Quote Originally Posted by Watchman
AFAIK camels work well enough as archery platforms. I've read Bedouin raiders operating as camel-mounted bowmen gave the Israelites major trouble at one point and presumably also pestered the Assyrians and Babylonians, and Arab camel-archers are mentioned as a part of the Seleucid line-up at Magnesia. Seems to have been a northern Arab thing though, the southerners apparently just used th beasts for transport and used their few horses to form the mounted arm.

The northern ones presumably picked up a thing or two from their Parthian, Sassanid and Roman neighbours, but AFAIK the phenomenom is in general a post-Islamic one - a direct result of taking over a lot of Byzantine and Sassanid territory, absorbing a lot of their military techniques (and often manpower - AFAIK much of the Sassanid warrior aristocracy flatly defected to the invaders en masse at some point, and there was also the ghulam slave-soldier practice) and then having to deal with HA-using enemies themselves.
Damn. I was hoping for a historical excuse to add atleast one unit of HA to the Sabeans. They have their mounted javelin skirmishers, but they suck. Too little ammo to be of use against phalangites.
Most enemy skirmishers can beat them in a fair fight, so the only really useful function they serve is chasing routed units.