Today Kate found my Holy Graal. Two of my Holy Graals. Ever since I was 12, I have been wanting to see photos of the two fountainhead mares of Algerian Arabian horse breeding, at the Jumenterie of Tiaret: the two mares Olympe and Primevere. Robert Mauvy’s precious gem of a book, “Le Cheval Arabe” has a section on these two mares that left an imprint of the teenager I was. Today, 31 one years later, when I need to take a flight somewhere, the first book I instinctively grab is this one. I never tire of reading it again and again and again. I don’t believe anyone has captured the essence of the Arabian horse the way Mauvy has. Both Olympe and Primere are the grand-daughters of two mares imported from Arabia to Algeria by the French: respectively Wadha, a Jilfat al-Dhawi of the Fad’aan Anazah, and Cherif (b. 1869), a Shuwaymah Sabbah of the Sba’ah Anazah. The French bought both mares at the camps of these of two tribes. Some 150 years later, both lines are still thriving worldwide. Here are the two pictures from the Sport Universel Illustre. Thank you, Kate. You have given shape to a longstanding…
This photo comes from L’Algérie Photographiée: Province d’Oran, by Félix-Jacques-Antoine Moulin, taken circa 1856/7.
Another stallion imported from Arabia to Tiaret. Click to enlarge.
An absolutely superb male specimen of a Desert Arabian horse, in Algeria. The legend says “syrian stallion”, yet so far I was not able to match with him with any of the grey stallions the French imported to Algeria from the East. Not Bango, not El Nil, not Sidi Gaber, not Aziz. If you know him, let me know. Photo courtesy of Farid Chaoui, of Algeria.
French equine librarian, collector and breeder, Philippe Deblaise just published the book “Tiaret, le reve Algerien” that will add tremendous value to the literature on Arabian horses, by pulling together the knowledge available about the glorious breeding program of the Arabian horse Stud of Tiaret, in Algeria. This stud was founded by the French in the 1870s, when France was the colonial power in Algeria, and relied exclusively on stallions and mares imported from desert-bred Arabians from Arabia. This stud is unique in the world as no stallion born outside desert Arabian was ever used at stud until Algerian independence in the 1960s. Click on the flyer (in French) to enlarge it.
Stephan Eberhardt shared with me this photo of his Algerian/Tunisian/Egyptian mare Dachna (Khaiber x Dahna by El Aswad a.k.a Ibn Galal-15), a Shuwaymah Sabbah tracing to the Tiaret mare Cherifa. I am always pleased to see that these asil lines from North Africa have crossed well with Egyptian lines in Europe. The mare has two close crosses to Tunisian lines: her paternal grand-dam is the Jilfat al-Dhawi mare Rissala (Esmet Ali x Chanaan by Souci), whose sire and dam are from Anatole Cordonnier’s breeding in Tunisia but mostly from Algerian lines; and her maternal grand-dam is the beautiful Dar Essalam (Koufi x Djamila by Titan) whose sire is from Tunisian lines from Sidi Thabet and dam from Algerian lines from Tiaret.
Perhaps I should not be doing that, but I am posting a list of potentially surviving Tiaret lines in a Word document. There are less than a handful potentially left, as John was writing earlier. If someone finds a way to get hold of one, let me know. I will jump on the next flight to Algiers. Let me know if you can open it. Legend: in bold: stallions, underlined: potentially alive.
French breeder and researcher Philippe Deblaise has a new book coming out: “Tiaret: le Reve Algerien”, which chronicles the story of the prestigious government stud of Tiaret in then French-colonized Algeria. The website of the French Union Pour la Sauvegarde du Cheval Arabe Oriental (USCAR) publishes excerpts of it (here). Here is a wonderful photo album of what Tiaret looked like from the first part of the XXth century until today, including 129 photos of the Tiaret stud. Below are a couple photos. Tiaret
by Adrien Deblaise Two photos of the Tiaret bred mare Malika, a Jilfat al-Dhawi, b. 1949, by Masbout d.b., out of Themis, by Bango d.b., out of Abaka by Ghazi d.b. The grand-dam of the stallion Jahir discussed below.
Two photos of the Tiaret bred mare Malika, a Jilfat al-Dhawi, b. 1949, by Masbout d.b., out of Themis, by Bango d.b., out of Abaka by Ghazi d.b. The grand-dam of the stallion Jahir discussed below.
