andai Arabians is a family owned and operated Straight Egyptian Arabian breeding farm founded in 1984 by Dr. William M. Hudson, Jr. The family's involvement in horse breeding and farming had its roots in the Antebellum cotton plantations of the Pee Dee River around Darlington, South Carolina. Charles McCall (born about 1732), a Scottish settler, carved a plantation out of the fertile, virginal lands, and this plantation came to be known as Idylwild.
Charles’ son, George McCall and his son, George J. Washington McCall, enlarged their holdings and expanded their agricultural diversity to the point that the McCall plantation was one of the major producers of timber and indigo in the region. Horse husbandry was of central importance for these early South Carolina planters. They especially valued equine blood stock which contained pure Arabian blood. These horses were used for overseeing the vast stretches of the plantation: they were highly regarded for their toughness and remarkable endurance.
The McCall fortunes changed quickly however, with the events of the war of Southern Secession. One of the McCall daughters, Belvidera McCall (07/17/1847 - 08/15/1922), had spent the war years in Columbia College, “a finishing school for young ladies” in Columbia, South Carolina. After Sherman’s troops had reached Savannah on their "march to the sea", they turned north to raid the South Carolina capital of Columbia. They laid siege to the city, and as cannonballs began to fall, Belvidera McCall was evacuated by carriage south of the city to safety at Idylwild Plantation in Darlington. Soon, however, Union troops left Columbia and began a campaign of burning and destruction in the fertile agriculture belt of the Pee Dee River. Idylwild, as were most of the planters homes, was burned.
Following the war and the death of her father, Belvidera McCall married a young Confederate soldier by the name of Moses Sanders Haynesworth (known as “M.S.” Haynesworth) Shouldering the burden of a ruined planting economy, he returned Idylwild to its former state, and he and Belvidera produced 13 children. As an innovative agriculturalist, M.S. Haynesworth introduced a variety of new planting techniques and crops to the Pee Dee region. M.S., as he was known, was an avid horseman and for much of his later life rode the sandy lanes of Idylwild Plantation on his prized Arabian mare, Queen Esther. He and his spirited mare became well known, leading parades and public events in Darlington County. Haynesworth’s devotion to his desert-born mare suggested a deep spiritual affinity for an exotic and long extinguished past. She was to him more than a hardy and resilient mount; she was, for him, with her highly temperamental and indomitable will, a romantic link to the far away deserts of Arabia with a long- forgotten past and it’s inscrutable inhabitants.
Southern plantation owners were as a group, well versed in classical literature and ancient cultures, clinging as they did to the fading vestiges of chivalry, with its inviolable code of honor, and family loyalty. They sought to build a world based on human dignity and self-sufficient individualism. Their admiration for the ancient Homeric Greeks ran parallel to their fascination with the legends and tales from Arabia and Mesopotamia. Southerners found in these works kindred minds alive with cultural values of fierce independence, nobility, intelligence, tenacity and stoicism. Here they read of a proud people, a people who gave primacy to matters of honor. These precepts were close to the heart of every Southron, and, as they read these tales, it may be said that “the centuries were whispering behind them”.
In the 19th century, Western culture was immersed in the struggle between the values of the industrialization and the values of personal freedom and self determination. There were individuals in the West of a certain aesthetic sensibility for whom this conflict was pivotal. Spiritually akin to the American Southrons was the Englishman Sir Wilfred Scawen Blunt. An artist, writer and Arabian horse breeder, Blunt recorded the following observations on his first journey into the Arabian interior, where he was received warmly by Ibn Rashid, Ruler of Hail:
"The result of this friendly visit to the capital of independent Arabia, with the view I obtained there of the ancient systems of free government existing for so many centuries in the hearts of that wonderful peninsula, was to confirm me in the enthusiastic feelings of love and admiration I already entertained for the Arabian race. Arabia seemed to me in the light of a sacred land. In Nejd alone, in all the countries of the world I have visited, either east or west, the three great blessings of which we in Europe make our boast, thought we do not in truth possess them, are a living reality: (liberty, equality, brotherhood) names only even in France where they are written upon every wall, but here practically enjoyed by every free man. Here was a community living as our idealists dreamed, without taxes, without police, without conscription, without compulsion of any kind, whose only law was public opinion, and whose only order a principle of honor. It was this that filled me with astonishment and pleasure and that worked my conversion from being an idle onlooker at the misfortunes of the Eastern world and to one filled with zeal for the extensions of those same blessings of liberty to the other nations held in bondage".
