Cataphract - Indo-Iranian Origins

Indo-Iranian Origins

The reliance on cavalry as a means of warfare in general lies with the ancient inhabitants of the Central Asian steppes in early antiquity, who were one of the first peoples to domesticate the horse and pioneered the development of the chariot. Most of these nomadic tribes and wandering pastoralists circa 2000 BC were largely Bronze-Age, Indo-Iranian populations who migrated from the steppes of Central Asia into the Iranian Plateau and Greater Iran from around 1000 BC to 800 BC (see Indo-Aryan migration). Two of these tribes are attested based upon archaeological evidence: the Mitanni and the Kassites. Although evidence is scant, they are believed to have raised and bred horses for specific purposes, as is evidenced by the large archaeological record of their use of the chariot and several treatises on the training of chariot horses. The one founding prerequisite towards the development of cataphract cavalry in the Ancient Near East, apart from advanced metalworking techniques and the necessary grazing pastures for raising horses, was the evolution of selective breeding and animal husbandry. Cataphract cavalry needed to be immensely strong and endurant horses, and without selectively breeding horses for muscular strength and hardiness, they would have surely not been able to bear the immense loads of armor and a rider during the strain of battle. The Near East is generally believed to have been the focal point for where this first occurred.

The previously mentioned early Indo-Iranian kingdoms and statehoods were to a large degree the ancestors of the north-eastern Iranian tribes and the Medians, who would found the very first Iranian Empire in 625 BC. It was the Median Empire that left the first written proof of horse breeding around the 7th century BC, being the first to propagate a specific horse breed, known as the Nisean, which originated in the Zagros Mountains for use as heavy cavalry. The Nisean would go on to become renowned in the Ancient World and particularly in Ancient Persia as being the mount of nobility and of their warhorses, sometimes referred to as "Nisean chargers", who were highly sought after by the Greeks and are believed to have influenced many modern horse breeds. With the growing aggressiveness played by the role of cavalry in warfare, protection of the rider and the horse became paramount. This was especially true of peoples who treated cavalry as the basic arm of their military, and indeed, the backbone of the Ancient Persian military, such as that of the Medes or the successive Persian dynasties that followed them, was the horse. To a larger extent, the same can said of all the Ancient Iranian peoples, as second only to perhaps the bow, horses were held in reverence and importance in these societies as their preferred and mastered medium of warfare, due to an intrinsic link throughout history with the domestication and evolution of the horse.

These early riding traditions, which were strongly tied to the ruling caste of nobility (as only those of noble birth or caste could become cavalry warriors), now spread throughout the Eurasian steppes and Iranian plateau from around 600 BC and onwards due to contact with the Median Empire's vast expanse across Central Asia, which was the native homeland of the early, north-eastern Iranian ethnic groups such as the Massagetae, Scythians, Sakas, and Dahae. The successive Persian Empires that followed the Medes after their downfall in 550 BC took these already long-standing military tactics and horse-breeding traditions and infused their centuries of experience and veterancy from conflicts against the Greek city-states, Babylonians, Assyrians, Indo-Scythians, and North Arabian tribes with the significant role cavalry played not only in warfare but everyday life to form a military reliant almost entirely upon armored horses for battle.