The status of the 1921 French Arabian racehorse Denousté is a thorny question with which I have been grappling for a long time. I believe I have now reached closure on the issue, and I feel relieved, even if no new information has surfaced on the horse.
There were always two issues about this horse: the first concerned a distant antecedent in his pedigree; and the second was about some French breeders breeding their Arabian mares to part-bred Arabian stallions and claiming the offspring were by Denousté.
The issue of his pedigree is easier to get a grasp of: Denousté was born in 1921 at Mr. Lalague in South Western France, and was by the desert-bred stallion Latif, a Hamdani Simri from the Fad’aan Bedouins, and out of Djaima, who was by Khouri, a desert-bred Ubayyan Sharrak also from the Fad’aan, and out of Dame Tartine, who was by Burkeguy (see below) out of Déesse, who was by the desert-bred Emir Selim and out of Berthe, who was the offspring of two desert-bred imports: the stallion Nahr El Kebir and the mare Merjane, a Mukhalladiyah by strain, imported from the Naqab (Negev) desert near Gaza. It’s a pedigree that’s relatively close to the desert, in general, with the exception of Burkeguy.
The 1899 stallion Burkeguy, bred by Mr. Horment, was the only French bred stallion in Denouste’s pedigree, at a time when French breeders favored imported desert-bred horses over home bred ones. Burkeguy’s ancetress Aissa, who was the maternal grand-dam of his sire Fez, is the main culprit in his pedigree.
If you follow Burkeguy’s pedigree on allbredpedigree.com (which is fairly accurate in this case), you will notice some line-breeding to the mare Kalifa, of the respected Souberbielle breeding program, but also to the desert-bred stallion Djerash, a Saqlawi Jadran. You will also notice his great grand-dam Aissa, an 1870 grey mare.
Aissa was bred by Friar Houneau, in Algeria, by Adjali out of his mare Fatouma, and brought to France in 1873, where she was registered and bred on. Her entry is in the French Stud Book Volume IV, page 487.
Her sire Adjali is not registered, however, and only appears in his daughter registration entry, as imported (to Algeria) in 1868, presumably from the Arabian desert. At that time, French authorities in colonial Algeria did not maintain formal studbooks until Volume V (1874); the Arabian horses that were bred in Algeria before that date were never registered, except when they were imported to France, only their progeny were registered.
Aissa’s dam Fatouma is not registered in the French Studbook either, and is only recorded in her daughter’s entry, and that’s because she, too, was not bred in France, but in Algeria. In her daughter’s entry, she is recorded as being born in 1862 by “Bou Maza et Kebira, Arabes”. The word “Arabes” in the context French horse-breeding activities in Algeria typically means “from Arabia” or “Original Arab”.
There is a Bou Maza active as a stallion at that time, not in Algeria but in France, bred in 1847 by famous French breeder Mr. De Nexon by Hussein out of Amine. There are several Kebiras, though, the best match being the one bred by Pompadour in 1844 (Mesrur x Furette by the grand Massoud, founder of the Anglo-Arabian breed); this Kebira would have been 18 when she foaled Fatouma.
The most likely scenario here is that Kebira left Pompadour when the Stud’s broodmare band was dispersed, in foal to Bou Maza; that she was taken to Algeria by this Friar, or someone else (Nicole de Blomac argues that the trip to Algeria may have taken place in the context of Empress Eugenie’s visit, when lots of people and horses went back and forth between France and its new colony);
Kebira’s daughter Fatouma was then foaled in Algeria (that’s a fact) in 1862; and when she became an adult mare, she was bred to Adjali by the Friar, and foaled Aissa in 1870; the friar then took Aissa back to France in 1873, where she was registered.
It seems to me like one of these stories so common to Arabian (and other breeds) registries in their early days, when horse registrations fall between cracks because of clerical errors, where changes in registration systems and procedures mean that some horses are registered posthumously, and in the absence of export documents between a country and its colony, some information is lost in the way.
Context here needs to be taken into consideration. It’s not too different a situation from that of some of the Hamidie imports in the USA, or that of *Abbeian 111, or more recently some of the Inshass horses in Egypt.
On top of this, according to Jean-Claude Rajot, both Admiral Cordonnier and Robert Mauvy went through the above research and documents when they chose to breed from select Denousté offspring. Jean-Claude testified that both men were so thorough and systematic in their research that they had no qualms about cutting out horses that did not match their standards of purity — and they put the threshold very high.
Jean-Claude also told me that both Cordonnier and Mauvy researched that Friar’s credentials, and found nothing that would justify breeding his mares to non-Arabian horses (e.g., Barb or English TB) for any reason; that innocuous Friar was not involved in racing, and he was not breeding horses for profit, or to sell them for that matter.
He also mentioned that while Cordonnier and Mauvy did not consider Denousté to be a prototype of the classic Arabian horse they liked, they thought he was a good horse, with bona fide origins, and they selectively used his progeny in both their breedings. In Mauvy’s case, it was the stallion Saadi (Ourour x Oureah by Ghalbane Or.Ar.), whose sire Ourour was out of Denousté grand-daughter (Gafir in Ourour’s tail female was sent from Tunisia to France for a breeding to Denousté); In Cordonnier’s case, it was the stallion Kriss II (Denousté x Kenia by Kerro).
As to the mention in Mauvy’s little book that the “use of [the stallion] Abel (Denousté x Alicante by Kerro) [by Pompadour] was unfortunate”, Jean-Claude said it was a reference to his progeny having disappointed Mauvy, rather than a remark on Abel’s pedigree origin.
That said, Jean-Claude mentioned that both Mauvy and Cordonnier were aware of at least three or four specific instances where horses registered as sons and daughters of Denousté were in reality by part bred Arabians, and that they were careful to stay away from these.
All in all, I am rather satisfied with Denousté’s status as a bona fide Arabian horse, and hence with his descendants purebred Arabian status.