Jugurtha, War, Dacians

Unfortunately, because of the many North African revolts against Roman authority, historians tend to mention only those that were of exceptional violence and intensity.

 One such rising, known as the Jugurthine War (112-105 A.D) was initiated by the nationalist fervour of the North African patriot Jugurtha.

Directing an unrelenting guerrilla war, Jugurtha became a formidable adversary to his enemies, inflicting embarrassing defeats upon the Roman legions.

"The wars of Jugurtha," writes Graham Webster, demonstrated the value of the nimble Moorish horsemen who Trajan later found so useful against the Dacians. During the Dacian Wars of Eastern Europe (101-105), the Roman military relied heavily upon highly mobile units of Moorish cavalry.

On a Roman column dedicated to the wars of Trajan in Dacia, there is a special relief devoted to a large body of galloping horsemen easily recognisable as Moors. They are depicted with tiered and plaited rows of curled hair, short tunics, and saddle-less with only a single bridle. Another work dated to the same period is terracotta human head found in the Dacian city of Suicidava.

Described by archaeologists as the head of a "Negro or Moor," it is in many respects similar to the horse cavalry depicted on the Roman column. Black soldiers, specifically identified as Moors, were actively recruited by Rome and served tours of duty in Britain, France, Switzerland, Austria, Poland, Romania, etc.

An original brass military diploma which dates from the middle of the second century A.D. mentions Moorish soldiers in Moesia, which is modern Serbia. Another military diploma of A.D. speaks of Moorish soldiers from Africa in Dacia, or modern Romania, and also of auxiliary troops of the Dacian Moors.

A Roman document, Notitia Dignitatum dates from the beginning of the fifth century A.D., mentions several Moorish battalions in the Balkans and the Moorish military colony Ad Mauros was located on the Inn River near Vienna; and in what modern Besarabia, there is was a city called Maurocastrum.

According to the document Notitia Dignitatum, 2500to 5000 illyrian Moorish soldiers, in five separate military units, had served in the Near East. From this document we must deduce that at the beginning of the fifth century at least 100,000 descendants of Moors lived in Illyricum, which was located in the present-day Balkans.

Regarding specific military men of Moorish extraction, there were several Rome honourably, or had ancestors that participated in Rome’s foreign wars. In 253 A.D., for example, "After his departure, the governor of Lower Moesia (modern Serbia), M. Aemilius Aemilianus, a Moor born Mauritania, in defeating the Goths and was proclaimed emperor by his troops. In another case, Zenophilus, Consul of Numidia, boasts that my grandfather is a soldier; he had served in the Commitatus, for our family is of Moorish origin. To the Commitatus belonged the renowned Equites Mauri, a Black horse cavalry of North Africa.