The Muslim Roman Empire?

Okay, Carl von Bach posted a post (wow, that's redundant) on the idea of a christian spain with the umayyad level of development.

Now, I like the umayyads, especially in spain.

say that after tours, the muslims hold onto southern france; maybe gascony and languedoc. (This means they'll keep catalonia, incidentally).

Around 760, they begin advancing into italy, and by 800, Umayyad emir dominates the western med.

Thoughts?

Quite credible, actually. It wouldn't be a Roman Empire, though - the Ummayyads felt no ties or kinship with Rome.

What would happen to Western Christianity without the unifying band of the Papacy and the Frankish empire?

Would the still pagan Germans and Slavs convert to Christianity without the feeling of it having 'Rome' behind it? Might the Viking raids become a Jihad?

I don't think the Muslim conquerors would have much interest in northern France, Germany, or Britain. But it could become something like an alternate Afghanistan - Muslim by default and interesting only because of where you can get to through it...

carlton_bach said:

Quite credible, actually. It wouldn't be a Roman Empire, though - the Ummayyads felt no ties or kinship with Rome.

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Well yeah, because they didn't live there. Muslim swere aware of it, however, and I suspect that just as the ottomans were heirs to byzantium, so the umayyads would play up their roman heritage.

carlton_bach said:

What would happen to Western Christianity without the unifying band of the Papacy and the Frankish empire?

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The Baesilus might know.

The other idea might be a frankish rebound across the rhine, so that nuestria is the nucleus of a north-frankish state.

carlton_bach said:

Would the still pagan Germans and Slavs convert to Christianity without the feeling of it having 'Rome' behind it? Might the Viking raids become a Jihad?

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That depends on england, I should think.

carlton_bach said:

I don't think the Muslim conquerors would have much interest in northern France, Germany, or Britain. But it could become something like an alternate Afghanistan - Muslim by default and interesting only because of where you can get to through it...

Click to expand...

Who can say? I mean, england's much nicer than afghanistan. Maybe a starnge, heretical islam arises amongst the sons of the north.

Christian but not catholic British Isles with muslim mainland W Europe?

Tours 732 Muslim victory

WI the Muslims won at Tours ? How would the shaping of western European religion and culture have looked ?

Faeelin said:

(Ummayyads and Romans)
Well yeah, because they didn't live there. Muslim swere aware of it, however, and I suspect that just as the ottomans were heirs to byzantium, so the umayyads would play up their roman heritage.

(Western Christianity without Rome)
Who can say? I mean, england's much nicer than afghanistan. Maybe a starnge, heretical islam arises amongst the sons of the north.

Click to expand...

I'm not sure how seriously the Byzantine heritage of the Ottoman Sultans was taken. I mean, the Franks bnever really stopped considering themselves the fighting arm of Rome (however weird that looks to us). Would a government looking to Mecca and Damascus for legitimacy feel any need to address this?

I think if Islam took hold in NW-Europe it would displace the papacy. Not necessarily Christianity (though I'd expect a significant drop in numbers once it is no longer the route to power and prestige), but certainly anything as subversive as Cluny. THat would likely leave us with a far more diverse, pluralist, probably mostly monastic Christianity. Some synergies with Sufism?

But on the whole it'd probably be good for Europe in the short term. I approve of libraries.

carlton_bach said:

I'm not sure how seriously the Byzantine heritage of the Ottoman Sultans was taken. I mean, the Franks bnever really stopped considering themselves the fighting arm of Rome (however weird that looks to us). Would a government looking to Mecca and Damascus for legitimacy feel any need to address this?

I think if Islam took hold in NW-Europe it would displace the papacy. Not necessarily Christianity (though I'd expect a significant drop in numbers once it is no longer the route to power and prestige), but certainly anything as subversive as Cluny. THat would likely leave us with a far more diverse, pluralist, probably mostly monastic Christianity. Some synergies with Sufism?

But on the whole it'd probably be good for Europe in the short term. I approve of libraries.

Click to expand...

The Byzantine heritage of the Ottomans was taken very seriously. For a while this was downplayed by historians, not least of which in Turkey which pretty much ignored the entire Ottoman heritage, but is being more thoroughly examined again. The basic administrative and economic system of the Byzantines was essentially taken over intact.

A factor in all this is that although the ridiculously naive Western Powers helping Greece in its War for Independence were motivated by philhellenism, with schoolboy dreams of classical Athens, the Greeks themselves, although happy to exploit Europe's delusions, were thinking strictly in terms of a Byzantine revival, which the Ottomans were extremely aware of, and thus all things Byzantine were suspect in the Turkish Republic, given Greece's bloody attempt to recreate Byzantium after WWI.