Interested in starting your own preservation program?
If you happen to take good care of your horses, or you if you know that you will take of your first horse, and are interested in starting a new preservation breeding program centered around the esteemed Arabian horse strain of Ma’naqi Sbayli, please contact me: ealdahdah@hotmail.com
I have a mare from that strain, 10 months pregnant, and she and/or her foal would be available to the right home to start such a program.
Below is a noted in Arabic penned by one of Homer Davenport’s Arab guests during his 1906 trip to North Arabia to buy desert-bred Arabian horses. Part of it — the second paragraph — reads:
“There is no better and more authentic strain to be found among the Arabs [Bedouins] than that of the Ma’naqi Sbayli which Mr. Davenport purchased. The Ma’naqi is from the Arab [Bedouins] of Gomussah, from the tribe of the Sba’ah ‘Anazah, and he is from the best strain in their possession; the name of his owner is al-Sbayli.”
By the way, my guess is that this note refers to the stallion *Gomussa, whom Davenport purchased, as opposed to the stallion *Haleb of the same strain, who was presented to him. Also, the mention of the Bedouin sub-tribe of Gomussah in the note supports this hypothesis.
See Chapter 14 of Davenport’s book, My Quest of the Arab Horse:
“The Governor’s son, Hickmet Bey, had been presented by the Gomussa tribe with another Maneghi Sbeyel, to take the place of the one which they had given to me. We went to see him. He was two years old, unshod, stood a fraction over fifteen hands high… he had three black feet, the only white being on the left fore foot… He had a small star on the forehead, the strip growing wider as it came to the nose, so that it took in one nostril which was completely white. The white ran to the under-lip, and this was tattooed in blue in imitation of the women of the desert…. To cap the climax the Governor’s son told me that as he had not yet made me a present he would give me this colt. With all the thanks that I could scrape up I took him, and he was hurriedly led away to join the rest of the horses….”
So the reference is most likely to *Haleb, with a confusion as to having purchased..
That would be my assumption, Edouard.