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…
I feel I have been maintaining a fairly uncontroversial blog – so far. But it did not escape me that the only times I broached slightly contentious topics (the issue of an international registry for Asil horses, and the piece on the myth of Kuhaylan Jallabi in Egyptian breeding), readers’ interested was sparked, comments reached the double digits, a lively discussion ensued which went on for several days, and visitors’ stats skyrocketed. Well, not quite. Anyway, time to spice things up… hence the sexy title. El Nasser was until recently one the most controversial topics in Asil Arabian breeding. Was he Asil? or wasn’t he? A passionate debate, albeit one based on very little information had been raging for about thirty (thirty!) years before fresh information contributed to the inclusion of the horse in the Al Khamsa roster six or seven years ago, thanks to the patient efforts of many, including yours truly. As usual, many more claimed undue credit for this, but hey, such is the reality of life; there are those who do the work, and those who take credit for doing it; I’d rather belong to the first category, where competition is less intense. The inclusion of El Nasser automatically led…