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.

Below is her pretty mare Akhesa Beni Sakr, by the Tunisian stallion Hadhr El Basher (Chedi x Loubna by Oramin0) out of her mare Akaba Beni Sakr (Jahir x Loubia Bint Breek by Breek), a Jilfat al-Dhawi that blends Moroccan, Algerian, Tunisian and Egyptian lines. The foal in the photo was by Fabienne’s Shuwayman Sabbah stallion Hortal El Din (SEA Asal x Thallame by Breek).

Dahiss Hassaka (photo below) was bred by Radwan Shabareq and later imported to France. I owned his grandsire Dahiss, as well as a sister of his dam, ”Zahra” who was by Dinar out of Hanadi. A head shot of hers was published earlier, you will find it if you scroll down.

His sire Iricho was imported from Tunisia to France, and has close lines to the desert. His grandsire, the Hamdani Simri Ghalbane, and his great-grandsire, the Saqlawi Jadran Masbout, and his great-great-grandsire, the Ma’naqi Sbaili Bango, all came from the Syrian desert, and were among the last imports to French Algeria. So much pure, authentic, well-ascertained blood flows in his vein, so close to the original desert source.

Adrien tells me the first photo was taken at Louis Bauduin who was standing him at stud, while the second was a show contest, much earlier.

In 1994, my father and I went to France for a benign medical treatment, and we looked up Mauvy’s surviving horses in the Studbook. Some of them were owned by Louis Bauduin, who lives a couple hours south of Paris, so we went to pay him a visit. He treated us to lunch in Nemours, presented us to his family and friends, several of which are now regular readers of this blog, and showed us his horses.

Among these was the glorious Hamada, then in her twenties. There she was, standing right beside me. I will never forget how the teenager I was felt when taking this photo of her, below, with Louis holding her. It felt like meeting your favorite action hero right there, in the middle of street, like jumping in the middle of a fiction book and become one of its characters.

Here is a photo of the little filly Mutarak Nesba (Mokhtar x Murad Diffa) bred by  Guillaume Lambert and Margot Leroux-Berger, in France.

By the way, it turned out that Mokhtar’s semen does not ship well, and that means he will have to be used live. It is still time to catch him before he leaves us, because if I had to vouch for the asil status of one horse in the world, it would be him. He is a time capsule straight from the 18th century.

Here’s his daughter Shueymah Challawieh, out of one of Jean-Claudes’ mares, also a Shuwaymah by strain, but tracing to the imported Cherifa, bred by the Sba’ah Bedouins and imported to Algeria in 1869.

By the way, this stallion will be the subject of my upcoming talk at the next Al Khamsa Convention in Pennsylvania: “A closer look at a modern Syrian Arabian horse pedigree: the case of Mahboob Halab”. Photos of his first foal crop coming soon..

Louis sent me these two pictures of the mare; the first one shows the mare heavily in foal on April 30th, and the second, followed by her baby on May 1st.

“Hussam a fait sa course avec Nicolas aux Andelys en Normandie. Epreuve élevage 20 kms pour 6ans.  Il l’a fait en 14,84 kms/heure, le meilleurs temps de l’épreuve de vitesse imposée entre 12 et 15 kms/heure. Ayant été gêné par d’autres concurrents pendant la course, il a terminé sur l’hippodrome à 40 kms/heure, parfaitement sec avec une récupération à 40 de pulsation. Pendant la course il était tout à son affaire, restant trés froid, ce qui n’était pas le cas au vet gate où il avait tendance à s’enerver à la vue des autres chevaux…A la remise des prix, le jury à souligné ses origines syriennes et son cachet et le public de cavaliers et d’éleveurs, semble t’y avoir été sensible de par leurs applaudissements. Il fera une autre course de 40 km le 9 Juillet à Vatteville la rue toujours en Normandie et si tout va bien une 60 km par la suite.”

Here are some pictures of this race from Arnault:

Adrien has a very nice filly from Hussam that will be featured here next, out a mare from an old asil Algerian line.

See how much he’s changed from the last time he was featured here.

Note the resemblance with some of the early horses of Davenport bloodlines in the USA.

His sire Bango was a Ma’naqi Sbaili from the Shammar, was imported to Algeria in the 1920s, and this makes Sumeyr very close to the desert. Photo from the Deblaise collection on their  site Lozanne Publications.

