Camels in the front line

This paper is a short comment on the historical perception of camels in Europe with special regard to Ottoman Turkish occupation in the Carpathian Basin. Regardless of their varied functions ranging from tokens of royal selfrepresentation to mundane beasts of burden or war machinery, these animals always stood out as exotica without ever having been integrated into the local domestic fauna. The documentary and iconographic data cited complement known osteological evidence of camels in the study area.