I can tell you that I saw a post about Bezatol recently, too – but that’s actually a typo, the horse was named Bezatal, BEZALEEL x TALATTAASH. 1958 stallion, endurance legend. You can take a gander at his pedigree here. He’s actually not “newer” but relatively older American breeding, going back to the imports of the 1890s through the 1930s in what we consider ‘Early American Arabian’ breeding. He’s also not new to the Tevis Cup — in fact, he was the winner of the 1965 and 1967 Tevis Cup rides. He’s found in the pedigrees of a good many fine endurance horses as a result.
^ Bezaleel circa the 1950s
His sire, Bezaleel, is an Al Khamsa accepted Arabian [x] and was historically referred to as a Straight Babson — not to be confused with a Straight Babson Egyptian, although a good chunk of his pedigree was Egyptian — 3 of his 4 grandparents were original imports from Egypt: *Fadl, *Maaroufa, and *Bint Serra I. The 4th grandparent, coming down the sireline, was another Babson import, *Aldebaran, who was a mixture of Blunt-Crabbet and Old English, via the Dwarka sireline. Dwarka was used by Tor Royal to improve the local Dartmoor ponies, and his son, *Aldebaran, was at one point owned by the Prince of Wales and used to improve the ponies being bred at the Prince’s stud in Canada. *Aldebaran’s dam, Amida, was mostly Egyptian from the Blunt’s later acquisitions of bloodstock from Alia Pasha Sherif, but she traced in the tail female to one of the original Blunt desertbreds, Queen of Sheba.
^ *Aldebaran when he arrived in Canada circa 1929: “PRINCE’S STALLION FOR CANADA. The Prince of Wales’ Arabian stallion Aldebaran, which was shipped on the Canadian Pacific liner “Minnedosa” from Glasgow. The animal will compete at the Canadian National Exhibition at Toronto before going to the Prince’s ranch in Alberta.“ – Courtesy of The Toronto Star Archives & the Special Collections Department of the Toronto Public Library.
His dam, Talattaash, has a more eclectic mix of how we tend to think of bloodlines.
Her 2nd sire was the Al Khamsa stallion Alla Amarward, his bloodlines being 75% Davenport, aka horses that trace 100% to horses imported from Syria to the United States by Homer Davenport in 1906. The other 25%, via El Sabok, was a neat mixture of some of the horses that (along with the Davenports) formed the basis of Early American Arabian breeding — Huntington horses, bred from Old English imports like *Naomi and General/President Ulysses S. Grant’s gift stallion *Leopard, plus the Hamidie Society horses *Mannaky, *Galfia, and *Pride, which were imported to the US circa the early 1890s for the 1893 Chicago World Fair.
Her sire’s dam, Follyat, is not Al Khamsa accepted. Most of the pedigree is Al Khamsa Arabians via Blunt-Crabbet sources, with the additions of 1/ the Old English lines courtesy of the Honorable Miss Ethelred Dillon’s program (El Emir and Ishtar) and 2/ the French import, *Balkis II. *Balkis II is actually a horse that had been proposed for inclusion to the Al Khamsa Roster, but unfortunately no eligible descendants are alive at this time, making it a moot point. The issue of El Emir and Ishtar is considerably more thorny, and much has already been written about it, so I won’t clog this post up with that.
These horses are found fairly frequently in endurance pedigrees, and you’ll find Alla Amarward and Follyat in just about any Abu Farwa or Aurab bred horse out there on the trails.
Her dam, Nukanna, was sired by the 100% Blunt-Crabbet stallion Nusi – who would go on to become one of the principle founding sires of the Doyle program. Nukanna’s dam was a mix of mostly Blunt-Crabbet, with a cross to the Old English stallion that went on to breed for Spencer Borden’s program in Fall Rivers, Mass.– *Hauran, who again brought in the Dillon horses El Emir and Ishtar. A further pedigree element – and a much more unique facet – is a line to the stallion S. S. Byron, who was imported in-utero from Syria in 1933 by K. A. Bistany. Bistany was involved with the Hamidie Hippodrome Society, and later became a wealthy carpet merchant in the United States. Bistany also imported the stallion *Al-Mashoor, who is a critically endangered Code Red stallion still extant in Al Khamsa via the stallion Bashir Al Dirri and his son, Sharif Al Arab.
^ Al-Mashoor and his descendant, Bashir Al Dirri.
It’s fun seeing the Bezatal horses make a comeback. The last decade or two has been dominated by Polish and French bloodlines — so most of the horses competing are heavily bred to these bloodlines now.
Bezatal’s gravesite is located at the Dry Creek XP station, where his plaque reads:
- “…and in the dust of his children, HE will run forever…”