The Black Francolin: Assessing the Origins of a Prized Courtly Bird in an Interdisciplinary Manner

Some animals are somehow paradoxical: well impressed in the collective imaginary of the recent past, perhaps even legendary, they might be nonetheless soon removed from our memory. Among these, the black francolin (Francolinus francolinus, Galliformes; see Figure 1), a pheasant-like bird known as Attagen or Attagas in the Classical Age, is an exemplary case. The dramatist Aristophanes, the natural philosopher Pliny the Elder, the lyric poet Horace, the epigrammatist Martial: these are only some of the eminent ancient Greek and Latin authors mentioning this bird in their works.¹ Currently found from Cyprus and the Middle East eastwards to the Indian subcontinent with six morphological subspecies inhabiting a variety of open ground habitats, the black francolin was also found in Italy and Spain until the nineteenth century.² However, the nativeness of the species to such areas was seriously doubted and the origin of these putatively imported westernmost populations shrouded in secrecy.³ The present study brings together historical evidence and results from DNA analyses to reconstruct the origins and uses of the black francolin in the Mediterranean area from the medieval period to the nineteenth century. As we will see, these birds largely owed their importation and survival from the Late Middle Ages to the nineteenth century to the needs of princes for exclusive and tasty game animals. Accordingly, deprived of fostering and special protection, their presence in Western Europe ended together with the age of the courts of the Ancien Régime.