This morning Adrien Deblaise, from France, sent me two photos of his superb stallion, Murad Ghazy. Ghazy was bred by Louis Bauduin, by Jahir (Iricho x Ciada by Ghalbane, d.b.), out of Murad Hadra (Medicq Allah x Hamada by Irmak), of Algerian and Tunisian lines. He traces to all three Cordonnier-bred stallions (Iricho, In Chaallah, Irmak) the French Government brought from Tunisia in the 1960s, sparking a small revival of asil Arabian breeding in France. Note also the not-so-distant line to the great desert import Nibeh in Murad Ghazy’s pedigree: Murad Ghazy — Murad Hadra — Medicq Allah — Medica — Meziana — Messina — Nibeh.
Fabienne Vesco, from France, shared these two informative videos about Barb and Arabian horse breeding in North Africa. It mainly talks about Arabian horses in the context of Arab Barb breeding for remounts, but also in the context of preservation breeding. Le Barbe – Cheval Des Berbères – Part 1 by NacirAdhrar Le Barbe – Cheval Des Berbères – Part 2 by NacirAdhrar
Fabienne Vesco, a French preservation breeder in Eastern France, breeds horses of combined Tunisian, Moroccan, Algerian and Egyptian lines, of the Jilfan Dhawi and Shuayman Sabbah strains. 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).
Adrien Deblaise, a preservation breeder in western France, sent me these two photos of the splendid and very asil 1975 Jilfan Dhawi stallion Jahir (Iricho x Ciada, who was by Ghalbane x Malika, by Masbout x Themis by Bango x Akaba). The pedigree on allbreedpedigree.com is wrong, so I am not linking to it. 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.
There is this photo of the beautiful asil stallion Sumeyr (Bango d.b. x Jamnia by the Algerian asil Oukrif out of Taflia by the Egyptian Ibn Fayda) on allbreedigree here. He was bred at a private stud in Tunisia, then exported to France where he stood at the government stud of Pau, in the South West. 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.
Iricho was born in Tunisia in 1959 at the stud of French Navy Admiral – and otherwise master Arabian horse breeder – Anatole Cordonnier, who sold him to the French government a few years later. Iricho, a Jilfan Dhawi tracing to Wadha, bred by the Fad’aan Bedouins and imported from the Arabian Desert to Algeria in 1875 by the Frnech, subsequently stood at the Haras de Pompadour for most of his breeding career. Although a horse of excellent conformation and irreproachable bloodlines, Iricho was little used by French breeders who preferred taller stallions of racing bloodlines. 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.
Blog reader Elena Latici who lives in Italy recently bought this young fellow from Louis Bauduin’s farm in France. Murad Mandour (by Shuayman El Badawi x Murad Ouffah Habib by Jahir) is a bay Shuwayman Sabbah yearling who combines modern desert-bred blood from Syria (through his paternal grand-sire Mokhtar, bred by the Shammar Bedouins) with older desert-bred blood through imports Tunisian/ Algerian bloodlines. He also carries a hint of old French blood, and has a distant line to the desert-bred import Nibeh, featured here, and whom French master-breeder Robert Mauvy really liked. Mauvy was a big advocate of the idea of re-invigorating old European Arabian bloodlines with fresh desert-bred blood at leart every three generations, as as to sustain the physical and mental characeteristics of the Arabian horse of Arabia Deserta. Mauvy’s friends and students adhered to this theory early on, and bred some of their mares to desert-bres stallions such as Mokhtar, and now Mahboob Halab.