Now this one is of the very desert looking Tabriz (Oukrif x Hama by Agege out of Taflia by Ibn Fayda), a close relative of Sumeyr who had all this sallion career in Tunisia. He is also very close to the desert blood, his grandsire being the stallion El Managhi, imported from Hama, Syria, at the same time as Bango.

He did produce three asil Arabian stallions: Zab in 1971 (out of the beautiful Izarra), Jahir in 1975 (out of Ciada), and Nichem (out of Caida). Very little asil blood if anything at all, remains from Iricho today.

Photo from the collection of Pierre-Henri Beillard of Le Sureau, France.

This is Akim de Ducor by Akbar (Djelfor x Fantasia by Gosse du Bearn) out of Ishra, who is by Tornado de Syrah (by Djourman), born in 2005.

This is Elios de Carrere, 1992, by Manganate out of Nerva du Cassou by Baroud III.

All three are “Arabians”, and duly recognized by WAHO. Actually, one comment: some people  just have no shame. Time for a paradigm shift.

This is not your usual Arabian horse. This is a horse from hell. This is fire made horse. Both Jean-Claude Rajot and Arnault Decroix told me about their first encounter with this horse in 2008, when he was just a weanling at the stud of his breeder Radwan Shabareq: three grooms were needed to handle him as he was being shown to the stunned visitors. This is probably why Radwan called him Nimr — tiger.

He hails from one of the most prestigious desert bloodlines: the Ma’naqi Sbayli marbat of Shawwakh al-Bu-Rasan, Shaykh of the Wuldah tribes of the Euphrates valley.  Shawwakh had obtained the line from his neighbor and friend ‘Atiyah Abu Sayfayn, a Fad’aan Bedouin who owns the strain now. ‘Atiyah’s great-grandfather had stolen the original mare from the Sba’ah (click here to read how), the fountain-spring of the Ma’naqi Sbayli strain.

The clan of al-Bu-Rasan is one of the leading clans of the Wuldah, and was once wealthy and powerful. In the 1960s,the Syrian government built a large dam on the Euphrates valley, and the fertile agricultural lands of the Bu-Rasan and others were flooded under the resulting manmade lake. They were relocated to a remote area in North Eastern Syria; by the time Radwan came to purchase Nimr’s great-granddam Hulwah from the sons of Shawwakh in the 1980s, they had become so impoverished that they traded her for a tractor’s battery.

I was always fond of this line of Radwan’s; indeed in the late 1990s, when Radwan offered us a filly in exchange for our stallion Dahess, I hesitated between two al-A’war daughters: Yamhad who is Nimr’s dam, and ‘Amshet Shammar (al-A’war x Ghallaieh), a Kuhaylat Krush, whom we ultimately picked.

If you happen to think that this is not how Arabian horses look like, then compare with the 1906 photo of the Crabbet stallion Rodan (by Harb x Rose of Sharon and the sire of Ghazi, Gulnare and Bazrah, and grandsire of Gulastra and Kahar among other foundation horses of Arabian breeding, and think again:

I do not know what position to adopt with respect to this controversy, and I will actually refrain from adopting one until more information emerges from within the country, which I am sure will be the case at some point.

The original Esmet Ali was born in 1955 at the famed and well-respected Sidi Bou Hadid stud of french Navy Admiral Anatole Cordonnier, one of the savviest and most knowledgeable breeders of Arabian horses of his time (little known in the USA, unfortunately). That Esmet Ali was by Cordonnier’s stallion Hazil and out of one of Cordonnier’s best mares, Arabelle (Beyrouth x Ambria by Nasr d.b).

In 1956, Tunisia became independent from France, and some troubled times followed for a brief period, during which the stud of Sidi Bou Said was looted, and many animals ran away, and others were lost or stolen. The yearling Esmet Ali was one of these. He was taken away to the nearby mountains, an army helicopter followed him for about an hour and a half, and then lost trace of him.

A few years later, a horse reappeared in the racing scene that was claimed to be Esmet Ali. Many saw in that horse the chestnut yearling of Cordonnier, but some did not recognize him. That horse made his way to the stallion barn at the Government Stud of Sidi Thabet and sired some of Tunisia’s best racehorses ever, including Dynamite III.

