Camel cavalry

Camel cavalry was a common element in desert warfare throughout history in the Middle East, due in part to the animals' high level of adaptability.

[3] More than sixty years later, the Achaemenid emperor Xerxes I recruited a large number of Arab mercenaries into his massive army during the Second Persian invasion of Greece, all of whom were equipped with bows and mounted on camels.

Herodotus noted that the Arab camel cavalry numbered as many as twenty thousand, including a massive force of Libyan charioteers.

Employed from the nomadic tribes of Arabia and Syria, the camel-mounted mercenaries in Achaemenid service fought as skirmishing archers, sometimes riding two to a camel.

[4] According to Herodian, the Parthian emperor king Artabanus IV employed a unit consisting of heavily armored soldiers equipped with lances (kontos) and riding on camels.

[9] As early as the 1st Century AD Nabatean and Palmyrene armies employed camel-mounted infantry and archers recruited from nomadic tribes of Arabian origin.

[13] The Göktürks used camel cavalry according to the Buddhist pilgrim Xuanzang from Tang China (d. 664), who visited the western Göktürk capital Suyab (now in Kyrgyzstan) and left a description of the Tong Yabghu Qaghan and his army.

"The rest of his military retinue [was] clothed in fur, serge and fine wool, the spears and standards and bows in order, and the riders of camels and horses stretched far out of [sight].

During the late 19th and much of the 20th centuries, camel troops were used for desert policing and patrol work in the British, French, German, Spanish, and Italian colonial armies.

Descendants of such units still form part of the modern Moroccan and Egyptian armies and the paramilitary Indian Border Security Force.

Forming part of the Tropas Nomades del Sahara, these camel-mounted units had a limited local role in the Spanish Civil War during 1936–1939.

[20] The Grenadiers used them for both transportation and fighting during the Indo-Pakistani War of 1965 where they prevented Pakistani forces from infiltrating and capturing territory intended to be used as negotiating chips in the Bikaner and Jaisalmer sectors both before and after the ceasefire.