My digital copy of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript
Two years ago, Judi gave me a digital copy of the Abbas Pasha Manuscript. It’s been a game changer to work with, because it allowed me to search for a specific person’s name, or for a particular strain, across multiple recorded accounts by Bedouin breeders over hundreds of pages. Not only does it save time, but the large number of horses mentioned (in the thousands) also gives a bird-eye’s view of a certain topic, a horse, strain, making more in-depth analysis possible.
For example, a search for “India” will result in 21 mentions. In the context of the Manuscript, looking for “India” will give you an idea of the stallions and colts that went there for racing, their strains, breeders, buyers, approximate area of origin, etc. Patterns emerge.
More on some interesting findings later.
I don’t imagine emojis are supported in the comments, but [the emoji eyeballs]. The fact that horses sent to India for racing are mentioned in the APM certainly piques my interest – a number of Arab stallions arrived in South Africa in the nineteenth century via India, including Dreadnought and Hurry Scurry. I also wonder if it might be at all possible to link Sir Harry Smith’s Aliwal to any of the horses mentioned in the APM, though I suspect that it isn’t.
One first needs to have a rough idea of the aggregate numbers of Arabians that went to India, beyond those mentioned in the APM.
Could be tricky to work out, but maybe one day I shall stir my stumps and start digging for that information. The Oriental Sporting Magazine may be useful, and possibly Tweedie too, as he discusses the racing Arabs in India. The India Office Records are held by the British Library, and they would overlap with the APM, though I think horse imports were carried out privately, by the agheyls, rather than through East India Company channels.
The Bayt al Arab publication has a nice article about the India horse trade that went through Kuwait.
I would think a fair number of them would go through Kuwait, it being close to Baghdad, which was no doubt a major collecting point.
Yes, it is indeed the case, as a next article would show.