By David Solway on April 23, 2010
The camel is a noble animal. Had it not existed, Islamic civilization would never have gotten off the ground, just as, in the absence of the horse, we in the West would still be lugging barrows and scraping along in donkey-hauled slipes. The camel is perhaps even preferable to the horse. It is fast, carries its own water, and provides what SUV manufacturers call “command seating,” rivaled only by the elephant. Indeed, Mark Twain understood the inherently exalted nature of the creature when he introduced the cameleopard in Huckleberry Finn. Of course, the cameleopard, or “Royal Nonesuch,” is really a giraffe (Arabic: ziraffah, “tallest one”), but it sounds like a camel with a temper and enviable velocity, a beast that demands respect.
