Ancient Carthage constructed a ditch to check the depredations of the nomads of Numidia.[1084] The early kings of Assyria built a barrier across the plains of the Euphrates above Babylon to secure their dominion from the incursions of the desert Medes.[1085] In the fifth century of our era, the “Red Wall” was constructed near the northern frontier of Persia as a bulwark against the Huns.  It stretched for a hundred and fifty miles from the Caspian Sea at the ancient port of Aboskun eastward to the mountains, and thus enclosed the populous valley of the Gurgen River.[1086] In remote ages the neck of the Crimean Peninsula was fortified by a wall against the irruptions of the Tauro-Scythians.[1087] The Russians early in their national history used the same means of defense against Tartar incursions.  One wall was built from Pensa on the Sura River to Simbirsk on the Volga, just south of Kazan; another, further strengthened by a foss and palisades, extended from the fortress of Tsaritzin at the southern elbow of the Volga across the fifty-mile interval to the Don, and was still defended in 1794 by the Cossacks of the Don against the neighboring Kirghis hordes.[1088] The classic example of such fortifications against pastoral nomads, however, is the Great Wall of China.

[Sidenote:  Pastoral life as a training for soldiers.]

The nomad is economically a herdsman, politically a conqueror, and chronically a fighter.  Strife over pasturage and wells meets us in the typical history of Abraham, Lot and Isaac;[1089] it exists within and without the clan.  The necessity of guarding the pastures, which are only intermittently occupied, involves a persistent military organization.  The nation is a quiescent army, the army a mobilized nation.[1090] It carries with it a self-transporting commissariat in its flocks and herds.  Constant practice in riding, scouting and the use of arms, physical endurance tested by centuries of exertion and hardship, make every nomad a soldier.  Cavalry and camel corps add to the swiftness and vigor of their onslaught, make their military strategy that of sudden attack and swifter retreat, to be met only by wariness and extreme mobility.  The ancient Scythians of the lower Danubian steppes were all horse archers, like the Parthians.  “If the Scythians were united, there is no nation which could compare with them or would be capable of resisting them; I do not say in Europe, but even in Asia,” said Thucydides.[1091] In this opinion Herodotus concurred.[1092] The nomad’s whole existence breeds courage.  The independent, hazardous life of the desert makes the Arab the bravest of mankind, but the settled, agricultural Arab of Egypt and Mohammedan Spain lost most of his fighting qualities.[1093]

[Sidenote:  Military organization of nomads.]