I “stole” this picture from the Internet, but it’s for a good cause. This is Jehol Sahraoui (Ouaffar x Kalthoumia by Sabour), for a long time the head sire at Mrs. Gisela Bergmann’s stud in Ghardimaou in western Tunisia. Mrs. Bergmann has bred precious ‘old’ Tunisian lines for some thirty years, and Jehol Sahraoui, born in 1978, is representative of these lines. He hails from a very rare sire line in Tunisian/Algerian breeding, that of El Managhi, imported from Hama (Central Syria) by the French to their Algerian Stud of Tiaret in 1924. His dam line, that of Dolma-Batche, is even rarer, and I don’t think it survives away from Mrs. Bergmann’s small breeding program (to be checked). Note that the Jilfan (no marbat recorded) line of Dolma-Batche, chesntut, born in 1869, imported to Sidi-Thabet in Tunisia in 1876, is a different line from the Jilfan Dhawi line to which was imported from the Syrian desert to Tiaret in Algeria in 1875. A number of good horses trace to Dolma-Batche, including the beautiful Sumeyr, who was featured on this blog before. Jehol is now represented by his son Tchad (b. in 1986 out of Binsar, by Koraich out of Hadia).…
At last I get to see a picture of Bossa Nova (Iricho x Bassala by Masbout), thanks to Adrien Deblaise who sent me this one today. Bossa Nova, of the Jilfan Dhawi strain that traces to the mare Wadha from the Fad’aan tribe, was bred by the French government stud of Pompadour, by Iricho, an asil imported from Anatole Cordonnier’s breeding in Tunisia, out of Bassala, an asil imported from the Tiaret government stud in Algeria. Bossa Nova, together with the Hamdaniyah Simriyah mare Ablette (photo below, by Sumeyr x Attique by Meat), was deemed the “best”, “purest”, and “most classic” mare in Pompadour” by master-breeder Robert Mauvy. Now I see why.
Yesterday evening, I threw away my 2000 Arabian Horse Datasource CD-ROM, and bought a new one year online membership. The geek in me was so excited. Now guess what is the first studbook I looked up in search for lost and forgotten asil Arabians? Saudi Arabia? Syria? Bahrain? Iraq? the USA? France? No. I looked up Algeria first. I guess that’s where my heart really lies. This is where France sent its best desert-bred imports and its best horsemen. This is where, in my opinion, some of the most authentic, true-to-type Arabians were bred. Every mare at the the West-Algerian stud of Tiaret was a gem. Of course, following their country’s independence , the Algerians went ahead and imported “Arabians” from Spain, the UK and elsewhere, effectively putting an end to some 100 years of asil breeding. I wanted to see what remained of the Tiaret breeding, which up to the 1980s was centered on the two magnificent stallions Larabi (Fil x Ledmia by Ghalbane) and Guercif (Ghalbane x Gaila by Bang0). The news is not good, but there may be two or three mares of breedable age still alive, with progeny in 2000. I feel like jumping in an…
Another desert-bred imported to Algeria in the XIXth century is Ben Chicao. I don’t know his strain or his breeder. He is represented in modern pedigrees through his daughter Addresse (x Pervenche), to whom the stallion Madani (Souci x Sissana by Mossoul) has a line in the middle of the pedigree. He was otherwise rarely used. Is that a good Arabian horse conformation wise, judging from the photo? What do you think?
Recently, Ambar Diaz started posting photos of some of this blog’s authors and regular contributors mounted on asil Arabian horses, as a way to put names on faces. Here is a photo that reader Predrag Joksimovic sent me of himself, mounted on Mahiba (Shams El Arabi x Mansoura), a very deserty little mare. Mahiba’s sire Shams El Arabi (Farouk x Bint El Arabi by El Araby) is of Egyptian bloodlines, her dam’s sire El Aswad (Ibn Galal x 10 Hosna) is also Egyptian, but her grand-dam Malaga (Madani x Berriane by Titan) was bred in Tunisia from predominantly Algerian bloodlines (and some old French through Mossoul). Malaga traces to several desert-bred imports featured on this blog, such as Bango, El Managhi, Ghazi, and others. She was a Jilfat Dhawi by strain, and so is Mahiba. She was exported to Germany in the 1960s. Egyptian and Algerian/Tunisian lines tend to blend very well with each other, further empasizing the added value of “combined source” breeding.
One more picture of old desert-bred stallions from Algeria, from Adrien Deblaise. This is Salamie. I don’t know his strain, nor his breeder. His name suggests an origin around the steppe area east of Hama, in Central Syria, where the town of Salamie lies, and which is a grazing ground for the Sba’ah, Mawali, Hadideen Bedouin tribes. The French imported well over a hundred stallions and mares to their studs in Algeria. Not all of these were equally good. Some were outstanding, like Ghazi. Some were average, like Salamie here. He does have a short back, deep girth, strong legs, a nice hindquarter, and a well placed neck. That said, his eyes are placed too high and his head is somewhat plain. The French, who were seeking stallions to produce cavalry horses (typically Arab-Barb crosses) to police their Algerian possessions, couldn’t care less about a good head, although they sometimes imported pretty typey individuals such as Aziz, featured earlier. Salamie left some progeny at the French government stud of Tiaret, in Algeria. Most notable is his daughter Kabla, out of the Aziz daughter El Kaira. Kabla is the dam of the stallion Bouq (by the desert-bred Hellal), really influential in early Tunisian…
The series on desert-bred Arabian imports to North Africa continues thanks to breeder and blog reader A. Deblaise. This is Aziz, one of the earliest desert-breds imported to Algeria by the French. I know nothing about his strain or his original breeder. All I know is that he is present in the back of the pedigrees of some really good Tunisian and Algerian horses, like the pretty Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz mare Hadia (Kefil x Rafiaa by Bango) from Tunisia, pictured below. Hadia has three lines to Aziz, though his three daughters El Keira, Fakhera, and Gueddima.
