The Cataphract

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A cataphract was a form of armored heavy cavalryman fielded in ancient warfare throughout Eurasia and Northern Africa.

The English word derives from the Greek kataphraktos, literally meaning "armored" or "completely enclosed". Historically, the cataphract was a very heavily armored horseman, with both the rider and mount almost completely covered in scale armor, and typically wielding a kontos or lance as his primary weapon.

Peoples and states deploying cataphracts at some point in their history included: the Scythians, Sarmatians, Alans, Parthians, Achaemenids, Sakas, Armenians, Seleucids, Pergamenes, Kingdom of Pontus, Greco-Bactrian Kingdom, Sassanids, Romans, Goths, Byzantines, Georgians, Chinese, Koreans, Jurchens, and Mongols.

In Europe, the fashion for heavily armored Roman cavalry seems to have been a response to the Eastern campaigns of the Parthians and Sassanids in the region referred to as Asia Minor, as well as numerous defeats at the hands of Iranian cataphracts across the steppes of Eurasia, most notably in the Battle of Carrhae in upper Mesopotamia (53 BC).


In this recreation of the Byzantine-Arab war the Arab lines were destroyed by the Byzantine heavy charge of the Cataphrats, after first releasing repeated arrow volleys.
The Byzantine-Arab war lasted 420 years but ended 1071 AD when the Byzantine Empire, with the help of Western Crusaders, re-established its position in the Middle East as a major power.