Daughter of the Wind: a blog on desert arabian horses, past and present

Help ! I have posted the photos but they dont show ,they are on the media library what shall i do?

Hussam el Shimal 2005 Kuheilan Nawaki
Pure Bedouin Horse
Raad (Kuheilan el Mussin) xRuba el Shimal
Syrian National Reserve Champion
Breeder :Saed Agha Yagan Aleppo
Owner:Naji Chaoui Damascus
I bought him when he was 2 and trained him as a race horse,I hope that he will make his debut on the race track in July

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 Dahmah), commonly known as Duhayman (female Duhaym, a diminutive). He also identified the name El Ajarrache (al-’Ajarrash) as that of a family of Bedouin warriors from the Bedouin tribe of Shammar.

So Douhaymane El Ajarrache was a Dahman stallion, bred by the al-Ajarrash family of Shammar, and owned by al-Jibour (al-Jubur) tribe around the time of the birth of his son El Nasser.  

But there is more… and that’s where the real story is: it looks like Douhaymane El Ajarrache might have descendants alive in today’s desert..   

In the above photo, taken at the Beirut racetrack in the mid-fifities, Henri Pharaon is in the middle, with former Lebanese President Camille Chamoun on the right and the Shah of Iran on the left.

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 to the addition of 3,000 plus Arabian horses, most of them of Egyptian bloodlines, to the roster of Al Khamsa.  The Asil Club had accepted El Nasser many years before, albeit on the basis of disputable information.

The bottom line is that there is every reasaon to believe that the horse is Asil, and that his inclusion and that of his descendants into the Al Khamsa roster is good news.

Since then, new information has surfaced, which I believe will further bolster his Asil status. This information is hitherto unpublished, and although I seriously doubt it will make any difference to those making big bucks on the showring with the sons and grandsons of The Ministril, Thee Desperado, and Thee Infidel, the purist breeding community (the converted this blog preaches to..) will no doubt welcome it.  Keep an eye on the next few posts.