Aoi

Initially I assumed this is a typo, and that he meant to say that the Carthaginians first brought elephants to Sicily. But it’s also possible that the Greeks of Syracuse brought them over from Africa or Asia, as elephants were common in Hellenistic warfare post-Alexander. I’m not sure what the reality is there (?).

But it reminded me of a Jefferson Davis monograph then Secretary for War, to introduce camels into the American Southwest.

It’s sad this experiment didn’t succeed. Camels probably wld have proven useful in the desert conditions of that frontier. But then again perhaps not.

Mostly made me reflect that the Arabs are credited with introducing the camel to North Africa. Mark Mazower noted that the Turks brought camels to the Balkans, and this was one of the vestiges of Islam that disappeared when the Ottoman Empire fell.

There are no camels in the Balkans today. Is that bc the conditions are not suitable? Did the camels reproduce in the Balkans? Or, as I suspect, did the Turks continuously bring more of them over from Asia to keep their numbers up?

Obvs suspect the latter bc I wondered if the Moors had brought camels to Spain too. And they did. The camel was introduced in Spain in 1020 AD, and to Sicily in 1059.

Similar to the Balkans, the disappearance of the camel in these areas must have coincided with the end of Islamic rule. I doubt the camel cld have survived and thrived in Sicily anymore than an elephant could have.

But Spain might be another matter. There are parts of Spain that are arid and hot, almost desert-like.

So in 1910 the British naturalists Abel Chapman and Walter Buck claimed to have come across wild camels in Andalusia, in the Coto de Donana. This seems almost too incredible to believe.

There are certainly no wild camels there today. Recent archaeological studies have found the remains of dromedaries in Cordoba, which show conclusively that the Moors did use them in Spain.

To what extent who knows and it appears that despite the potentially favourable conditions of the Iberian Peninsula, the camel couldn’t rly make the successful transition to becoming an endemic species.

Why? Another possible explanation is that the association between Islam and camels was so strong that when the Christians retook Spain (and the Balkans), they killed or deported the camels.

I haven’t rly seen anything to suggest this, but it’s just a tentative hypothesis. I wld suspect that the reason camels disappeared from Spain and the Balkans (and obviously Sicily) was bc the Muslims stopped importing them, and they couldn’t rly maintain their populations naturally for whatever reason.

A strong support for this is that, much to my surprise, I learned that the Spanish imported camels to the Canary Islands. And the camel *is* endemic to those islands now. There are still camel populations in the Canaries, albeit very small ones.

Secondly, even more to my surprise, the Spaniards attempted to introduce the camel to South America in the seventeenth century. This strikes me as a sort of precursor to what Jefferson Davis attempted in the 1850’s American Southwest.

Evidently these attempts all failed. One might think that the camel would be well-suited for the Atacama or Patagonia in general, which is dry and hot.

But apparently not. I don’t know enough abt camels but they seem to be very special animals. While North Africa and the Sahel were apparently as suitable for them as their native habitat in the Arabian Desert, later attempts to create indigenous populations in Southern Europe were unsuccessful, as were attempts to introduce them to various parts of the Americas.

Yet the fact that the Spanish introduced them to the Canaries and tried to introduce them to South America suggests to me that they recognized the value of the animals, if not as much as the Arabs did then at least to a sufficient extent to desire their presence.

If so, then it seems to me that it’s probable the camel simply couldn’t survive in Spain. If the Spanish wanted them in the Canaries and in Bolivia, they probably would have wanted them in Spain too.

Nonetheless this is fascinating to me bc the camel is so closely associated with Islam, and the Arabs tried to bring the camel with them everywhere they went just as the Europeans tried to bring the horse with them everywhere they went.

They were not always successful. The horse cannot survive in Sub-Saharan Africa, for example. One might suggest that the Islamic conquest of Europe was seriously impeded by the lack of camels.

Historians have long argued that the camel made the early Arabic conquests possible, but as the animal was evidently unsuited to Europe the Arabs found maintaining their momentum problematic. This is, of course, more conjecture on my part and is more suggestive than conclusive. I don’t rly mean to contend that the Arab invasion of, say, France, failed because the Arabs did not have enough camels to draw upon in Spain.

I only mean to suggest that it might have been a contributory factor. The Arabs could use horses too, of course, and the Arabian horse is world-famous.

But they found the camel useful for so many different purposes that they could perhaps not do without it. So the fact that the camel could not follow them north of the Pyrenees may have been a reason for their inability to push very far in this direction.

We often forget that humans were dependent upon animal labour in that historical period. It has been said that wherever man has conquered, next to his footsteps are the horse’s hooves.

The camel, like the horse, was not merely ridden into battle. It was used to haul supplies and provide transport.

It wld have been interesting had the Muslims succeeded in transplanting camels in Spain and the Balkans, which could have been a powerful symbol of their Muslim past.

Sadly, however, there are no longer camels in either. Except in zoos. Apparently the camel population even in Turkey has declined significantly during the twentieth century, and this raises more questions on their adaptability to that peninsula.

John Adams, who could be counted on for commentary on most of the political figures of his day, described Caesar Rodney as “the oddest looking man in the world; he is tall, thin and slender as a reed, pale; his face is not bigger than a large apple, yet there is sense and fire, spirit, wit and humor in this countenance.”