Persian war elephants

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History

Under the Achaemenids

As said above the Persians first used elephants at Gaugamela, however some people claim that they were used in the Greek campaign of king Xerxes I of Persia and even further back at the times of Darius the Great when they went to attack the Indians at the Indus and again the Danube river and attacked the Scythians in 512BC.However, both of these are highly unlikely as nether Xenophon or Herodotus tells us that they were used at that time.

Under the Parthians

The Parthians (who were overthrown by the Sassanids) used war elephants against the Romans, but little is known about their use.

Under the Sassanids

Julian's campaign

and elephants. Caught unaware, the Roman soldiers fought valiantly but eventually ended up losing the battle.

During the melee, Julian foolishly charged into the conflict without his armour and was injured by an arrow. Although initially surviving, he later succumbed to the injury and died.

Belisarius remarks on Sassanid troops:

Armenian wars

The most famous was the Battle of Avarayr ( _hy. Ավարայրի ճակատամարտ) in 451 CE, where Armenian rebels led by Vartan Mamikonian led an army of 66,000 men to gain independence from the Sassanids under Yazdegerd II, who opposed them with forces including war elephants.

Despite their victory over the rebels and the death of their leadership (including Vartan Mamikonian), Yazdegerd was forced to give the Armenians their religious freedom.

Persians fighting elephants

In 1739, Nader Shah of Persia invaded India and led an army to their capital , Delhi but on the way he was halted by the Mughul Indian ruler Muhammad Shah and his huge army, it greatly outnumbered the Persian army. The Indians also had war elephants with them, they had blades on their tusks which they were taught to use against the enemy. Nader shah sent his pots of oil to the front lines where the goats horns were ordered to be set on fire. The goats charged at the elephants who panicked and turned around killing thousands of Indian troops just like at the battle of al-Qādisiyyah, they were proved to be "double edged weapons".

Origin and training

The elephants were hired as mercenary troops as well as their riders they were from the Indian terriotries under persian rule some historians say that some were actually from Iran itself they were called Syrian Elephant.However this is highly unlikely as most historians and sources do not say this is correct.

All the times Persians used war elephants they were trained by their rider called a mahout would also ride the elephant into battle as well.The mahout would be from Indian origin and so were the archers. Training elephants was a risky job they would be hard to maintain because they ate so much food and water.Also they were hard to march with as huge paths needed to be cut in order for elephants to march through,another reason was because they were expensive to hire and they some times turn they would painck if they were under heavy fire from spears and arrows.Thousends of them lived in the "elephant farms"

Weapons

Persian elephants were from Indian origin and were probably armed with Indian styled weapons. The men(excluding the driver) sat in a large tower from which troops would fight. The elephant itself would normally be armed with thin plate armour (the Sassanids used chain Sassanids mail as well as thin plate armour)and would bear a large crenelated wooden "howdah" on its back. The troops would be armed with bow and arrows and javelin. The sworn enemy of the sassanids, the Eastern Roman empire, were terrified by the huge beasts, making them very effective in battle. When they were used at the Battle of al-Qādisiyyah, they came to be known as "double edged weapons". King ( shah ) Yazdgerd III attempted to use war elephants to fight off Arab invaders, however his elephants got sand in their eyes and panicked. They turned around and ran amok, killing their own troops. This was the final time Persians used elephants in battle. Fact|date=August 2008

Persian elephants outside of war

The Sassanids loved hunting and (according to the relief at Taq-i-Bustan) members of the royal family mounted themselves on elephants and went hunting. Elephants were bred in large "elephant farms".This would be were both males and females were kept,within the boundaries there would be a large lake and a forest.

Crushing by elephant

's feet")

Those people that were traitors to the army, enemies of the empire and criminals were crushed by the elephants this way and executed in the age of Sassanids they also used this method of execution for training for battle. An example for executed was when the Sassanid king Khosrau II, who had a harem of 3,000 wives and 12,000 female slaves, demanded as a wife Hadiqah, the daughter of the Christian Arab Na'aman, Na'aman refused to permit his Christian daughter to enter the harem of a Zoroastrian; for this refusal, he was trampled to death by an elephant.Fact|date=September 2008

In popular culture

* In the PC strategy game "Age of Empires II" the Persians' special unit is the war elephant.
* In the strategy game ' the Parthians use war elephants. In the expansion ' the Sassanids can use war elephants as well, and in "" the Achaemenid Persians also have them.
* In the 2007 film "300", the Persians are also shown as using war elephants, which is historically inaccurate.fact|date=September 2008

See also

* War elephant
* Crushing by elephant
* Sassanid army
* History of elephants in Europe
* List of historical elephants
* Military animals
* Cavalry tactics

References

Bibliography

* Michael B. Charles, ‘The Rise of the Sassanian Elephant Corps: Elephants and the Later Roman Empire’, "Iranica Antiqua" 42 (2007) 301-346
* Kaveh Farrokh, "Sassanian Elite Cavalry, AD 224-642" (Osprey Publishing 2005)
* David Nicolle, "Sassanian Armies : the Iranian empire early 3rd to mid-7th centuries AD" (Montvert Publishing 1996). ISBN 1-874101-08-6
* Philip Rance, ‘Elephants in Warfare in Late Antiquity’, "Acta Antiqua Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae" 43 (2003) 355-384
* Peter Wilcox, "Rome's Enemies 3: Parthians and Sassanid Persians" (Osprey Publishing 2001). ISBN 0-85045-688-6
* R. Nabil. "History of Iran" (2006)

External links

*http://www.mlahanas.de/Greeks/LX/WarElephant.html
*http://www.iranchamber.com/history/parthians/parthians.php
*http://www.artarena.force9.co.uk/sass2.htm