MAKBULA EL KEBIRA (APS)

A Pre-Registration Horse

A Kuhaylat 'Ajuz of the marbat of Ibn Jallab (or Kuhaylah Jallabiyah), by Shueyman (APS) out of Bint Jellabiet Feysul (APS).

NOTES: The birthdate is an Al Khamsa estimate. Weatherby's General Stud Book entries for Makbula (APS), foaled 1886 [GSB 19.903] and Khatila (APS), foaled 1887 [GSB 17.810] show Makbula El Kebira as dam of both mares and as a chestnut owned by Ali Pasha Sharif. Lady Anne Blunt [J&C, 1/27/1889] writes that they "asked to see the mare Makbulah-dam of the filly [Khatila] and a message being sent to Ali Pasha he allowed her to be brought." She was said to be pretty at the time, the implication being that she was not an old mare. Therefore, the Blunts should have known her color. However, in an apparent transcription of Makbula (APS)'s herd book entry [Upton, 1980, p112], Lady Anne says, "Mohd Salame says white." This entry describes Makbula El Kebira as a daughter of Shueyman and Bint Bint Jellabiet Feysul, who was herself a daughter of the mare of Feysul Ibn Turki. This entry, therefore, skips a generation, so that Bint Jellabiet Feysul was the mare imported for Abbas Pasha, a description that is contradictory to others in Blunt records. All references agree that Makbula El Kebira traced in tail female to Jellabiet Feysul, but the number of generations of removal seems to be a subject of some disagreement.

Previous editions of Al Khamsa Arabians have followed the assumption that the "Bint Bint Jellabiet Feysul" who is the dam of Makbula El Kebira is the same as El Argaa (APS), who is the dam of Feysul (APS). This may not be correct. Joan Schleicher [2004, 57-62] has hypothesized that El Argaa and Makbula were from different branches of the Jellabiet Feysul descent. This may be so, or there may simply be more generations between Jellabiet Feysul and the horses of Ali Pasha Sharif in the 1880s than we are aware of.

Raswan Index entry #1047 shows sire and dam for Makbula El Kebira (also called Aziza) as Shueyman and El Argaa. Entry #5830 describes her as either fifth or sixth generation removed from the original Jellabiet Feysul (depending on interpretation of the punctuation). This entry gives a date of 1867 for Makbula El Kebira (APS). If El Argaa was also the dam of Feysul in 1894, this date would be unlikely. Index entries #1047, #6294 and corrections entry #1137 show Makbula El Kebira as dam of Merzuk (APS), foaled 1887. However, at the same time the Blunts purchased Merzuk and Mesaoud (APS), the Blunts also purchased Khatila, an 1887 daughter of Makbula El Kebira by Aziz (APS) [see first paragraph], foaled 2 months before Merzuk. Therefore, Makbula El Kebira could not have been the dam of Merzuk.