Musette (b. 1932), a Saqlawiyah by strain, is a good specimen of the Asil Arabians bred by the French government stud of Pompadour in the first half of the twentieth century. She reminds me of some of the first and second generation offspring of the horses imported by Homer Davenport to the USA in 1906. She was by the desert import El Sbaa (strain: Ju’aitni) out of Musotte, who was by the famous Dahman (strain: Rabdan, sire: a Dahman) out of Mysterieuse. Mysterieuse was by yet another desert bred stallion, Enwer – a Ma’naghi, bred by the Shammar Bedouin tribe like Dahman, and like him imported to France in 1909 – out of Mysie. Mysie was by the desert-bred Beni Kaled, a chestnut Hamdani, out of the imported desert-bred mare Meleke. Meleke was imported to Pompadour in 1891, a Saqlawiyah by a Ma’naghi, himself by a Hamdani Simri (or by a Hamdani Simri by a Ma’naghi, the French importation records are ambiguous). This precious line has unfortunately completely died out by the 1940s, and only survives in the middle of the pedigrees, through the Asil stallions Matuvu, and Minos. Matuvu (by El Sbaa out of Manon, by Dahman out of Mysterieuse), stood at…
In 1909, a French government commission led by Inspector Quinchez bought 24 desert-bred stallions from the Egyptian racetrack of Sidi Gaber in Alexandria. Of these, 17 went to Algeria (then a part of France), and the remaining 7 were distributed in government studs across mainland France. The seven were: Dahman, Meenak, Farid, Aslani, Hamdany El Samry, Latif and Maarouf. The magnificent Dahman, to which this blog paid a tribute some time ago, was no doubt the star of this importation. Dahman’s hujja – which I will translate for you soon – tells us that he was bred by the Shammar tribe, from a Dahman sire and a Rabda dam. He stood at Pompadour for twenty-some years, leaving behind many pretty Asil mares like Ninon (picture below), Melinite, Musotte, and Noble Reine, and some excellent stallions, one of which, Minos (x Melisse) was sent to the King of Morocco. Today Minos appears in many modern Moroccan pedigrees. If Dahman was the most striking, Aslani was the French breeders’ favorite. He originally came from the tribe of Bani Sakhr, by a Ubayyan and a Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz. Quinchez had to pay the hefty sum of 8,000 Francs to snatch him away from Alexandrian trainer and racehorse owner Michaelides – the same individual who…
After an unfortunate technical problem with uploading pictures that lasted over one week, this blog is back at work. Apologies for this glitch. Last week, I provided the translation of the hujjah (authenticity certificate) of a desert-bred mare that mentions the stallion Duhayman al-Ajarrash. The mare traces to the horse through her maternal great-granddam. Duhayman al-Ajarrash may well be the sire of the stallion El Nasser, as discussed in this entry. I now provide a scanned copy of this hujjah, in Arabic. Click on it to enlarge it.
The mare in this picture is desert bred, from the strain of Jilfan Stam al-Bulad. Her breeder is an old Bedouin from the al-Yassar section of the tribe of Tay. The picture is frm the early 2000s, and I think that mare is still breeding today. She is of interest because she traces to a stallion of the Dahman ‘Amer strain, which was owned by Saud al-Ajarrache, a Bedouin of the Shammar tribe, in the 1940s. The information on that stallion matches that available for the stallion “Douhayman al-Ajarrache”, which the record of the Beirut racetrack list as the sire of the racehorse El Nasser, imported to Egypt in 1943, and later used by the Egyptian Agricultural Organization (EAO) as a breeding stallion.
Back to El Nasser. An earlier post identified his sire, “Douhaymane El Ajarrache”, as a Dahman (or Duhayman) ‘Amer from the al-‘Ajarrash family of the Shammar Bedouin tribe. “Douhayman El Ajarrache” was actively breeding in 1937, when El Nasser’s dam was bred to him to produce El Nasser in May 1938. Last year – and here is the fresh information I promised – I stumbled on the hujjah (certificate of authenticity) of a desert-bred mare tracing to a stallion that could be “Douhaymane El Ajarrache”. The mare is now dead but she has descendants alive today in Syria, in the very area El Nasser was born, the Upper Jazirah. Here is the full translation of this mare’s hujjah: “In the name of God, the Merciful, the Compassionate, I, the undersigned, ‘Ali al-Blaybil son of Husayn, from the village of Qartaba born in 1915, from the tribal section of al-Yassar, from the the tribe of Tai, testify by God Most High, that the grey mare which I sold to Mr. Nawaf al-Sulayman al-‘Abd al-Rahman in 1950, is from my horses, called Jilfat Stam al-Bulad; the sire of her dam is the horse of Sa’ud al-‘Ajarrash, a chestnut Dahman ‘Amer, and I did that breeding myself. And Gost is bears witness to what I say. Testifier: Ali Husayn al-Balybil, ID #: […], owner of…
The starting point of any serious discussion on El Nasser should be a short statement in Judith Forbis’ “Authentic Arabian Bloodstock”, p. 137, where she cites a letter from Henri Pharaon, the one-time owner of El Nasser. “Pharaon wrote to me on October 6th, 1970 that El Nasser was born on May 1938, that he had purchased the horse from Cheikh Ahmad Taha, that it was bred by the Gheiheich (Ajarash, El Ajarrache) of Upper Syria, the Jezirah region, and that his sire was Douhayman El Ajarrache of the Tibour tribe.” I saw the letter Pharaon wrote to Forbis, in French. I also saw a copy of the horse’s Lebanese racing papers, which match the information in Pharaon’s letter. Save a few small transcription errors (Tibour is Jibour, for example), and one incorrect analogy (Gheiheich and El Ajarrache are two different entities), all the names in the letter are those of well known and identifiable tribes, clans, and individuals. In September 1997, I asked a 90 year old horse merchant, ‘Abdl al-Qadir Hammami what he knew about all these names. Click here for his answer, which one of several inputs that helped clear El Nasser as an Asil Arabian horse. Hammami did not recall Douhayman El Ajarrache, the sire of El Nasser, but identified the strain of the horse as being Dahman (female…
This is one of my favorite old pictures. The horse pictured is Dahman, a dark chestnut stallion bred by the Shammar Bedouin tribe in 1905, and sold to a French horse-buying commission led by Inspecteur Quinchez in 1909. Dahman was a herd sire for the Shammar prior to his importation to France. He was by a stallion of the Dahman strain out of a mare from the Rabdan strain. Al-Rabdah is one of the many families of Kuhaylat al-‘Ajuz, but somehow the Kuhaylan part is frequently dropped from the strain’s name, and the horses are simply referred to as Rabdan (fem. Rabdah). Dahman stood at the French government stood of Pompadour until he was 25, and sired some of the best Arabians of his day. Unfortunately, there are no Asil horses tracing to Dahman left today. [Correction, Jan. 06th, 2009: well, maybe there are]