Today French horse-breeder Adrien Deblaise made my day. He sent me a set of very rare, old pictures of desert-bred Arabians imported to France, Tunisia and Algeria in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Some time ago, I started a series of blog entries featuring photos of some these outstanding and so little known desert-breds (Dahman, El Sbaa, Nibeh, Burgas, Taleb, Niazi, El Managhi, etc), but I ran out of original photos to share. I am happy I now have a few more pictures to resume this series. Merci Adrien! This is Ghazi. Chestnut; desert-bred; born in 1901; recorded sire: “Arkoubi”, a Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz; recorded dam: “Zarifa”, a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz; raced successfully in Egypt; imported by the French government to Algeria (then a part of France) in 1909; head sire at the Tiaret stud for many years. Robert Mauvy, who knew him well, said of him: “Alezan dore, trois balzanes et liste, et dont presque toutes les juments nees a Tiaret descendent. Couvrant beaucoup de terrain avec de tres grandes lignes, il brillait par l’elegance de ces gestes et de ses allures … Ce fut, en outre, un excellent performer.” By 1954, on the eve of the bloody (more than a million dead) Algerian eight…
Adrien Deblaise breeds Arabian horses of Tunisian, Moroccan and Algerian bloodlines in Western France. His father Philippe was a bookseller that specialized in equine literature. Philippe’s inventory contained one of the largest collections in France books on horses in general and Arabians in particular. Below are pictures of two of Adrien’s mares: B’Oureah Marine (by Ourki x Bismilah by Irmak), and Qhejala (by Fawzan x Jelala II by Abouhif). B’Oureah is shown here competing for a 60 mile endurance race (which she won). She is a Jilfat Dhawi by strain, tracing to the mare Wadha imported by the French government from the Fad’aan tribe in 1875. Qhejala traces to Cherifa, a Shuwaymat Sabbah imported by the French from the Sba’ah tribe in 1869. Note the resemblance between Qhejala (who is 75% Egyptian) and the Babson (a group of asil Arabians of Egyptian bloodlines) broodmatron Fada (Faddan x Aaroufa by Fay El Dine). Fada’s rare photo below is from the late Billy Sheets’ photo collection.
My friends Jean-Claude Rajot and Louis Bauduin have been breeding Arabian horses for a long time. They are the students and friends of the late Robert Mauvy. Robert Mauvy is, simply put, the Westerner who came the closest to understanding the Arabian horse and to breeding it as its original custodians, the Bedouins of Arabia, bred it. Forget Carl Raswan, forget Abd al-Qadir al-Jazairi of Algeria, forget Prince Mohammed Ali Tewfik of Egypt. Only Anne Blunt, in the later years of her life, equalled Mauvy’s ‘art of breeding’. While Mauvy is little-known outside of France and North Africa– despite his longtime connections with some of the fathers of the Asil Club movement in Europe, such as Foppe Klynstra, I am certain that his fame will skyrocket when an English translation of his small yet gigantic book “Le Cheval Arabe” will become available. This masterpiece was my Arabian Horse Bible, from age 10 until today. One of the key teachings of Mauvy, as laid out in his book, is that the Arabian horse, like all things living (plants, animals, and even humans) is the outcome of the environment in which it is bred. If you take it out of its original environment, it will live certainly live…
Sandra Uhlig’s mare Djoumanah El Nil, from Germany, has an interesting pedigree: Egyptian bloodlines on top, and a Jiflan Dhawi tail female from Tunisia through the mare Malaga and her dam Berriane. Berriane was bred in Algeria and imported to Tunisia by Admiral Cordonnier for his Sidi Bou Hadid stud). Note the line to the stallion Barr in her pedigree, through his grandson Koraich. More about Barr later. Jenny Lee’s weanling Amr, from the UK, has a different yet equally interesting pedigree. His sire is the Egyptian stallion Goudah (Gad Allah x Ramiah), and his dam Jenny’s Bahraini mare Shuwaimeh Bint Warda.
