Cavalry

[Flavius_Belisarius]

I often asked myself the question if it is realstic that such cavalry like cataphracts are owning every cavalry in melee, even the famous companions of alexander, the hetairoi. I know that arabian cavalry which is actually very ligthly armored mangaged to defeat the byzantine cataphractoi many times but i think that only happend because those heavy cavalry runs out of stamina too fast in desert...

[Fluvius Camillus]

If you are talking about the EB timeframe... Big Kontos charges, followed up by AP weapons (like maces), decimate any opposing cavalry, not to mention they are armoured from top to toe.

~Fluvius

[Alsatia]

If you are talking about the EB timeframe... Big Kontos charges, followed up by AP weapons (like maces), decimate any opposing cavalry, not to mention they are armoured from top to toe.

~Fluvius

Kinda reminds me of those Constables of Jerusalem you get in M2TW:K... (No Jewish pun intended)

[Exosus]

The Catraphacts took everything that was great about the Companions and then added on to it. They were the most fearsome cavalry in ancient history; sources are in almost universal agreement on that point.

[Andy1984]

I don't think cataphracts are overpowered. Place scythed chariots, concentrated missile fire or masses of low level infantry against them and see what happens. :)

About light cavalry winning over heavily armoured cavalry: this had perhaps something to do with the numbers of the historical light cavalry?

[antisocialmunky]

The Catraphacts took everything that was great about the Companions and then added on to it. They were the most fearsome cavalry in ancient history; sources are in almost universal agreement on that point.

They were an independent development. Also, Companions were used to outmaneuver the enemy where as Cataphracts were used to charge through a disordered enemy frontally.

[Flavius_Belisarius]

And this outmaneuver isnt possible in eb because the companions have the same crappy stamina like cataphracts :\

@Andy

Im quite sure that the Byzantines were at the most times more when the fougth against the arabs. I read that the arab light cavalry defeated the cataphracts of byzantium several times, maybe the outmanveuvered the cataphracts, and thats sure easy because cataphracts will be very fast tired in a desert.

[HunGeneral]

I would suspect that the fact that Catas tire quite fast in the desert (like said bafore) and maybe that the Arabs fielded above all skirmisher Cavalry (javelin cavalry + horse archers) had a role in defeating the Byzantines. (lets also not forget that these Arabs had defeated the Sassanids earlier so they had some experience fighting heavy cavalry... )Althoug I'm not sure since I don't have much knowledge of that era and it's warfare. (I'm rather informed about the Ottoman/Turkish invasions on the Balkan and South/East Europe, both thats a different story..)

[Flavius_Belisarius]

Yeah that arabs had a lot of ranged cavalry and excellent ligth cavalry. The seldjuks which combined heavy cavalry and light cavalry defeated the cataphracts of byzantium again, first the tired the catas with their light cavalry and finaly the finished them with the heavy seldjuk kav but i still dont understand how the arab cavalry should defeat the cataphracts in melee.

[antisocialmunky]

And this outmaneuver isnt possible in eb because the companions have the same crappy stamina like cataphracts :\

Companions are fast. Kataphracts in their tired state can be caught by fast infantry while the fast and very fast types don't have to worry about it.

[bobbin]

Sheer numbers would have helped, both the Sassanids and the ERE were sevrely weakend after fighting a very costly war with each other.

[Flavius_Belisarius]

Companions are fast. Kataphracts in their tired state can be caught by fast infantry while the fast and very fast types don't have to worry about it.

I didnt know this, i thougth they are same fast because it isnt written in the unit skill description.

And whats with their stamina, is it as bad as the cataphracts one ?

[vartan]

I didnt know this, i thougth they are same fast because it isnt written in the unit skill description.

And whats with their stamina, is it as bad as the cataphracts one ?

Companions are faster than the Kataphraktoi (more maneuverable), but the Kataphraktoi, even though they seem to wear out quicker (think about all their armour), do seem to be rather powerful when it comes to charge and attack (defence is a given).

