Teymur from Germany sent me this photo of Sharkasi with his owner TGB Trouncer, before the Royal Agricultural Society of Egypt (RAS) acquired him in 1955. I had never seen a picture of Sharkasi before and confess being pleasantly surprised at his good looks. The way his neck is set and his straight shoulder also make me wonder how he ever became the good racehorse he was supposed to be. The Alzabra stud, where his sire and paternal grandsire were supposed to come from, according to a WAHO investigation report, was probably one of these rural stallion depots maintained by the RAS across Egypt, where surplus RAS stallions were stationed for use by the local population. You can infer that from this sentence of the WAHO report: “His sire was one of the Alzabra Stud distributed to villages to cover the mares of farmers. His dam was also by an Alzabra stallion and out of a Bedouin mare.” If Alzabra was a private stud, why would it ‘distribute’ its stallions ‘cover the mares of farmers’? Its description actually fits the role fulfilled by government-owned stallion depots. Stallions would typically spend part of the year in the depot/stud, and the rest…