Je voudrais rappeler le cri d’alarme lancé par Monsieur Robert Mauvy ! : “Renouvelant mon cri d’alarme, mon cri de désespoir ! Il faut absolument et à tout prix sauver ce qui reste du véritable Pur Sang Arabe. Il est impossible de laisser disparaître l’une des plus belles oeuvres du Créateur. Que l’initiative privée, que les amis et admirateurs du Noble Cheval se resserent et prennent en main cette admirable mais dure tâche : Sauver à tout prix le Cheval Arabe ! Je les en supplie car demain … demain il sera trop tard !…” Monsieur Robert Mauvy qui avait plus de quatre vingt années d’expérience a fait éditer un petit livre; oh, non pas un album de photos ni même une encyclopédie mais le contenu en est d’une très grande richesse : “Le Cheval de Pur Sang Arabe” chez Crépin Leblond. Il est très néfaste et dangereux pour la race chevaline entière de vouloir élever l’Arabe en fonction d’une mode ou d’une discipline ! L’Arabe est et doit rester le cheval de chasse et de guerre des nobles Bédouins d’Arabie. c’est le “Don d’Allah”. “L’Arabe de Sang Pur” est fait pour l’attaque et le repli avec ses démarrages, accélérations et arrêts…
I have started working on “Le French Directory” (click here to access) a section of this website dedicated to listing the hundreds of Arabian horses that were imported to France, Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco from the desert in the XIXth and XXth centuries. This is work in progress. So far there are only stallions, but mares will be added soon. If you have any additional informaiton about some of the horses listed, want to correct faulty information, or wish to add more horses, please send your comments!
These four rare photos of Mohalhil are courtesy of the late Billy Sheets. No idea where he got them from. Mohalhil was a grey Ma’naghi Sbayli bred by the Shammar tribe in 1922 and imported to Egypt in 1925, by Fawzan al-Sabik, who raced him there before presenting him Charles Crane in 1929. Crane imported him to the USA, where Mohalhil still has a very thin line. Notice the striking physical resemblance between Mohalhil and another stallion that was featured on this blog, Bango. But the similarities in their backgrounds is even more striking. Like Mohalhil Bango was a grey, desert-bred Ma’naghi Sbayli; like him he was bred by the Shammar tribe, at around the same time (Bango in 1923 and Mohalhil in 1922); like him he raced in Egypt.
Rosemary B. Doyle, who is attending the 2009 WAHO conference in Oman, just reported to the Al Khamsa Board about the first day of WAHO meetings. One event worth noticing is that Yemen was voted in as a WAHO member. Yemen, the cradle of the Arabian breed, if one is to believe the old Arab legends. Great. Now the Yemenis can safely import and register Polish and Spanish “Arabians” from the Gulf countries and cross them with whatever asil Arabians Yemen has left, in the name of “improving the heads of their horses”. Let me make a forecast, and I really hope time will prove me wrong: there will be no asil Arabians left in Yemen ten years from now. That’s how long it took to destroy the remnants of asil Arabian breeding in countries like Lebanon and Algeria. Asil Arabians in these two countries survived two civil wars (Lebanon: 1975-1990; Algeria: 1991-2004), looting by militias, air raids and bombings, famine and government neglect. By the time Lebanon was a full WAHO member, in 1992, non-asil stallions of Russian, French and Spanish lines had been imported to the country and crossed with the remaining elderly asil mares. By 2000, not…
Another photo courtesy of Jean-Claude Rajot is of the stallion El Obayan, a ‘Ubayyan Sharrak, which the Veterinary Dr. Bardot bought in 1923 from the city of Hama in Syria, for the stud of Tiaret in Algeria. El Obayan was in the stall next to El Managhi, who was featured earlier. In Algeria, El Obayan sired the Jilfat Dhawi mare Baraka, who in turn sired the mare Gafsa by Bango. Gafsa was owned by master breeder A. Cordonnier of the Sidi Bou Hadid stud in Tunisia, and was the dam of the Cordonnier stallion Inchallah, exported to France, where he stood at the government stud of Pau. I need to scan a picture of Inchallah and share it with you.