[Chris1959]

Horse fatigue or being "Blown" is usually very poorly handled in most wargames, I charge my cavalry round in EB like they are on something highly illegal. In reality cavalry commanders had to be very conscious of the stamina of their horses, more so than their men. A horse is a suprisingly fragile creature.
I recommend Allan Mallison's books about Hervey and the Light Dragoons, whilst set in the Napoleonic wars they give a very true read about the complexities of commanding cavalry and are way more realistic than the Sharpe books!

[Cute Wolf]

With a good handling, a sandwich charge (2 units charge against 1 target) from basic greek Hippeis can take down Sauro Bodyguards, noble cav, and Saka Cataphracts rather easily.... My Bosophoran experience proves that 3 or 4 Hippeis is all those cav that u need to kill enemy melee cav (but with proper usage of Hoplitai and Sphendenotai too...)

[Flavius_Belisarius]

Yep i only can agree to this, i think the cataphracts arent their price worth...With some ligth armored cavalry you can easiliy crush such heavily armored cav like Cute Wolf already said.

[antisocialmunky]

Good luck facing down an even amount of horse though. Its the steppe, they will have more.

[Cute Wolf]

Good luck facing down an even amount of horse though. Its the steppe, they will have more.

wow, you forgot to note that I use hoplites and slingers for main course, the hippeis are just their executioner.... Hoplitai is especially best for giving your "inferior" cavalry forces a solid, but flexible wall to hide behind... and sphendonetai will give those armoured horsemen a nasty stone on their face

[Brave Brave Sir Robin]

I'm actually reading a book now on the arab conquests and the author claims that most arab cavalry dismounted before fighting their Sassanid and Byzantine foes. Also a good portion of the Arab warriors did wear chain mail though their horses were unarmored. There are accounts of Persian archers slaughtering Arabs in droves at the Battle of the Bridge while at the same time being relatively ineffective at Quaysidah (sp?). So the Arabs were not necessarily as lightly armored as we might be led to believe. At least the upper classes. The Bedouin were probably unarmored.

[Vasiliyi]

Heavy cavalry can be easily countered in many different ways.

Slingers. I had 2 units of slingers mow-down 3 units of pontic bodyguards as if they were using machine guns. Honestly, the only way Cata's are good is if they are use by the human, not AI. The AI is too stupid to realize their strength.

[Maion Maroneios]

Or use Katapeltai. It is funny to see Kataphraktoi and generally every kind of Heavy Cavalry dying like flies from a shot. But then again, the mechanai are expensive, not easy to come by and clumsy on the battlefield.

But as many stated above, there are ways to counter heavy cavalry like Kataphraktoi.

Maion

[Watchman]

We may also note that around the time of the Arab conquests super-heavy cavalry was somewhat out of fashion in the Middle East. Byzantines and Sassanids alike were more into moderate armour and only partial barding (and the Sassanids apparently preferred to bow to the lance as the primary weapon, too) rather than the massively heavy juggernauts that had been all the rage a few centuries earlier.
'Course, you can kill even such "katatanks" with decent maces relatively easily enough, as the Romans' local auxiliary infantry at least once did to Palmyrene cataphracts, so eh.

Also, cavalry played a relatively minor part in the Conquest period Arab armies AFAIK. The largely arid peninsula wasn't exactly prime horse-rearing country after all.

[Ibrahim]

Yeah that arabs had a lot of ranged cavalry and excellent ligth cavalry. The seldjuks which combined heavy cavalry and light cavalry defeated the cataphracts of byzantium again, first the tired the catas with their light cavalry and finaly the finished them with the heavy seldjuk kav but i still dont understand how the arab cavalry should defeat the cataphracts in melee.

cavalry fought with lances and swords; bows, if used, were few and far between; IIRC, the lakhmids were more likely to use them, and even then. the lance was about the size of a Xyston, made of canes from the murraan tree (citing Al-Jahiz). swords were either the short, native arabian swords, or, should the owner be of good luck, the long persian ones (3ft).

