Page 39 - THE SLOUGHI REVIEW Issue 15

T H E S L O U G H I R E V I E W 3 9

H.R.P. Dickson in Kuwait, Saluki, feathered on ears and
tail, 1920s to 1940s, Kuwait collection

"3. ... It has been made plausible from various sides that the separation of "Saluki" and
"Sloughi" is justified by a separate geographical origin ... Unfortunately, this idea, which is
logical in itself, does not stand up to careful examination of the respective ancestral

animals. The source material of the "Saluki", which originated as a breed in England,
included animals from Persia, Mesopotamia, Syria, Arabia and Egypt - the latter smooth and
indistinguishable from today's Sloughi.” - This should come as no surprise, as the Sloughis,

including those in Egypt, are in any case short-haired and therefore not Salukis, as
Burchard once again rather involuntarily proves here. Egypt can therefore not be
considered the country of origin of the Salukis!

But the text continues directly afterwards: " ... The starting material of the "Sloughi"
created in France probably only contained smooth representatives, but by no means all of

them from North Africa - rather, there was a considerable contingent from Syria, which
also belonged to the French colonial empire." - This actually sounds as if this practice of
mixing Saluki and Sloughi had been common in France since the 1930s or before, with
the above-mentioned contingent of Salukis from Syria to Marseille, which is said to have
taken place until the mid-1940s!

Burchard continues: " ... Instead of a racial romanticism, we have the rather sober
realisation that the specific characteristics of "Saluki" and "Sloughi" have come about
through the circumstances of colonial history and through a perhaps slightly different

selection from the same gene pool." - So here is the clear statement that Professor Dr.
Quaritsch and other supporters of the idea of understanding a Sloughi with clear
origins in North Africa are fundamentally at odds with the ideas of the colonial powers
England and France. Hence the audacity of labelling Ata as authentically Tunisian with
the ancestry of a mixed French breed! More on this point below.