- This passage is not authoritative enough to justify us in
believing that the mediaeval Abyssinians or Nubians did use elephants in
war, for Marco has already erred in ascribing that practice to the Blacks
of Zanjibar.
There can indeed be no doubt that elephants from the countries on the west
of the Red Sea were caught and tamed and used for war, systematically and
on a great scale, by the second and third Ptolemies, and the latter
(Euergetes) has commemorated this, and his own use of Troglodytic and
Ethiopic elephants, and the fact of their encountering the elephants of
India, in the Adulitic Inscription recorded by Cosmas.
This author however, who wrote about A.D. 545, and had been at the Court
of Axum, then in its greatest prosperity, says distinctly: "The Ethiopians
do not understand the art of taming elephants; but if their King should
want one or two for show they catch them young, and bring them up in
captivity." Hence, when we find a few years later (A.D. 570) that there
was one great elephant, and some say thirteen elephants,[3] employed in
the army which Abraha, the Abyssinian Ruler of Yemen led against Mecca, an
expedition famous in Arabian history as the War of the Elephant, we are
disposed to believe that these must have been elephants imported from
India. There is indeed a notable statement quoted by Ritter, which if
trustworthy would lead to another conclusion: "Already in the 20th year of
the Hijra (A.D. 641) had the Nubas and Bejas hastened to the help of
the Greek Christians of Oxyrhynchus (Bahnasa of the Arabs) ... against
the first invasion of the Mahommedans, and according to the exaggerated
representations of the Arabian Annalists, the army which they brought
consisted of 50,000 men and 1300 war-elephants."[4] The Nubians
certainly must have tamed elephants on some scale down to a late period
in the Middle Ages, for elephants, - in one case three annually, - formed a
frequent part of the tribute paid by Nubia to the Mahomedan sovereigns of
Egypt at least to the end of the 13th century; but the passage quoted is
too isolated to be accepted without corroboration. The only approach to
such a corroboration that I know of is a statement by Poggio in the matter
appended to his account of Conti's Travels. He there repeats some
information derived from the Abyssinian envoys who visited Pope Eugenius
IV. about 1440, and one of his notes is: "They have elephants very large
and in great numbers; some kept for ostentation or pleasure, some as
useful in war. They are hunted; the old ones killed, the young ones taken
and tamed." But the facts on which this was founded probably amounted to
no more than what Cosmas had stated. I believe no trustworthy authority
since the Portuguese discoveries confirms the use of the elephant in
Abyssinia;[5] and Ludolf, whose information was excellent, distinctly
says that the Abyssinians did not tame them.
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