Page 55 - THE SLOUGHI REVIEW Issue 15

T H E S L O U G H I R E V I E W 5 5

Persian Saluki 1563-64, Federico Zuccari, ears hanging flat on
the head, head shape, elongated build.

... Well, perhaps there was once an autochthonous race in the Maghreb, but the typical
Sloughi characteristics such as hanging ears only came with the Arab invasion of the

Maghreb. As Daumas described in the middle of the 19th century, there were already
different types at that time, mainly those of the nomads on the Saharan rim and those of the
sedentary Berbers. Daumas believes that those of the nomads were clearly better than those
of the Tell. It is also quite understandable that the farmers had other interests for their dogs,
which had to be able to fight wild boar and predatory game, jackals and foxes. Not typical

tasks for a hunting sighthound, which is why a type of lurcher called the Bérouche was
created.

Thomas Liedtke: The theory that sighthounds with the typical characteristics such as

drooping ears only came to the Maghreb with the Arab invasion has not been proven and,
on the contrary, there is evidence that, for example, the invasions in the 11th century AD
of the Banu Hilal, who were camel nomads and came from Egypt, neither had horses in
large numbers nor carried sighthounds with them.

... The Sloughi's ear is a point of contention. I have known Sloughis since 1970 and my first

one was born in 1973. While Sharaf could wear his ears very differently, his sister always
wore her ears like the midbar dog. Xavier Przezdziecki told me that in his time in Algeria he
didn't know what the ears had to be like until he met a certain bitch who was sandy with a
black coat and had droopy ears. She was bred by Bedus in the south. Until then, he had only

known cropped ears in the Maghreb.