WI Arabs settled America?

bard32

Banned
About a year or two ago, I saw a book by Steven Barnes, the title escapes me,
but it's about an Arab discovery, and ultimately, settlement, of America. The
POD is when Socrates escapes to Egypt, rather than take the hemlock, and helps the Egyptians. It continues with Carthage defeating Rome in the Punic
Wars. The country that the Arabs found in the American South is called Belialstan. WI Arabs settled America?
 
:confused: Islam is probably butterflied away ITTL.... so the Arabs would not expand to the large caliphate of OTL. They also would not be as prolific traders. Although a large pagan Arab empire would be interesting, it would not be feasible because the Arabs have no reason to expand.

Also, -stan is a Persian suffix. So non-Muslim Arabs would not have expanded into Persia, and thus would not use that in their language.
 
About a year or two ago, I saw a book by Steven Barnes, the title escapes me,
but it's about an Arab discovery, and ultimately, settlement, of America. The
POD is when Socrates escapes to Egypt, rather than take the hemlock, and helps the Egyptians. It continues with Carthage defeating Rome in the Punic
Wars. The country that the Arabs found in the American South is called Belialstan. WI Arabs settled America?

Lion's Blood, yes? Oh dear...
 

bard32

Banned
:confused: Islam is probably butterflied away ITTL.... so the Arabs would not expand to the large caliphate of OTL. They also would not be as prolific traders. Although a large pagan Arab empire would be interesting, it would not be feasible because the Arabs have no reason to expand.

Also, -stan is a Persian suffix. So non-Muslim Arabs would not have expanded into Persia, and thus would not use that in their language.

Maybe. I don't know. The premise of the book is that the Arabs expanded their
civilization while the Northern Europeans remained in a barbaric state.
 
When did the *Arabs show up in the New World? Egypt and Carthage of that day would not have been Arab influenced yet.
 

bard32

Banned
When did the *Arabs show up in the New World? Egypt and Carthage of that day would not have been Arab influenced yet.

They didn't. It's part of Steven Barnes' alternate history series. The POD, if
you've read the first post, and I hope you did, begins with Socrates fleeing to
Egypt rather than drink the poison hemlock.
 
How does Socrates escaping to egipt change anything?

and ewen if islam develops just as in OTL there would have to be real reasons for them to find and actually colonise north america, they would have a hold in the centre of the old world, no need to find any routes to ider india or china as they are right there, and all of africa to colonise, and, in this storyline, europe too

so why cross the atlantic?
 
Your best bet is to have the Muslims in Iberia and North Africa stay united and compete with their Eastern co-religionists. Constrained with heavily taxed Eastern goods, they launch an expedition to go to China another way... west. They discover America instead.
 
Your best bet is to have the Muslims in Iberia and North Africa stay united and compete with their Eastern co-religionists. Constrained with heavily taxed Eastern goods, they launch an expedition to go to China another way... west. They discover America instead.


Why would the taifa be taxed by people of their own religion?
 
I would suggest searching similar time-lines. Than find a nice hook.

This has been done before, alot. Check out some of the earlier threads....
 
Wait, isn't Belial the name of a demon? Why would the Arabs name anything after him?

Bilalistan, actually.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion's_Blood

Islam somehow shows up in spite of a POD over a millenium earlier (it's also apparently a Kinder, Gentler, More Feminist Islam): why so many Arabic names, I dunno, since it seems to have spread more by conversion than by conquest through much of Africa.

Bruce
 
Why would the taifa be taxed by people of their own religion?

I think he means to say "Ottoman merchants make Iberian Muslim buyers pay through the nose for Eastern products." (Anyhoo, if the Iberian Muslims are to be strong enough to defend their New World conquests from Christian Europe, we probably need to keep the Cordoban Caliphate at least semi-healthy, or have a reasonably muscular successor: a bunch of quarreling Taifa mini-states aren't going to cut it.)

Bruce
 
Bilalistan, actually.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lion's_Blood

Islam somehow shows up in spite of a POD over a millenium earlier (it's also apparently a Kinder, Gentler, More Feminist Islam): why so many Arabic names, I dunno, since it seems to have spread more by conversion than by conquest through much of Africa.

Bruce
Ah, so it was named after the man who prophesised it's existance. That makes more since.

Interestingly, uncircumsised heathens were known as the "sons of Belial" so, now that I think about it, "Belialstan" might still work for a continent filled with non-Abrahamic cultures.
 
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