now, how did they do it? It helped that their leaders knew what they were doing. In particular, the exploits of Khalid Ibn Al-waleed are of interest; he never really attacked the enemy cavalry head on, but when they were either scattered, or from the rear (citing the accounts of Yarmouk). and he only used them at the last possible moment, for reasons which I will elaborate. It also healped that the enemy cavalry had been decimated by the recent romano-persian wars, especially the sassanids (evidently the byzantines weren't totally exhausted; they had a well accoutered army in northern Syria; what they didn't have was coordination, as yarmouk clearly shows.)

besides, cavalry was actually unimportant to the Arabs in the early days, as there was a dearth of cavalry. most of the troops were infantry. so the more accurate question is: how did arab infantry deafeat the cataphracts?. lots of factors were involved:

1-the romans and persians were exhausted, particularly the persians. both were still able to crush the arabs who came out (battle of the bridge is a good example), but seemed to have lacked the willpower or motivation
2-there was better coordination among the arabs than either enemy-any account of walajah, dhat-as-salaasil, or yarmouk show so. the adversaries were also not as imaginative for some reason.
3-Khalid ibn al-waleed happened to be an Arab-Muslim
4-the Byzantines made the stupid mistake of not listening to jabalah ibn-al'aiham, prior to yarmouk.
5-the persians made the even dumber mistake of underestimating their foe, if one is to believe the accounts.(figured they learned better at Callinicum-the ghassanids were spectacular there. too bad Belisarius ran away without good reason.
6-and most importantly: the Arabs evidently wanted to win more than either adversary did.

so in short: its not the armor you have or the weapons you use, but how you use them, that decided this one.

EDIT: oh, and in almost every major battle, the Arabs were outnumbered, especially in the cavalry department.

[Brave Brave Sir Robin]

Its unfortunate that very few first hand or contemporary accounts of the Arab conquests were passed down. So much of the information comes from centuries later. I would be very interested to see what tactics were used. While there are some fragments, the lack of contemporary pieces as well as the fact that little archelogical work has been done due to the troubled state of the Middle East in general means that that period is somewhat cloudy.

I too find it amazing that bands of 5,000 warriors could conquer all of Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt and such. Even with exhausted Sassanid and Byzantine foes, its quite a bit of territory. Helps that neither of those empires were very religiously tolerant I suppose.

[J.R.M]

Religious fervor can make wonders in warriors if used properly. And there is also the surprise factor i guess.

[Ibrahim]

Its unfortunate that very few first hand or contemporary accounts of the Arab conquests were passed down. So much of the information comes from centuries later. I would be very interested to see what tactics were used. While there are some fragments, the lack of contemporary pieces as well as the fact that little archelogical work has been done due to the troubled state of the Middle East in general means that that period is somewhat cloudy.

I too find it amazing that bands of 5,000 warriors could conquer all of Syria, Palestine, Iraq, Egypt and such. Even with exhausted Sassanid and Byzantine foes, its quite a bit of territory. Helps that neither of those empires were very religiously tolerant I suppose.

just the opposite-its surprisingly well documented (by arab standards). problem is the people who wrote it; the arabs love literary style, not just boring history, so they embellished, and later exaggerated the accounts, rendering them in the second hand form you see today.. as a result, Europeans reading this stuff centuries later couldn't figure it out, and either ignored it, or scratched their heads at it. a common problem in the accounts is that numbers in Arabic could be taken literally, or could be taken metaphorically (so if someone mentions 4000 of something, it may literally be 4000, or mean "a lot").

tactics are well described: double envelopements, flanking manuevers, head on assaults, field trenches, bridge battles, ambushes etc. ,they are all mentioned, and then some. even weapons and armor are described in some detail; we know that arabs typically rode horses without stirrups or saddles for the first 20 years of the conquests, that cowhorn spears were more common than iron ones, adn that infantry was better armored than cavalry.

