Narrow rim with wide tire?

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Hi,
I do a lot of dirt jumping and recently mangled my front wheel dropping to a flat. Fortunately, I've managed to acquire a complete front wheel with a sweet, very-tough looking DH rim for free from a mate who no longer needs it. The problem is it's narrower than the wheel I was using before: I have 2.1" wide tires and the rims are about 1 3/16" wide. This new rim is only 1" wide. Would it be safe to put the wider tire on the narrow rim, given that the difference is only very slight? If not, am i better off with a narrow, strong rim and tire or a wide, weaker rim and tire, given that this is my front wheel and I need it for control? Thanks for your help, sorry if this is a stupid question...

P.S. I am running 26" diameter wheels.

Lots of good info here - especially relevant at the bottom of the page.

http://sheldonbrown.com/tire-sizing.html

However, I'd also be interested in others' actual experiences in running wider tires on narrower rims.....

Thanks for that, my combination is just in the red on that chart :( Would definitely be interested in hearing peoples actual experiences with this sort of thing.

u used to run a 2.3 tioga on a sun cr18 wheel, it worked just fine and i consider that to be a thin wheel...