Tiaa's Colt

2023 Colt (Fa Ali Bey x Fa Tiaa Nasreen)

One of the highlights of the 2023 foaling season at Fantasia Arabians, Sealy, Texas, was the birth of this particular colt, a son of the farm's exciting black stallion,  Fa Ali Bey (Justynn x Fa Angelita Rose) and out of the equally extraordinary mare, Fa Tiaa Nasreen (Shaheen Al Waab x Echo Hill Jemma). In tail female line, the colt traces to Moniet el Nefous, through the *Ansata Ibn Halima daughter, Monisa Halima. 

Justynn, Fa Ali Bey's sire, was Dahman by strain, as are the majority of Marilyn's horses. However, on paper, Justynn is influenced more by the Abeyyan and Hadban strains, than by the Dahman strain. What's really interesting is that half of the Abeyyan influence (15.625%) comes by way of the stallion, Ruminaja Ali (Shaikh Al Badi x Bint Magidaa). Justynn's heritage combines several note-worthy breeding programs like the Marei's in Egypt, Dr. Nagel's in Germany and in America, that of the Jameson's, the Marshall's, Jarrell Mc Cracken & Lisa Lacy, the St Clair’s, Judith Forbis and the Sirbasku’s. All of these programs, while combining a few of the same ancestral elements that are also part of Marilyn Lang's foundation, introduce outcross sources which are different.  You can see the influence of Marilyn's multi-generational program come alive in Fa Ali Bey's phenotype but you can also see the scope, the stretchiness from the other programs mentioned, injected into the refined elegance that is also part of Fa Ali Bey and his adorable new son. When I asked Marilyn about it, she said,

"My mares needed stretch.....black stretch was icing on the cake."

When Marilyn shared the photo of her new colt, I marveled over the size of the colt's eyes.  In the book, Concerning Oriental Horses, Count Rzewuski writes,

"The eye is large, protruding, black and alert. The countenance gentle and intelligent is characteristic of Nejdis. The pupil is elongated and straight, of a deep blue color toward the upper part of the pupil. The globes are quite strong and irregular; they should resemble truffles. The rest of the orbit is blackish, brownish; the darker it is, the more the Arabs like it."

So many years after the life of Count Rzewuski, his words come alive again, through the size, shape and dark eyes of this colt. His head is clean and dry, with beautifully shaped ears and large, elastic nostrils, much in the style of his sire. His fine skin, deeply pigmented, accentuates the prominence of veins and bone already visible in one so young. I think of his future and how much more dramatic the desert chiseling will become, once he has evolved, as part of the maturing process.