Jean-Claude Rajot just sent me this rare photo of the important desert bred stallion El Managhi, bought in 1923 in Hama (central Syria) by veterinary Dr. Bardot for the Algerian stud of Tiaret. The stallion Bango, bought in Alexandria was part of the same importation. There is another picture of him in F. Klynstra’s book “Nobility of the desert”. Note that according to R. Mauvy, there is no indication that his strain was Ma’naghi, as his name may suggest. Most Tunisian Arabians now include his blood yet El Managhi’s most important product was perhaps the Asil Jilfat Dhawi mare Saponnaire, dam of Bassala which was acquired by the Pompadour stud in France. Here is an incomplete list of El Managhi’s progeny.
WARNING: DON’T READ ON UNLESS YOU ARE A PEDIGREE FREAK OR INTEND TO BECOME ONE. Of the Arabian horses bred in the three North African countries of Algeria, Tunisia and Morocco, the latter is the only one that did not develop its own “brand” of Arabians. Rather, Morocco relied on importations from its two North African neighbors as well as France and Egypt. Lets look at the pedigree of a typical modern Moroccan-bred Arabian horse: Fata, a chestnut stallion of the Jilfan Dhawi strain imported in utero from Morocco to France in 1976. Fata’s dam Tobiha was actually sold by the Moroccan Government stud of Meknes to French breeder jean Deleau, the founder of Haras de la Lizonne, in Western France. Fata is by El Sud El Aaly (Nazeer x Lateefa), an Asil stallion born in Egypt and gifted to the King Mohamed V of Morocco (a full brother to SF Ibn Nazeer, by the way). Fata’s dam Tobiha is by Burhan (Morafic x Mona by Sid Abouhoum x Moniet el Nefous), another Egyptian Asil, and also a present from Egypt to the Moroccan King. Fata’s maternal granddam, Mousson is by Murols, a stallion bred at the French stud of Pompadour and imported from France…
Some of you have emailed me privately with questions about French and North African Asil Arabians of the past and the present. Thank you for your messages. It is nice to see that there is interest in these horses. I reread the posts I have been writing on French Asil horses to refresh my memory. Most are “gloom and doom”, with words like “lost” and “last” all over the entries’ titles. The sad reality is that this grim assessment is true, and that French Asil are on the brink of extinction, despite the enormous number of desert horses imported to France and to its former North African possessions over the last two centuries. Arabian horse in France were – and are still – bred by two categories of breeders: the Government and private breeders. Since Napoleon’s time and until WWII, the French government has been importing and maintaining desert Arabian stallions in stallion depots across the country, as well as a small herd of broodmares in the stud of Pompadour. Arabian stallions and, to a lesser extent Arabian mares, were bred to English Thoroughbreds to produce Anglo-Arabs, a breed France is credited for creating and developing. A small nucleus of…
Several recent blog entries have mentioned the Arabian mare Bucolique (Besbes x Berthe by Irmak). Bucolique is arguably one of the few remaining Asil mares of French bloodlines still in breedable age. She was born in 1982, so that window of opportunity is closing fast. Bucolique is not quite representative of “Old French” bloodlines: both her sire Besbes and her maternal grandsire Irmak (a gorgeous horse of the most classic type, pictured below) were born in Tunisia (at Sidi Thabet and Sidi Bou Hadid, respectively), and her maternal granddam Bassala was born in Algeria (at Tiaret). All three were subsequently imported to the French goverment stud of Pompadour, where they conspired to produce Bucolique and her full sister Best, pictured below. Best’s picture was sent to me by her owner Rose Cambon. Best, born in 1981, was still alive in 2006, but had stopped breeding. She is pensioned at Jean Cambon’s stud in South-Western France, after having produced a string of race winners in France and the United Arab Emirates, none of them by Asil stallions (I am being polite here: saying that some of these stallions are non-Asil is a euphemism). At the time, Ms. Cambon was open to the idea of trying to breed here again, this time…
The entries on the French Asil Arabian horses continue to generate a lot of interest. To some, the photos of classic specimen of Arabians horses were like an eye opener, shedding light on Asil breeding in a country that has imported hundreds of desert bred stallions and mares from Arabian, and set up large-scale breeding ventures that go on in three other countries (Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco). Some of the comments I received go a step further, and ask practical questions, for example about what can be done to save the remnants of these horses, before it is too late. Here is a lead: While I was still based in France, I tried to lease one of the last Asil mares, Bucolique (Besbes x Berthe by Irmak), a gorgeous 1981 bay mare of the Jilfan Dhawi strain, and the dam of many racehorse champions, with the aim of breeding her to Rubi de la Mouline (Ilamane x Hamma by Raoui), a 1983 chestnut stallion of the Kuhaylan al-‘Ajuz strain . Her owner, Jean-Marie Baldy, of the Haras du Cayrou in the Cantal area of central France, was willing to lease her, and the owners of Rubi de la Mouline were also willing to…
I have a dream that one day all the Asil Arabians of the world will be united in one unique World registry. I have a dream that one day breeders of Asil Arabians worldwide will rise above specific labels, breeding groups and sub-groups, and will start breeding their horses to each other to produce the best Asil Arabians possible, the Straight Arabian. I have a dream that one day the remaining Asil horses of Algeria, Bahrain, Iraq, Syria, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, and other Arab countries will be recognized for what they are, true authentic Arabian horses, on par with Asil Arabians bred in Egypt, Europe and the USA. Let us work together towards that dream.