The position of the Robert Mauvy, who was Admiral Cordonnier’s best friend and confidente is a bit ambiguous here. Mauvy knew Cordonnier’s horses inside out. He even received two of Cordonnier’s mares as a gift: the beautiful Izarra (David x Arabelle) a Kuhaylat al-’Ajuz who is Esmet Ali’s maternal sister, and Hammada (Madani x Antinea by Kriss II), a Mukhalladiyah of old French lines. The story above is known to have come from Mauvy, among others yet at the same time it is the same Mauvy who writes in his book ‘Le Cheval Arabe’: “Aissaoui, Esmet Ali, que de bon et beaux chevaux sont restes outre-Mediterranee; souhaitons qu’ils y aient fait souche…“, which roughly translates as “Aissaoui, Esmet Ali, so many good and beautiful horses remained on the other side of the Mediterranean” (i.e., North Africa). The first edition of the book was written in the mid 1960s, the second in the late 1970s, and the stallion Esmet Ali was active during both times. Maybe Mauvy eventually recognized that the horse that resurfaced was indeed Esmet Ali..

Whatever the case, his sons and grandsons certainly bear the original Arabian type: deserty, dry, skin like silk, huge eyes, etc.

People who defend horses such as Flipper will tell you that French Arabians were bred with a focus on speed, not on classic Arabian type, over a ten to fifteen generations, which is why they look the way they do.  It’s true, and there was no shortage of ‘untypey’ French Arabians since the 1910s; yet, as far from classical type as they may have been, they were of authentic Arab blood. Flipper belongs to a different league: he has non-Arabian blood in his veins — and more than a trickle.

So do his sons Dunixi and Tidjani (photos below), both of whom are major progenitor of French racing lines. The status of Flipper’s line as ’purebred’ Arabian is safely guaranteed by the presence by a senior staff of the French National Haras on WAHO’s Board of Directors.

The horse is turning 24 next year, so the clock is ticking.. Soon, with Bedouins becoming sedentary and more integrated in the global economy, the notion of a desert-bred horse born under a tent will itself come to and end. Below is a photo of one of Mokhtar’s sons in France, the stallion Quarzai, who recently earned third place at a 90 miles endurance race.

The bay Hijab was born in Syria, by Mostafa al-Jabri’s asil Kuhaylan Ibn Jlaidan stallion Al-Ward al-Mayed (Mahrous x Nadrah), out of Basil Jadaan’s Saqlawiyah Jadraniyah mare Nisreen (Mobarak x Marwah). Basil gave Hijab and the black Mokhtar to Mrs. Mennings who took them to France. They were later acquired by Chantal Chekroun, who bred them to each other. The breeding of Mokhtar to Hijab produced the dark bay Menjad Maram al-Baida (photo below, by Sophie Lacarre) now a stallion at the Balthasar’s Haras de la Lizonne in Western France. I first wrote about Menjad on this blog several months ago (click here to read). Then I wrote about him and his grand-dam Marwah again here.

Chantal retained Manjad’s full sister Quokriya Al Shatane (Mokhtar x Hijab), whose headshot below she also sent me. The long established marbat of the Saqlawi Jadran of Ibn Amoud, to which Quokriya’s maternal great-grand-dam Marwah traces to, belongs to one of the most powerful clans of the Shammar tribe, that of Ibn Amud. Marwah comes straight from this clan.

According to Fahd Ibn Haddal, the leader of the ‘Amarat Bedouin tribe, in an quote in Abbas Al-Azzawi’s excellent book “Tribes of Iraq”, the clan of Ibn Amud of Shammar, then under the leadership of its best known scion, Hasan al-Amud obtained its Saqlawiyat in a raid against the Frijah clan of the Ruwalah Bedouins. So Hijab ultimately traces to the Ruwalah tribe, the fountainhead of the Saqlawiyat Jadraniyat…

The first, and perhaps most famous here in the US, was Aiglon. Aiglon was a Saqlawi Jadran imported by Ibish to Egypt for racing, around 1920, according to the export document for his daughter, *Exochorda, attested to by Dr. Branch, the Director of the Royal Agricultural Society of Egypt. *Exochorda, named after the ship that brought her to the USA, is of course best known as the dam of Sirecho.

