Swift Runner article on Mesaoud
The latest edition of the Swift Runner newsletter has an article by Betty Finke about the Crabbet foundation stallion Mesaoud being the most influential Arabian stallion of all time, an observation I agree with. The article also includes a nod to the new pedigree of Mesaoud on the sire line, which was published in the new book: “The Arabian Horses of Abbas Pasha”. This new pedigree, stemming from the re-discovery of the Abbas Pasha Sale Catalogue of 1860, and other original Arabic documents from the time of Abbas Pasha and Ali Pasha Sharif, traces Mesaoud’s sireline all the way back to Ghadir, the foundation stallion of Abbas Pasha.
I’m sure this article is not the first time it has been observed that behind every Nazeer descendant and behind every Skowronek descendant — two stallions noted for being ubiquitous in the genepool of Western Arabians — is Mesaoud. But it doesn’t hurt to have it repeated every now and then. It still blows me away that this cornerstone of breeding just up and vanished during the Red October.
Wasn’t Mesaoud already dead by Red October? He would have been 30..
As far as I am aware, there aren’t actually any known records of him dying. In fact, from what I gather, it’s particularly a problem where we don’t know exactly what happened to him because Count Stroganov’s stud was ransacked, the horses all destroyed, and the studs/the records within destroyed.