[3] His parents, Dewlet Shamsi (mother) and Abbas-Baligh Sabri (father) were of Turkish-Circassian descent and belonged to the privileged class.

Following the failure of what historian term the "Urabi Rebellion" of 1882, Khedive Tewfik imprisoned Shamsi Pasha later releasing him on a hefty bail.

Sabri was also a nephew of Ali Shamsi Pasha (1885-1962) co-founder of the Wafd Party and a several-time minister during the reign of Fuad I of Egypt later to become the first Egyptian to head of the National Bank of Egypt which acted as the country's Central Bank.

[4] One of Ali Sabri's paternal grand-uncles was Mohammed Faizi Pasha (1840-1911), a director-general of the Awqaf Department during the reign of Khedive Abbas Hilmi II.

The trilingual Ali Sabri, along with his three brothers and one sister, was raised in the then-predominantly aristocratic and European Cairo suburb of Maadi and was an active member of its Sporting Club's tennis and swimming teams.