where are the camels?

[The Persian Cataphract]

There were occasions where camelry was used in the manner of shock cavalry, as opposed to being merely an elevated archer's platform or in situ tactical transportation for warriors; Our earliest evidence for this usage, especially when it came to disrupting conventional cavalry formations, are recorded in the battle of Thymbra 547 BCE, where Cyrus The Great improvized by using his baggage dromedaries to scare away the Lydian heavy horse, while Cyrus' heavy cavalry majorly consisting of Medes, struck at the weak spots between the wings and the centre, causing a tremendous rout. We may take this with a pillar of salt; The richest details of this battle stem from Xenophon's "Cyropaedia", which at parts is a homage to Cyrus The Younger and at parts semi-fictitious. The usage of camelry, at all, was irregular in the Achaemenid armed forces.

However, evidence for armoured camelry armed and equipped like cataphracts appear in the 2nd and 3rd centuries CE, and were a prominent force on behalf of the Parthians during the battle of Nisibis, 217 CE, where Artabanus IV emerged victorious against Macrinus. This sort of armoured camelry could have been a staple unit in the Parthian client city of Hatra as well as the Syrian client-kingdom of Palmyra. Check out Herodian:

Herodian IV.14.3 - Nisibis, AD 217:

Meanwhile Artabanus was upon them with his vast and powerful army
composed of many cavalry and an enormous number of archers and
cataphracts who fought on camels, jabbing with long spears.

Herodian IV.15.2-3 - Nisibis, AD 217:

The barbarians caused heavy casualties with their rain of arrows and
with the long spears of the kataphraktoi on horses and camels, as the
wounded the Romans with downward thrusts. But the Romans had easily
the better of those who came to close-quarters fighting. And when the
size of the cavalry and the numbers of the camels began to cause them
trouble they pretended to retreat and then threw down caltrops and
other iron devices with sharp spikes sticking out of them. They were
fatal to the cavalry and the camel-riders as they lay hidden in the
sand, not seen by them. The horses and the camels trod on them and fell
onto their knees and were lamed, throwing the riders off their backs.
As long as the eastern barbarians are riding on horses or camels they
fight bravely; if they dismount or are thrown they are easily taken
prisoner because they do not resist in close-quarters fighting. And
further, they are hindered from running away by the loose folds of
their clothes hanging around their legs.

MeinPanzer should be able to recognize this. In fact, he stresses the exact same thing here:
http://www.romanarmy.com/rat/viewtop...r=asc&start=20

This is what you get when you search for Herodian and "camel cataphract". I suppose great minds think alike.

Otherwise, the reader may find the relevant passages here:
http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/he..._book4.htm#C14
http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/he..._book4.htm#C15

So clearly camels could indeed be used as shock mounts. What we do not have any evidence of is however a barding for camels; The Tehran National Museum does allegedly have a caparison, but it is dated 15th century CE and by those standards could be anything from a Timurid construct or White/Black Sheep Turkish or even early Qizilbash/Safavid. Very odd finding as by the Timurid advent, heavily armoured cavalry had resurged (Which is reflected upon in Medieval Iranian art and miniatures with a high figure of cavalry armed and armoured like Tarkhan champions). In the cases where we do find camelry at all, in the mentioned arts, is exclusively as a platform for musicians, beyond their usage of logistics, which was the main usage of these animals in war.

So, I'm not completely against camelry at all, in fact history attests of novel and improvized usage of these animals, sometimes even decisively, but their sparse historical usage has given them a rather low assessment priority. It might change sometime in the future, but I wouldn't get my hopes up.