima, who traces in tail female to the root mare of the Hadban strain, Venus. Wahag is a Dahman Shahwan horse by strain, sired by the Hamdan son, Anter and out of Kamar, who traces through Layla to Bint Sabah, the same mare who produced *Bint Bint Sabbah, the mare that Henry Babson imported from Egypt in 1932. So, while we have a Saqlawi influence through Anter, neither side of the pedigree is tail-female Saqlawi, as was recommended by Lady Ann Blunt in breeding the Rodania horses, a long time ago.

Ramiah, as we read before, was sired by the Alaa el Din son, Mohawed, a pure-in-the-strain Kuhaylan Rodan stallion, as Alaa el Din is out of Kateefa, a Bint Rissala daughter while Rafika, Mohawed's dam, is out of the Yashmak daughter, Om el Saad, a Bint Rissala grand-daughter. Ramiah's dam, Fifi, a chestnut mare by Anter and out of Mamlouka, a Malaka daughter and a Bint Bint Riyala grand-daughter.

So, it is interesting, in light of the Lady Ann Blunt quotation that we have been studying, regarding the recommended breeding of a Kuhaylah Rodaniyah, always by a Saqlawi stallion. How effective, really, is that statement in today's age, so many years later after both, Lady Anne Blunt and Rodania were alive?  Rayah is the end result of a predominantly Kuhaylah Rodaniyah mare, blended with Hadban and Dahman strain horses. What is interesting about this combination, is that despite the influences of the Dahman and Hadban strains, we see physically, the evidence of the Kuhaylan Rodan family in Rayah. She looks like what her pedigree tells us she is, she looks her strain. When Lady Anne Blunt was alive, the blood of Rodania and her progeny was not as diluted as it is today. It is very difficult to say with any certainty that a Kuhaylan Rodan will look like a Kuhaylan Rodan or that a Dahman Shahwan will look like a Dahman Shahwan. Here, within this small piece of the Kuhaylan Rodan family, we have studied three horses: Goudah, Rawwah and Rayah and it is only Rayah, who bears any physical resemblance to what we have come to understand as Kuhaylan Rodan type. Maybe, in Rayah, the deciding factor, genetically, which influenced her phenotype to be Kuhaylan Rodan in look, is the presence of the mare Kateefa, a Bint Rissala daughter, on the sire side of the pedigree, to intensify the sources of Rodania blood already present in the dam side. That's something to think about.

EnJoy,
Ralph

PS Many thanks to Judi Parks for the photo of Rayah