Blunt later wrote this poem expressing his admiration of the Arab people:
Wind and the Whirlwind
The nations of the east have left their childhood.
Their manhood is to come; and they shall carry on earth's high tradition
Through the long ages when our lips are dumb.
Till all shall be wrought out. O Lands of weeping,
Lands watered by the rivers of old Time,
Ganges and Indus, and the streams of Eden,
Yours is the future of the world sublime.
Yours was the fount of man's first inspiration,
And the well of wisdom whence he earliest drew.
And yours shall be the flood time of his reason,
The stream of strength which shall his strength renew.
The wisdom of the West is but a madness,
The fret of shallow waters on their bed.
Yours is the flow, the fullness of man's patience,
the ocean of God's rest inherited.
"Thy perfection cannot be denied, nor yet the union in thee of knightly virtue and seemlihood," and he added, "Fare in peace for thy father showed us favor." Rejoined Kanmakan, “By Allah I will not deign to honor thee, O wretch I disdain, so far as to overcome thee in battleplain”. Upon this the Badawi waxed wroth and they drove at each other, shouting aloud whilst their horses pricked their ears and raised their tails. And they ceased not clashing together with such a crash that it seemed to each as if the firmament were split asunder, and they continued to strive like two rams which butt, smiting and exchanging with their swords thrust and cut. Presently, Khardash joined at Kanmakan, but he evaded it and rejoined upon him and so pierced him through the breast that the spearhead issued from his back. Then he collected the horses and the plunder and he cried out to his slaves saying, "Up and be driving as hard as ye may!" Then he set out for his home and ceased not journeying night and day until he drew near Baghdad City with the horse thief's head on the point of Sabbah’s spear.
Tale of King Omar bin al-Nu’uman & his sons
A Thousand Nights and a Night
Sir Richard Burton
But the swift runner Achilles answered firmly, "Phoenix, old father, bred and loved by the gods, what do I need with honor such as that? I say my honor lies in the great decree of Zeus. That gift will hold me here by the beaked ships as long as the life breath remains inside my chest and my springing knees will lift me. Another thing, take it to heart, I urge you. Stop confusing my fixed resolve with this, this weeping and wailing just to serve his pleasure, Atreus' mighty son. It degrades you to curry favor with that man, and I will hate you for it, I who love you. It does you proud to stand by me, my friend, to attack the man who attacks me. Be king on a par with me, take half my honors!
The Iliad
Book 9
line 738-752
The third Haynesworth daughter, Belvidera Harrison Haynesworth, moved to Spartanburg, South Carolina and there married Joseph Taylor Hudson. One of their sons was William M. Hudson, Sr. As a young boy, Dr William M. Hudson, Jr. great grandson of M.S., rode the same sandy lanes on the plantation’s horses, learning at a young age the powerful bond between man, horse and the land. There he was filled with the illumination that man and horse once had a glorious past, and could again. These rides through the tracts of towering oaks and Spanish moss left an indelible impression.
r. William Hudson continued this family tradition with an affinity for the peoples, culture and horses of the Middle East. Zandai Arabians is a Straight Egyptian program which supports the mission and principles of the Pyramid Society, Lexington, Kentucky. Zandai Arabians was founded in 1984, with a daughter of Ansata Abbas Pasha and a son of Ansata Abu Tai. This adherence to an Ansata-based breeding program forms the basis of our work today.
Our bloodstock breeding program is based on 2 Egyptian female bloodlines, El Dahma and Ghazieh I. The first, the line of El Dahma, (Dahmah Shahwaniyah, a desert bred Chestnut, born about 1880) was acquired from the Qahtan, and used in the stud of Ali Pasha Sherif. The second, the Saqlawi strain, originated with the mare Ghazieh I of Abbas Pasha, (a Grey desert bred, date of birth unknown, bred by Ibn Sudan of the Ruala).
These two female lines were chosen because of their consistent reproductive quality. These bloodlines came to America through a number of individuals, and have come to the Zandai herd principally through the breeding of Don and Judith Forbis of Ansata Arabians. Zandai horses are bred according to the ancient Bedouin practice of “line breeding”, a time honored method known for fixing and perpetuating type and quality.
The horses of Zandai Arabians are featured in the following publications:
Authentic Arabian Bloodstock by Judy Forbis
Authentic Arabian Bloodstock II by Judy Forbis
The Pyramid Society's reference handbooks
Asil Arabians, Olms Press, Hildesheim, Germany 2007
In addition, Zandai Arabians was a sponsoring patron for the Forbis book, The Abbas Pasha Manuscript.