Lady Anne Blunt’s last visit to Ahmed Pasha
The entry in Lady Anne Blunt’s Journals about her last visit to Ahmed Pasha Kemal’s stud (shortly after the Pasha’s death) on March 10th, 1907 is extremely informative. It was the last of several visits of Lady Anne’s to that stud, she remembered a lot of the horses from her previous visits, she spent a long time looking at the horses (1.5 hours), and she was accompanied by “Ali Effendi the old Kurdish manager”, Mahmoud who then went under her service and of course Mutlaq. Her description of the mares and stallions in that Journal entry comes four days after the acutal visit (which was on March 6th), and is precise and detailed as usual. Look at the comments of that blog entry for comment’s and speculation on my side about the horses in this entry of Lady Anne’s Journal, some obvious and some not so obvious.
Here is the full text of that entry (italics are Lady Anne’s but bolds are mine):
March 10
Now about the Ahmed Pasha Stud. Was received there by Ali Effendi the old Kurdish Manager, and Mahmud, and spent about an hour and a half looking round. The first mares in the row, a chestnut Nowakieh, Mutlak fancies much, and she is a fine strong mare with sympathetic head (8 or 10 years I think) a daughter of Noma (who was by Wazir), a bay I remember, and of Jamil the bay son of Sobha one of original = from = APS = Seglawi Jed: by the chestnut Ibn Sbeyni Seflawi Jedran I remmber. There were two bay Nowagiehs and several greys but all these seemed to me to have very plain quarters. Then 2: a grey Seglawieh Jedranieh daughter of Roga another original = from = APS = Seg. = Jed. ( I think I remember her too) her sire Jamil, 13 years old. 3: Chestnut Seglaw. Jed. daughter of above (g.d. of Roga) 8 years old her sire Sabbah Manaki from Ibn Maajil. 4: Grey Seg. Jed. (“Shieha”) daughter of the chestnut above (g.g.d. of Roga) said to be 7 years (?) (if so the Shakra was only 3 on foaling!). Sire Abeyan Haneydis (an Abeyan I’ve never heard of). 5: Grey Seg. Jed. “Dalal” daughter of the chestnut above, 3 years, her sire Rabdan, grey by. K. Radbn., his dam Rabda brough from Nejd by Ibn Bassam, his sire Dahman whose dam was Ferida the white Dahmeh Shahwanieh (from Abbas Pasha’s stud) of Ahmed Bey Sennari, his sire the old white Segl. Jedran Ahmed Pasha got from A.P.S. 6: Bay yearling Seg. Jed. said to be daughter of Seglawieh Jedranieh the old grey mare daughter of Roga; pretty head, has no white, is by Radban. 7: Chestnut Ke. Mimre, beautiful head ‘Ghazala’ at end of nose. Sire? 7 years. 7a: Chestnut Ke. Mim. 5 1/2 – dam? – blaze (Sire Dahman), 8: Grey Keh. Mimre daughter of original mare of Zeydel Horeymis [?] of Fedaan with foal by Sabbah (while be grey) 8 years sire Dahman. 9: Brown Keh Mimre (fill) sister of chestnut Ghazala (lovely head). 10: Bay Keh Mimre yearling (by tent) blaze, sire:?
Horses
Grey, nearly white dark mane and tail, Segl. Jed. 7 years, his dam Batila from Ali Pasha Sherif died before Mahmud came, his sire Sabbah a Dahman Shahwan. 2: Dahman 14 years not for sale, his dam Ferida the Dahmeh Shahwanieh of Sennari, his sire the old white Seglawi: a splendid horse, the old fashioned type of APS. Prince Ahmed used to ride him, and neither this horse nor the prince’s ass are to be sold. 3: Radban, white Keh. Radban his dam Rabda frm Nejd brought by el Bassam his sire Dahman — beautiful head. 4: Gharaf, pretty grey, 4 years old. 5: Chestnut…
Obviously, mare #2 is Bint Roga
http://roster.alkhamsa.org/pedigrees/B/Bint_Roga_Al_Zarka_(000dd.HTML
Obviously mare #3 is Om Dalal
http://roster.alkhamsa.org/pedigrees/O/Om_Dalal_(APK)000fd.HTML
Obviously mare #5 is Dalal
http://roster.alkhamsa.org/pedigrees/D/Dalal_Al_Zarka_(APK)0011e.HTML
Horse number 3 is obviously Rabdan El Azrak, refereed to two once as the sire of Dalal and once for his own sake
http://roster.alkhamsa.org/pedigrees/R/Rabdan_El_Azrak_(APK000f0.HTML
but what I don’t understand is why, in the presence of such first-hand testimony as Lady Anne’s, pedigrees still refer to Rabdan’s sire Dahman (horse number 2) as being by Jamil El Ahmar and not by the old white Seglawi Jedgran Ahmed Pasha got from APS.
Why? In my opinion, such first hand testimony is worth all the studbooks and the certified pedigrees in the world, *Bint Saada’s and others.
From Lady Anne’s journals and herd books, we have either several pedigrees for a stallion named Dahman, or several stallions named Dahman that were used, so the difficulty is to sort that out. The same applies to the stallion(s) named Saklawi. In this case, this entry seems clear, I agree.
There were evidently at least two stallions named Dahman out of Ferida the mare of Ahmed Bey Sennari, because one is described “handsome and very strong but somewhat wanting in quality” (his sire the K. Mesenneh) while another is described “the old fashioned type of APS” (his sire the Saklawi of APS), and these cannot be two descriptions of the same horse because they are so contradictory.
Edouard, I agree that Lady Anne’s journals are a valuable record because they are a first hand account made by an astute and interested observer at the time the horses and people were living, during the period between 1880 when Lady Anne first met Ali Pasha Sherif until Lady Anne died in Egypt in 1917.
But Lady Anne’s journals do have limitations. This was a journal never intended for publication and not subject to the same review for error she would have given to, for example, the handwritten Crabbet records or the pedigrees published in her Sheykh Obeyd catalogs. For example, the journals seem to give on different occasions two different origins for Muniet el Nefous, and two different sires for what seems to be the same Bint Nura mare in entries about one year apart.
Regarding the horses named Dahman, I agree with you that the physical descriptions seem to refer to two different horses. One was “wanting in quality” and the other was “the old fashioned type of APS.” My impression is that Lady Anne considered “the old fashioned type of APS” or “the unmistakable Ali Pasha Sherif stamp” to be the very definition of quality.
Hi RJ,
re: Dahman, exactly.
re: Muniet El Nefous the Hamdani Simri mare of Ahmed Bey Sennari, I would think that the discrepancy in the Journal entries about her pedigree can be taken as an ongoing and iterative learning process, with new information on the mare superseding older information. While she first seemed to believe that the mare was a desert bred, later in her life, she made multiple and precise references to the mare being from the “Abbas descent” (see the Journal entry where she discussed Mezna on page 379 I think) to the point that she even says she believed the mare was a sister to her own Sobha. Her information seemed to have evolved over time, and I would take the later references to be corrections of the earlier ones.