Interesting Quote: Don Hernan Ayerza to his friend Leonardo Pereyra
Don Hernan Ayerza, a well-to-do Argentinian landowner imported desert-bred Arabian horses from France, Hungary (Babolna) and the UK (Crabbet) into his El Aduar Stud. He also went to the Middle East (but not the Arabian desert itself) and bought a number of Arabian horses from there. He also bought two stallions for his friend Leonardo Pereyra.
I leave you to ponder this quote about the reliability of hujaj (authentication certificates), from a letter Ayerza wrote to Pereyra, quoted from “the Crabbet Heritage in Argentina” an article by Mary Lockwood in the the Crabbet Journal – Winter 2006 No. 7:
“I am sending you the only kind available in all Arabia and anyone who says he has a legal certificate, like the ones used in Europe, lies! I’ve insisted on being shown something with every horse I inspect and they jot down more or less whatever occurs to them at the moment of sale in front of witnesses. I have seen over 500 such ‘certificates’!”
Hmmm.. lets debate that one over the next few days..
Edouard
Could You find the german lady in Brasil ? I’m sure ,that She knows the South -American situation.
László
Can’t help but notice that no one’s commented
on the reliability of the huja. I’m certainly not going to be the first because I’m happy to admit that in comparison to others who post here I know nothing. However, IF the quote from the letter is true….where does that leave us with regard to our asil horses?
How did Don Ayerza determine that the sellers were writing just “whatever occurs to them at the moment?”
Is he simply comparing these certificates to European legal documents? Because even a good huja would no doubt have been a very different kind of record.
I think we need more information about his knowledge & experiences and also the circumstances under which he was buying in order to make any useful judgments…
I don’t find anything remarkable in Sr. Ayerza’s statement. I don’t find that his statement reflects in any way upon the reliability of a hujja. He is exactly right — a hujja is not the same thing as a legal certificate like the ones used in Europe.
“they jot down more or less whatever occurs to them at the moment of sale in front of witnesses”: that means to me that there was no standard format. It might occur to them to jot down color, age, markings, marbat of sire and dam on one occasion, and it might occur to them to add the names of previous owners, a verse from the Quran and a passage from the Hadith literature on another occasion. So what?
As for where this leaves us “with regard to our asil horses,” most foundation horses of Western Arabian breeding never had a hujja anyway. Or at least if they did, the document has not survived. A surviving hujja is the exception, not the rule.
RJ is right: we don’t have very much in the way of hujaj left for our foundation horses.
I think we have to evaluate the precious existing hujaj the way they were judged by Bedouin. Who signed off on this information, and do we trust them as reliable?
That said, obviously we in the west are not going to know individuals from towns or Bedouin families back in the 1900s, so we can’t be as judgmental. However, with help from someone with access to names and families and tribes (like Edouard!), we can have some idea of the quality of an existing hujjah.
Thanks everyone. I realize now I focused on the word “lies” and not on “jotting down whatever occurs, etc.. Now it’s clear to me exactly what a huja is–jotting down the particulars of a horse, each owner/seller in his own way. Thank you RJ for clarifying that. 🙂
Whether or not we have hujaj or whether or not we know anything about the circumstances surrounding the drawing up of written documents, we are still interested in preserving the kinds of horses that are the product of the originating culture. If such a horse is believed to be a reasonable example of that culture’s horses we are obliged to make the reasonable assumption that it is so. Then, learning all we can about the originating culture, we can continue to breed the kinds of horses we have received from them.
That is so true, Joe!