The second was El Sbaa. El Sbaa, a chestnut, was bought from Ahmad Ibish by a French government mission led by Madron and Denis at the Cairo Heliopolis racetrack in 1925, and sent to the French Stud of Pompadour where he was used as a stallion. De Madron related the circumstances around his purchase in his bool. El Sbaa was recorded as a Ma’naghi Sbayli, but there is an additional paper attached to his file at Pompadour, which clarifies that according to the leader of the Hadidiyeen Bedouin tribe, Nawaf al-Salih, his strain was actually Ju’aitni. I wrote about him extensively, here.

The third was a bay stallion named Ibisch, born in 1902. I  don’t know his strain. All I know is the French bought from Ahmad Ibisch, and took him to Tunisia, where they used him at their Etablissements Hippiques d’Afrique du Nord. Ibisch is still represented in modern pedigrees, since the two influential French bred stallion of Algerian/Tunisian lines Saadi and Ourki (both by Ourour out of Oureah, by Ghalbane and Fantazia by Vizir, who was out of Omphale, who was by Mossoul, by Ibisch).

The fourth was a chestnut stallion, whose racing name was lost, but who remains forever influential as the sire of Krush Halba, a Lebanese-bred stallion exported to Turkey where he founded an important sire line, in addition to being the foundation stallion of the now defunct Lebanese asil breeding program (below is headshot of my own Al-Tuwayssah, the last suviving mare of the program. She has two close lines to Krush Halba). The hujjah of Krush Halba is featured on the WAHO website, from which comes the following quote:

“His father (sire of the Krush) is the golden chestnut horse with blaze and markings on the left legs, he is the Saglawi Shaifi of the breeding of Ibn Ghobosh from the Al Fidaan tribe, that was purchased by Solaiman Ojel from the Fidaan and sold by him to the famous Ahmad Afandi Ebesh at the price of one hundred and sixty Ottoman Lira. The above mentioned sold him to Egypt at the price of five hundred English Lira and after that he won two races.”

While this Saqlawi Shaifi will probably remain unnamed for a long time, his story provides with a number of interesting insights as to the supply chain that ends with Ahmad Ibish. From the above quote, and the information available about the other horses, we learn that :

a) Ahmad Ibish used to deal with Sulayman Ujayl, the scion of a family of Syrian horsemerchants from Hims in Central Syria, who used to buy their horses from the ‘Anazah tribes whose summer pastures were near Hims.

b) Ibish did not hesitate to acquire mature horses who already had an opportunity to be used as stallions before being raced.

c) Ibisch bought horses straight from the desert source: El Sbaa came from the Hadidiyeen and the Saqlawi Shaifi came from Sba’ah.

d) Ibisch used to pay large sums for his horses: One Hundred and Sixty Ottoman Liras. (Will need to see how large this amount was for the time).

e) Ibisch used to act as a horse-merchant as well. He bought horses for racing, but he also sold them to racehorse owners, presumably  with a profit margin. Not sure how much the conversation rate between Ottoman Liras and English liras was at the time.

f) Ibisch, a native of Damascus, Syria, was active in both Syria and Egypt.

“Toute selection ou amelioration chevaline doit se faire du Sud vers le Nord mais jamais a l’inverse”

In English:

“Every attempt at improvement or selection must take place from the South to the North, not visa versa”

Further explanation may be needed: in Mauvy’s parlance, the South is the cradle of the breed, Arabia Deserta, and, to a lesser extent, Egypt and North Africa, the latter being a French dominated region where the climate and the soil are very similar to the horse-breeding areas of Arabia. The North is Europe (which on a map, lies to the North of Arabia, Egypt and North Africa). What Mauvy meant is that Arabian horse-breeding in Europe (and the West in general) ought to be ‘refreshed’ by the constant importation of stallions from Arabia Deserta, which would infuse much need sturdiness and dryness into older European breeding; on the other hand, one should not attempt to improve the desert-breds with Western-bred Arabians.

Now that I have Mauvy’s newly published booklet in hand, I will be quoting him more frequently. On another line, the booklet includes the first photo I have ever seen of the other Ibn  Fayda (Ibn Rabdan x Fayda by Jamil Blunt), the one that was gifted by Egyptian Prince Kemal al-Din Husayn to the Tunisian government.