St. Caleb's War Elephants

This saint rescued Christians, destroyed bad guys, and may have inspired J.R.R. Tolkein's Mûmakil in Lord of the Rings...

In the previous article, we read about St. Caleb — the valiant king of Aksum (Ethiopia) who marched across the sea, defeated a wicked Jewish king who was persecuting Christians, and then laid his crown at Christ’s feet and entered a monastery. Today we’re zooming in on one of the wildest details of that story: St. Caleb’s war elephants.

Yes, you read that right. War elephants. And these weren’t the friendly circus kind. These were African bush elephants — thirteen feet tall at the shoulder, eleven tons of muscle, tusk, and rage — stomping into an epic battle for the Cross.

According to Arab sources, King Caleb ferried over 170,000 men across the Red Sea — the largest invasion East Africa or Arabia had ever seen. They came clad in quilted armor, armed with steel, and even reinforced with Somali mercenaries. And towering above the myriad soldiers, a mighty retinue of highly trained elephants marched to war.

Imagine it. War elephants the size of small houses disembarking on Arabian shores. Dunaan, the Jewish tyrant who had butchered thousands of Christians in Najran, had braced himself for an attack. But no amount of planning could prepare him for the thundering march, the crashing of tusks, and the tremor of the earth beneath charging elephants.

Dunaan tried to fight smart. His plan was textbook: pin Caleb’s front line with infantry, then swing cavalry around the edges to outflank them. On paper, it could have worked. In reality? Caleb had been waiting for this moment.

The Aksumite elephants charged. Horses panicked, bolting in terror. Cavalry formations crumbled. The elephants smashed into the flanking force, leaving Dunaan’s infantry wide open. Caleb’s men surged forward, turned the tables, and broke the enemy lines.

What followed was slaughter. Dunaan’s army fled in chaos, harried and cut down as they ran. The Battle of Zafar was not just a defeat — it was the end of organized resistance. The tyrant’s days were numbered.

You’ve probably heard of Hannibal’s elephants crossing the Alps, or Indian kingdoms fielding them in massive numbers. But Ethiopia’s use of elephants has barely made a dent in the Western imagination. And here’s what makes the kingdom of Aksum different: their elephants weren’t the smaller, trainable, Asian kind. Nor were they the now-extinct species used by Hannibal. These were African bush elephants — the largest, most temperamental, most untamable elephants on earth.

Circuses never use them. Safari parks won’t touch them. If you manage to find elephant rides in Africa, they’re always the smaller, gentler forest elephants. Bush elephants are a whole different category: stubborn, dangerous, unpredictable. And yet somehow, Aksum’s trainers managed to turn them into war machines.

For years, historians doubted this was even possible. Surely, they argued, the Ethiopians must have imported Asian elephants from India, or used the smaller forest elephants from Central Africa. But fresh research in the Journal of Late Antiquity says otherwise. Contemporary drawings, Arab accounts, and even Roman notes all point to the same conclusion: Aksum really did tame bush elephants.

Think about it: these are animals no modern trainer dares put under saddle, and yet King Caleb had them charging into cavalry lines. It’s one of the most jaw-dropping feats of animal training in history.

We don’t know how long Aksum had been raising war elephants, but Caleb’s massive deployment suggests the practice was centuries old. It makes sense. Aksum was a hub of the ivory trade. Their merchants studied elephants, harvested tusks, and knew their ways. Maybe that familiarity bred not just profit, but mastery.

And here’s a fun twist: if you’ve read The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King, you’ll remember the battle of Minas Tirith, when gigantic war elephants — the “Mûmakil” — stormed into the fight. Tolkien based the Haradrim (the elephant-riders) on his studies of ancient East Africa. That means those terrifying beasts in his book can indirectly trace their inspiration back to St. Caleb’s war elephants in Ethiopia.

St. Caleb wasn’t just a pious king who prayed for deliverance. He was a warrior who marshaled the largest army his part of the world had ever seen — and unleashed war elephants to crush a persecutor of Christians.

The same God who split the sea for Moses sent the waves to lift Caleb’s fleet. The same Christ who promises justice empowered a king’s sword — and a herd of elephants — to smash through evil.

It’s history that reads like fantasy. But it’s all real.

When Ethiopia’s elephants went to war, they carried not just soldiers, but the Cross of Christ — and they trampled tyranny underfoot.

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If you missed the setup, read the previous post: “A King Who Went to War for the Cross.” Then come back and re-read about St. Caleb’s war elephants. You’ll feel the ground shake.