Algeria was a French colony from 1830 to 1848, and an integral part of France from 1848 till its indepedence in 1962, following one of the bloodliest colonial wars. The conquest of Algeria by France was extremely long and arduous, and could only completed by 1900, when the latest of the Tuareg chiefs (ethnic Berbers, not Arabs) surrendered to French troops. Horses were a major factor in the conquest and stabilization of Algeria. In 1877, the French Ministry of War (the equivalent of a Department of Defense), established a breeding stud near the town of Tiaret, in the mountains of central Algeria. The objective of the “Jumenterie de Tiaret”, which later became the “Haras de Tiaret-Chaouchaoua“, was to produce Arabian stallions, which were sent to local stallion depots, where they were used on Barb mares. The result was a sturdy Arab-Barb cavalry horse. Hundreds of Arabian stallions and dozens of mares were imported to Tiaret (and its equivalent in neighboring Tunisia, Sidi-Thabet) from the deserts of Arabia and the racetracks of Egypt and Lebanon. Depending on the expertise of the horse-buying commission and its budget, imports ranged from the outstanding to the mediocre. Overall, Algeria received much better quality desert-bred imports than Tunisia or even France. Outstanding genitors included: Bango, a grey Ma’anaghi…
Look at the picture of the magnificent El Sbaa below: a French government commission led by M. Rieu de Madron purchased this Asil Ma’anaghi Sbayli stallion straight from the desert [correction: from Cairo, Egypt] in 1925. El Sbaa stood at the Stud of Pompadour, France, but he was ill suited for its humid climate, so he developed a form of asthma and died a few years later. He left too few offspring behind, including the stallions Nemer (out of Ninon), Khartoum (out of Kioumi), the full borthers Medard and Meat (out of Medea), and the dark brown stallion Matuvu (out of Manon). Nemer was exported to Poland, and Khartoum to Romania, where they both started famous racing lines that endure to this day (although not in Asil form). Meat was retained for the Stud of Pompadour, where he took over from his sire, and Matuvu was sent to the stallion depot of Blois, where only a handful Arabian horse breeders used him. Two Asil lines to El Sbaa survived well into the 1970s: one old French dam-line at Pompadour, and another Algerian dam-line with the French breeder Robert Mauvy. At Pompadour, the last Asil to carry a line to El Sbaa was the very typey mare Ablette (by…
The presence of a French mare of Algerian/Tunisian bloodlines in my top ten list of best Asil Arabian mares ever bred has achieved its (undeclared) goal: it has sparked an interesting and lively debate about the Asil status of these bloodlines and their place within the broader community of Asil Arabian horses. Such a debate was way overdue, in my opinion. Yet before delving into a discussion of these little-known Asil Arabians, let me share with you a few pictures of some of these horses, to give you a feel for what they look like. Below is the magnificent Nichem, a 1970 Asil stallion, bred in France from Tunisian and Algerian bloodlines. Nichem was by Iricho and Caida, who was Rabat and Salammbo, by Bango. Nichem’s sire Iricho was born in Tunisia in 1959 at the stud of French Navy Admiral – and otherwise master Arabian horse breeder – Anatole Cordonnier, who sold him to the French government a few years later. Iricho subsequently stood at the Haras de Pompadour for most of his breeding career. Although a horse of excellent conformation and irreproachable bloodlines, Iricho was shunned by French Arabian (?) horse breeders who preferred taller stallions of racing (i.e., highly dubious) bloodlines. In addition to a number of…