and it wasn't 5000; it was closer to 70,000-80,000 (if the accounts describing the numbers are literal. applies to all numbers here); most went to fight the Byzantines, and no more than 30,000 fought the sassanids. the battles of yarmouk involved closer to 45,000 Arabs, while kadhimah involved 20,000-30,000 men. even then, Arabs were still locally outnumbered every where they fought, seeing how they divided the men going to the byzantines into several mini armies, around 10-20,000 strong. it makes victory less impressive, but they were still outnumbered and outgunned, even by the exhausted Byzantines and persians.

and while religion did motivate the soldiers to an extant, money tended to have an equal influence on the motivation of the Arabs, as Umar ibn al-khattab payed a lot of money per year to war veterens*. and if one account is to be believed, 'Umar ibn al-khattab was not particularly willing to conquer all that land (he gave a letter to Amr ibn al-'as that could have led to the cancelling of the conquest of Egypt, and in another case he wanted to leave the persians behind the Zagros)


*believe it or not, the same man was against converting the local non-arabs, seeing that conversion to islam made one eligible for the payments, thus diluting the money sent to the Arabs. the policy continued for a century more.

[Brave Brave Sir Robin]

Yes, your right. I worded my reply wrong. There were numerous first hand accounts BUT they usually did not describe the events in the style most historians are accustomed to creating. Instead, they would tell of different men, tribes, and such within the army, who led this charge, who scaled this wall etc. Names are very common in these sources. But, as forms of poetry were popular to the Arabs, some of that same style makes its way into these sources. I was under the impression that many contemporary Arab conquest histories were more propagandaish than anything but I suppose thats true for most of history. Also many sources seem contradictary. Dates are often confused in various accounts for example. Another is the siege of Damascus. Supposedly half the city was taken by force, the other half given up through diplomacy. Is that truely realistic or were there differing accounts of how the city fell and the historian who put it together chose to represent it this way? But yes, I looked back and there were some good accounts of the battles.

I do remember the story of Umar informing Amr through letter that he should forgo his invasion of Egypt if he had not yet crossed its border. Amr guessed the contents and opened it only after he was in Egyptian territory.

[Ibrahim]

Yes, your right. I worded my reply wrong. There were numerous first hand accounts BUT they usually did not describe the events in the style most historians are accustomed to creating. Instead, they would tell of different men, tribes, and such within the army, who led this charge, who scaled this wall etc. Names are very common in these sources. But, as forms of poetry were popular to the Arabs, some of that same style makes its way into these sources. I was under the impression that many contemporary Arab conquest histories were more propagandaish than anything but I suppose thats true for most of history. Also many sources seem contradictary. Dates are often confused in various accounts for example. Another is the siege of Damascus. Supposedly half the city was taken by force, the other half given up through diplomacy. Is that truely realistic or were there differing accounts of how the city fell and the historian who put it together chose to represent it this way? But yes, I looked back and there were some good accounts of the battles.

I do remember the story of Umar informing Amr through letter that he should forgo his invasion of Egypt if he had not yet crossed its border. Amr guessed the contents and opened it only after he was in Egyptian territory.

exactly the case.the quality and style is the issue, not the number of accounts.

at least the history of the conquests wasn't as propaganda-ridden as that of the histories documenting the Banu umayyah

[Reality=Chaos]

exactly the case.the quality and style is the issue, not the number of accounts.

at least the history of the conquests wasn't as propaganda-ridden as that of the histories documenting the Banu umayyah

Yeah the ummayad period has been badly distorted by the abbasids indeed

[Cimon]

exactly the case.the quality and style is the issue, not the number of accounts.

I'm just now making my first foray (by reading The Great Arab Conquests by Hugh Kennedy) into the Arab conquests 600-700s, so correct me if I am wrong, but my understanding is that most of the sources come from roughly a century or more after the conquests, and that the sources often contradict each other, which makes it hard to determine which version to view as accurate (or, more accurate at least).

Certainly, as a general matter, some sources are apt to be more reliable than others, but isn't it difficult to determine which ones when, if viewing the sources as a group, the same conquest is related in multiple different ways?

If I am missing something, please let me know.