A Midwinter Mare

"In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, 

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;" - from the poem, A Christmas Carol, written by Christina Georgina Rossetti, music by Gustav Holst

On Wednesday, I received the email notification from Tutto Arabi, announcing the release of issue  n.64 of Desert Heritage Magazine.  Here we are, in cold, gray mid-January (ugh) and the arrival of a new issue was like sunshine, warm and bright, melting the icy heart of winter! On the cover of the new magazine is the photo of the 2006 chestnut stallion, Frasera Mashar (Majd Al Rayyan x Frasera Mashara), bred by La Frasera and photographed by Gregor Aymar.

I'm interested in Frasera Mashar, both as an individual and a sire but I haven't had the opportunity to really study the horse, until now. A quick search on You Tube revealed a video posted by Paolo Capecci, which includes the series of striking photos taken by Gregor Aymar. 

His sire, Majd Al Rayyan, is a son of the Katharinenhof-bred Safir, who was the end result of breeding Ansata Halim Shah get, who are also related through Hanan. At first glance, Ghazal appears to be the point of difference in the pedigree, as he does not possess lines to Ansata Halim Shah or Hanan; however the matriline that leads from Ansata Rosetta to *Ansata Bint Bukra reveals that there is no difference at all.

As interesting as Safir's role in the pedigree is, it is Frasera Mashar's dam, Frasera Mashara (Shahil x MB Madora) who surprisingly, became the center of my interest and who, in my opinion exercised more of an impact upon her son.  

Frasera Mashara at the 2008 Baden Baden International Show, earning the Senior Female Championship,
photographed by the late Irina Filsinger

Bred by La Frasera and owned by the Dubai Arabian Horse Stud, she is a taller mare standing at 15.3 hands tall. A strong bodied mare, she is impressive, with a beautifully shaped neck, a well-muscled shoulder, longer forearms and short cannons. The photos of her silhouette are dramatic, in presenting a mare whose body is comprised of gracefully flowing lines. She is La Frasera's masterpiece and her son, is her genetic contribution to insure the creation of another masterpiece, in the pastures she once called home.

What's interesting about her pedigree is that while Majd al Rayyan's pedigree is a study of close connections between the Ansata and Katharinenhof programs; Frasera Mashara's pedigree combines a concentrated source of Ibn Galal (28.125%) plus *Imperial Madheen, top-crossed onto a blend of Ansata Abu Sudan (Ansata Ibn Sudan x Ansata Bint Misuna) with the Albadeia-bred *Alfa Mabrouka (Seef x Mabroukaa), a mare imported in utero by Don Ford of Lancer Arabians in the 1970's. Another interesting note is Maysoun, the sire of Shahil. Maysoun, like Salaa el Dine and Aisha, is a son of Ansata Halim Shah, who was top-crossed with a German-bred straight Egyptian, Maysouna (Ibn Galal x KIS Mahiba). When bred to Majd Al Rayyan, the genetic impact of Ansata Halim Shah becomes even stronger than we find in Safir, as Ansata Halim Shah appears 3 times, 18.75% of Frasera Mashar's genetic history.

The matriline of Frasera Mashara traces back to Bint el Bahreyn, a mare whom we have learned to associate with the Dahman strain. However, the stallion, Seef (Mashhour x Elwya), the sire of *Alfa Mabrouka, also traces to Bint el Bahreyn in his matriline. In the not so distant old days, we would have called *Alfa Mabrouka a pure-in-strain Dahmah, however, imagine my surprise in September 2023, when Edouard Al-Dahdah, in a blog entry, shared that Bint el Bahreyn is actually documented in the unpublished notes and diaries kept by Lady Anne Blunt to be Kuhaylah Rabda by strain. The horses who trace to Bint el Bahreyn have always been a little different from the Dahman Shahwan horses. I believed that it was the proximity of the desert horses, who were closer up in the pedigree of the horses who descended from her, like Zareefa, as compared to other straight Egyptian horses whose desert connections were further back in the pedigree.

It is interesting to note that Frasera Mashara was bred to other straight Egyptian stallions like Al Lahab (D Hitham), Royal Colours (D Ghandoor, D Taghreed, D Mashaa Allah) and Phaaros (Frasera Dubai, Frasera Mashall, Frasera Masharina) but she was also bred to the widely popular superstar stallions like Marajj (D Hanem),  Excalibur EA (D Karamat), QR Marc (D Masarrah, Forbes KA) and Marwan Al Shaqab (D Jani) insuring that her genetic presence, in several forms,  travels farther into the future than La Frasera ever believed she would.