Muslim Conquests and Colonial Period
The camel was used in this way by many civilizations, especially in Arabia and North Africa. Both camel and rider were sometimes armored like the contemporary cataphracts. The Arabs used camels to great effect against their horse-mounted European enemies during the Muslim conquests. Napoleon used camels for his French campaign in Egypt and Syria.
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. Descendents of such units still form part of the modern Indian, Moroccan and Egyptian armies. The British-officered Egyptian Camel Corps played a significant role in the 1898 Battle of Omdurman; one of the few occasions during the colonial period when this class of mounted troops took part in substantive numbers in a set-piece battle.
Camels are still used by the Jordanian Desert Patrol.
Read more about this topic: Camel Cavalry
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