Bosra Sham

Bosra Sham is a retired Thoroughbred racehorse, bred in the United States and trained in the United Kingdom. In a career which lasted from August 1995 until August 1997 she ran ten times and won seven races. Bosra Sham won several important races including the 1000 Guineas and the Champion Stakes in 1996, a year in which she was awarded the title of European Champion Three-Year Old Filly. She was one of the highest-rated fillies of modern times.

Background

Bosra Sham is a chestnut mare with a prominent white blaze and long white socks on her hind legs, bred in Kentucky by Gerald W Leigh. She was sired by the Mr. Prospector stallion Woodman out of the Riverman mare Korveya, making her a full sister to the European Champion Two-Year-Old Hector Protector, and a half-sister to the Poule d'Essai des Poulains winner Shanghai. As a descendant of the broodmare Royal Statute, she was also closely related to the Epsom Derby winner Lammtarra.

Her pedigree made her highly-sought after and, at the 1994 Tattersalls Houghton yearling auction, the Syrian businessman Wafic Saïd paid 530,000 guineas (the highest price in Europe that year) to secure her. The price was no guarantee of success: no top-priced yearling at the Houghton Sale had gone on to win a Classic since Sayajirao in 1947. Her name is derived from the ancient Syrian city of Bosra or Busra ash-Sham. She was sent into training with Henry Cecil at Newmarket.

Bosra

Bosra (Arabic: بصرى‎ Buṣrā, also spelled Bostra, Busrana, Bozrah, Bozra and officially known Busra al-Sham بصرى الشام) is a town in southern Syria, administratively belonging to the Daraa District of the Daraa Governorate.

According to the Syria Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS), Bosra had a population of 19,683 in the 2004 census. It is the administrative center of the nahiyah ("subdistrict") of Bosra which consisted of nine localities with a collective population of 33,839 in 2004. Bosra's inhabitants are predominantly Sunni Muslims, although the town has a small Shia Muslim community.

Bosra has an ancient history and during the Roman era it was a prosperous provincial capital and Metropolitan Archbishopric, which became a Latin Catholic titular see and the episcopal see of a Melkite Archeparchy. It continued to be administratively important during the Islamic era, but became gradually less prominent during the Ottoman era. Today, it is a major archaeological site and has been declared by UNESCO as a World Heritage Site.