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
Famous quotes containing the words muslim, conquests, colonial and/or period:
“For the salvation of his soul the Muslim digs a well. It would be a fine thing if each of us were to leave behind a school, or a well, or something of the sort, so that life would not pass by and retreat into eternity without a trace.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“The fame of heroes owes little to the extent of their conquests and all to the success of the tributes paid to them.”
—Jean Genet (1910–1986)
“In colonial America, the father was the primary parent. . . . Over the past two hundred years, each generation of fathers has had less authority than the last. . . . Masculinity ceased to be defined in terms of domestic involvement, skills at fathering and husbanding, but began to be defined in terms of making money. Men had to leave home to work. They stopped doing all the things they used to do.”
—Frank Pittman (20th century)
“After all, the practical reason why, when the power is once in the hands of the people, a majority are permitted, and for a long period continue, to rule is not because they are most likely to be in the right, nor because this seems fairest to the minority, but because they are physically the strongest. But a government in which the majority rule in all cases cannot be based on justice, even as far as men understand it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)