Scholar’s Corner
Lady Anne’s Hunt for Abbas Pasha Pedigrees by Robert J. Cadranell, ©2021
The horses of Ali Pasha Sherif’s breeding that Wilfrid and Lady Anne Blunt (mostly Lady Anne) bought as foundation stock for their Crabbet Stud in England and Sheykh Obeyd stud in Egypt became integral to Crabbet pedigrees. From Crabbet, their lines spread to Arabian horse breeding around the world. This spread includes all modern Egyptian Arabian horse pedigrees.
it was to be nearly ten years before they acquired any of his horses.
Lady Anne com- Mesaoud (APS) mented that she considered Ali Pasha’s horses to be “mazbut of mazbut,” (Lady Anne Blunt Journals and Correspondence (1986), or “J&C,” March 5, 1891) yet I have often wondered why Lady Anne did not have complete pedigree information for certain of her APS purchases. She first met the Pasha in 1880 and he lived until 1897. Did she not attempt to obtain more complete pedigrees from him? On looking again at Lady Anne’s published Journals & Correspondence, it turns out that references to her efforts to get pedigree information are scattered throughout the years when she was acquiring horses of APS breeding. It seems that she did try to get more information from Ali Pasha during his lifetime, but she was not always successful. Detailed pedigree information for many of the Ali Pasha Sherif horses owned by the Blunts was first published in Volume 2 (1922) of the British Arab Horse Society’s stud books. Some people would also have seen the hand-lettered, large format pedigrees created by the Blunts’ daughter, Lady Wentworth, for horses she sold from Crabbet starting in the 1920s. Later published compendiums, such as the Travelers Rest catalogs of the 1930s and 40s, The Raswan Index (seven volumes, 1957 to 1967), and the Blue Arabian Horse Catalog (1961) also included pedigree details for the APS horses. Most of this information seems to be drawn, either directly or at second or third hand, from the records and notes of Lady Anne Blunt. Although the Blunts first met Ali Pasha Sherif in Cairo in 1880, 49
Published sources available in the 1970s were sometimes contradictory and confusing as to the APS pedigrees. It seemed to me that Lady Anne Blunt’s original records would be the gold standard for extending the pedigrees. This source became available to Al Khamsa through Michael Bowling’s transcripts of the handwritten entries for the Ali Pasha Sherif horses found in Lady Anne Blunt’s Traveling Copy of the Crabbet Herd Book; Michael had the opportunity to study this volume during the 1970s when it was in possession of Lady Anne Blunt’s namesake granddaughter, Lady Anne Lytton, at her home Newbuildings Place near Horsham in Sussex, England. (Contrary to what you might read on the Internet, Newbuildings is not another name for Caxtons, which was located on the south side of Crabbet Park, near Crawley.) The pedigrees Lady Anne recorded turn out to have gaps that are not found in works by Carl Raswan, whose sources are not listed. For example: 1. Carl Raswan describes Yemama as a daughter of Aziz and El Argaa (Raswan Index entry #11071). Lady Anne records Yemama as a bay Kuhaylah Jallabiyah she owned at Sheykh Obeyd, without further pedigree. 2. Carl Raswan gives the dam of Merzuk as Aziza III (Raswan Index entry #6294), a mare he says was also called El Argaa (Raswan Index entry #1047). Lady Anne records the dam of her stallion Merzuk simply as a chestnut Kehileh Jellabieh mare of Ali Pasha Sherif, without further pedigree. 3. Lady Anne records the dam of her stallion Mesaoud as a grey mare of the Seglawieh Sudanieh strain named Yemama, without further pedigree, except for a single reference to this
