In February, Tzviah Idan passed away suddenly at her home in Israel. Tzviah had a long connection with The Arabian Magazine and in honour of her memory, we are sharing this feature – A Breeder’s Journal: Remembering Alhambra – as written by Tzviah in 2018. The loss of this remarkable horsewoman has been felt keenly around the world, and it is a privilege to share her words here with you.
We continue with Tzviah’s insight into life as a breeder. For part one, please click here, part two, click here, and part three, click here.
The making of Adara
Before I moved to Israel, I spent lots of summers competing at the various Arabian shows held nearly every single weekend in Michigan and Ohio. As a result, my pulse remains fairly steady when I think about the three or four Arabian competitions that are organised here every year. Certainly, I greatly enjoy these shows; it’s simply that, while most of my Israeli peers grant them extraordinary significance, for me, personally, the experience feels more like “been there, done that.” All in all, it’s just another horse show, and it barely rocks my world — win or lose — or even if we compete at all. This being the case, we show our horses only rarely.
The 2006 Israeli Egyptian Event was an exception. We had several entries, including Alhambra and her weanling Laheeb daughter, Atiq Ayla. We really hadn’t been planning on competing, but Alhambra and several others simply never looked better. It was as if they had gone through some tough conditioning programme when actually, they had simply been turned out every day to wander our sparse pastures. The closer it got to the show entry deadline, the surer I felt that we must grab the opportunity to show off our unique Bábolna programme. With help from our close friend, the talented Arabian handler Khaled Shanati, we committed to the show with six entries.
Lady Luck was with us on show day and every horse we brought placed well. The icing on the cake was when Alhambra’s filly, Atiq Ayla, captured the Reserving Weanling Filly title, and again at the show’s conclusion when Alhambra was named the Egyptian Event Champion Mare. We were especially proud when the veteran British judge presiding told us that she had known Alhambra was her champion from the moment she stepped into the ring.
There was another impressive horse competing that day who greatly attracted our admiration. This was the 1999 German-bred stallion Al Ayad (Moheeb x Mamunah), bred by Jack Moritz and owned by Monica Wenzel. Al Ayad was visiting in Israel, on lease to Ariela Arabians. It happened that he was a beautiful and extremely classic stallion with a rare and valuable pedigree, but he had never been tried at stud. Apparently, it took the fresh eyes and long experience of Chen Kedar and Eliko Kachlon to recognise his untapped potential. Al Ayad showed brilliantly at our Event and deservedly won the title of Champion Stallion.
Following the show, I made a close study of his mostly unfamiliar German pedigree as both Kuti and I had really liked his looks. We decided that Al Ayad would be a great future breeding choice for Alhambra, who was at that time already in foal, but we had not yet done anything to promote this plan. And then I got a telephone call.
The caller was Chen Kedar and she needed a favour. She explained that following our Egyptian Show, Al Ayad’s owner had gotten it into her head that Alhambra must absolutely be bred to Al Ayad since both had been awarded championship titles while competing at the same show. In fact, his owner was so insistent that every time the two spoke, she would inquire whether Alhambra was in foal yet to her horse, and if not, why not. The favour that Chen needed was that we contract for a breeding for Alhambra to Al Ayad and she was, in fact, willing to sweeten the deal and gift us Ariela’s portion of the stud fee if we would only please do so to fully satisfy Al Ayad’s owner.
Granting this favour was only too easy and after delivering a colt in 2007, the deed was done and Alhambra settled to Al Ayad with hardly a hiccup. We were delighted the following season when she presented us with a lovely ultra-feminine filly with especially expressive eyes, a filly I named Atiq Adara. Though normally quiet and unpretentious, Adara is definitely her father’s daughter and, once roused, she is truly a sight to behold.
Unfortunately, things fared less favourably for Adara’s sire. After siring less than thirty-five foals in Israel, Al Ayad returned to Europe only to be lost following a tragic accident. Just as the world recognised the promise of his progeny, this great sire left us forever.
As it happens, during the same time that Adara was growing up at our farm in HaYogev, Chen and Eliko were shopping for their own farm. This farm was to become the permanent home of Ariela Arabians as well as their own home. When they eventually found a suitable property, that property was located little more than a mile from our farm. Since similar deals regarding other properties had previously fallen through, Chen and Eliko had decided not to go public about this until a final deal had been closed.
As it also happened, my barn help at that time was a young man who was related to Chen. Through the family grapevine, he had heard that she was buying a property in HaYogev but he had been sworn to secrecy. Since he worked for me and absolutely loved to gossip, this secret weighed heavily upon him. And because he had come to his own mistaken conclusion — that this news would upset me enormously, he was very keen to be the first to witness my reaction.
With this in mind, he approached and asked whether he could trust me with an important secret. When I replied that he could, he asked if I were very certain. I couldn’t imagine what this secret could possibly concern and told him that it was totally up to him to reveal it or not; that I truly didn’t care a whit. With that he shared his juicy news only to be shocked at how delighted I was to learn that Ariela Arabians would eventually become our close neighbours.
This plan remained Chen and Eliko’s secret for over a year until one day, Chen told me that she had something important to tell me, but that it was not a discussion suitable for the telephone. When we met and she broke her news I did not reveal that I had known their plans long before, thus keeping my promise to my barn help. But I also had the sense that Chen was not really sure about my welcome. This was not surprising given the very competitive nature of our local Arabian circle, but it was important to me that she have no doubts.
By this time, Atiq Adara was almost three-years old but we were not planning to breed her until she was four. Her sire had proven a key sire for the Ariela programme and we knew that Eliko absolutely adored Adara and that Chen also greatly appreciated her blood. Kuti and I decided to make a gesture that would leave no uncertainty about how we felt about their move: when next they visited us, we offered them a gift lease of Adara so that they could breed a foal for themselves.
Although at first overwhelmed, the two soon realised that this was too good an offer to refuse. Arrangements were made for Adara to be covered by Ariela’s senior stallion Laheeb (Imperial Imdal x AK Latifa). This breeding produced the striking 2012 filly Malikah AA. Malikah has since grown into a beautiful and special mare and fully stepped into her role as a key broodmare for the Ariela programme. As a doting grandma, I am pleased to say that with just two foals on the ground to date, Malikah has already produced her first show champion.
Following Malikah’s birth, Chen and Eliko gifted us our own breeding to Laheeb to use on Adara. Although every effort was made over two seasons to settle her to Laheeb again, we failed to get a pregnancy. In the end, they generously gifted us a breeding to a horse visiting their farm on lease, a horse that I had greatly admired some years earlier in the US. This was the exciting Ansata Nile Pharaoh (Ansata Iemhotep x Ansata Misty Nile), bred by Ansata and owned by the Rhodium Stud in New Zealand. This time we were successful, and the results were most satisfactory as Adara produced a long-awaited filly of great expression we call Atiq Nile Amrah. Leggy, long-lined and very feminine, Nile Amrah looks very much like Alhambra did when we first met her at Bábolna, and our hopes for her are extremely high.
Only just recently, Adara presented us with an impressive grey colt sired by our homebred stallion, Atiq Hilal (Laheeb x *Hila B). Atiq Ahlan is, without a doubt, the best male colt by his sire to date and appears already to have surpassed him in quality. We also discern that Ahlan has inherited many wonderful features from his dam’s sire, the great, late Al Ayad, making him, in our books, a serious and exciting stallion prospect.
And so, although it is true that one should never look a gift horse in the mouth, our own experience confirms that the willingness to share freely with others almost always results in great rewards for both giver and receiver.
Our final part in Tzviah’s remarkable story will be published next week.
