On Rhoufi’s distant Lebanese roots

This is another video of Rhoufi, the 20 year old stallion I imported to France this past August. I got him from Skander Karoui of Tunisia. Skander, the rider in the video, had found him and bought him from an Italian man, who had obtained him from an equestrian club near Tunis. The horse had gone from one club to the other since the age of three.

Rhoufi was one of the last horses bred by Gisela Bergmann. She and her husband were old-time breeders of asil Tunisian lines of the stout, sturdy, endurance type. Their stud in Ghardimaou, on the Tunisian desert border with Algeria, was a destination for European purist breeders looking for the real Arabian horse, a bit like Helga Tahawi’s farm in the Egyptian delta. I will eventually dedicate a separate article to Tunisian asil horses in general and the horses of the Bergmanns in particular. For now, I just want to talk about the reason that led me to acquire him. It has mostly to do with my home country of Lebanon.

Rhoufi’s strain is Kuhaylan ‘Ajuz, one of the original Arabian horse strains, and my personal favorite. Rhoufi traces in the dam line to Samaria, a grey Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz mare born in 1882, which the French Mr. De Ganay bought in 1887 for the French government stud of Pompadour for the enormous sum of 8,000 Francs .

De Ganay bought Samaria from Khalil Bey al-As’ad. He was the powerful overlord of Southern Lebanon, in the hinterland of the ancient coastal Phoenician city of Tyre. The area is also known in the West as Upper Galilee, and in Arabic as Jabal ‘Amil. It is overwhelmingly inhabited by Shi’a  Muslims, with a small but historically important Christian minority. Biblical Cana, where Jesus performed the miracle of turning water into wine at a wedding, is possibly one of the towns in that area (today’s Qana).

The seat of the al-As’ad family was the village of Taybeh, which is where Samaria was bought. The al-As’ad overlords were from the clan of ‘Ali al-Saghir, whose ancestor, Muhammad ibn Hazza’ al-Salimi, broke away with the Sawalimah, an ‘Anazah Bedouin tribe, and settled in Southern Lebanon during the rule of the Mamluks (1258-1516 CE). His descendants ended up ruling the area on behalf of the Ottomans, and often in defiance of them. The different ruling ‘Ali al-Saghir clans kept close ties with the neighboring ‘Anazah tribes, especially the Ruwalah, who by then had absorbed the Sawalimah. The ‘Anazah had their summer pastures in the nearby Golan Heights, and were a wellspring of the Kuhaylan ‘Ajuz strain, in its Rodan, Tamri, ‘Abhul, Mu’abhil, etc., branches. This is the possible origin of Samaria.

Samaria did not stay at Pompadour for a long time. She was sold to the newly constituted stud of Sidi Thabet in French-controlled Tunisia, where she went on to found one of the most successful North African damlines.