Roman Empire and Islam

okey dokey, how does a surviving ROman Empire deal with Islam? could be a Christian Roman Empire, but i would prefer one where there are alot of different religions
 
Depends. I mean, what is their economic and military base? Can the Romans deploy troops in significant numbers? OTL the Roman Empire fought a long but ultimate unsuccessful war against Islamic nations. If ATL Empire has more resources to deploy, the whole thing might be still born - an Islamic 'Empire' extending from the Sinai to Oman and down the African coast to Sansibar, yes, but no further than that. Being a border war province might make for an interesting change to Egyptian culture

Also, what happens to converts? If the Roman Empire keeps its traditional religious policy, converts to Islam will be dealt with harshly. Of course, if it is Christian, it will be even more hazardous to your health to be Muslim. But I don't think the Empire would under any circumstance short of total mnilitary defeat of the Arab tribes tolerate Muslim missionary activity. In their world, religious freedom ends where the fabric of society is threatened, and like Christianity, there is no way Islam can fit in.

Of course, without a monoreligious state as a model (and the brand of Judaism that developed in the context), Islam will look radically different anyway.
 
Scarecrow said:
okey dokey, how does a surviving ROman Empire deal with Islam? could be a Christian Roman Empire, but i would prefer one where there are alot of different religions

I'm confused. It WAS the Christian Roman Empire that dealt with Islam.
 
What if Christianity alway adhered by about 40% of the entire roman empire up until ISlam arrives. Could Roman emperoros convert to it.; Double points if the Western empire converts enmass to ISlam while the East stays heavily christian (including most of the Holy Land).
 
Justin Green said:
What if Christianity alway adhered by about 40% of the entire roman empire up until ISlam arrives. Could Roman emperoros convert to it.; Double points if the Western empire converts enmass to ISlam while the East stays heavily christian (including most of the Holy Land).

Difficuklt. one a religion with the kind of exclusivity claim and missionary imperative manages 40%, it will take some butterflying to keep the emperors from converting. But assuming they don't, and something like the acomodation of 311 is retained, it would certainly be possible. Christianity's roots in the west were much shallower in the first few ceturies, the church organisation was far more aristocratic and less organic, and it appears theology for the majority of churchgoers was so hazy that (according to complaints by Gregory of Tours) they occasionally went to Synagogue instead of church and didn't know the difference (except, it appears, the sermons were better). Surely, if we get Islam in place as a religio licita, many people would regard it as another flavour of Christianity. If a western Emperor (assuming there is such a thing) converts, lots of people looking out for #1 will toss bells and start bowing towards Mecca. Or Jerusalem. Or wherever else this variant of Islam is directed.

The proble is making Islam happen in anything like its OTL form while not allowing the conquests, I guess.
 
carlton_bach said:
Difficuklt. one a religion with the kind of exclusivity claim and missionary imperative manages 40%, it will take some butterflying to keep the emperors from converting. But assuming they don't, and something like the acomodation of 311 is retained, it would certainly be possible. Christianity's roots in the west were much shallower in the first few ceturies, the church organisation was far more aristocratic and less organic, and it appears theology for the majority of churchgoers was so hazy that (according to complaints by Gregory of Tours) they occasionally went to Synagogue instead of church and didn't know the difference (except, it appears, the sermons were better). Surely, if we get Islam in place as a religio licita, many people would regard it as another flavour of Christianity. If a western Emperor (assuming there is such a thing) converts, lots of people looking out for #1 will toss bells and start bowing towards Mecca. Or Jerusalem. Or wherever else this variant of Islam is directed.

The proble is making Islam happen in anything like its OTL form while not allowing the conquests, I guess.

Well, the Eastern Empire was apparently only superficially attached to Christianity judging by the speed with which it converted to Islam.

Islam more or less IS a flavor of Christianity. Muslims accept most Christian dogma, including the Virgin Birth, just not the divinity of Jesus.
 
Abdul Hadi Pasha said:
Well, the Eastern Empire was apparently only superficially attached to Christianity judging by the speed with which it converted to Islam.

Islam more or less IS a flavor of Christianity. Muslims accept most Christian dogma, including the Virgin Birth, just not the divinity of Jesus.

That's not true at all. It took centuries before Islam became the majority religion in most of the eastern provinces, and Anatolia was basically re-settled by turks.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
It should be noted that at the time of the Arab Conquest the ancient Near East (Levant, Syria, Anatolia, Mesopotamia, Arabia, and Iran) was still a very pluralistic region; there were scads of Jews all over the place (in previous centuries both Adiabene and Yemen had Jewish royal houses), and the substrate religions (Iranian religions in Cappadocia, Armenia, and Iran and varieties of, for lack of a better word, "paganism" elsewhere) were still going strong when Islam appeared on the scene. Both Syria and Mesopotamia had large populations of what the Arabs called Nabat, i.e. pagans (not to be confused with the Nabataeans, who are something else). The Christians themselves were by no means uniform; they were divided into a number of groups, each with their own claims to orthodoxy, and a bizarre array of amusing heresies. I get the impression from the Arab sources that Judaism and Christianity were very much a feature of urban life and that the countrysides were still predominantly "pagan."
 

Hapsburg

Banned
but islam does recognize christ as a prophet, like muhammed. its just that muhammed was the "final prophet" and the founder of islam.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
Hapsburg said:
but islam does recognize christ as a prophet, like muhammed. its just that muhammed was the "final prophet" and the founder of islam.
One thing - Muslims do not consider Muhammad to have founded Islam. As far as their concerned, Islam was the religion revealed at various points in history to the personalities in the Old and New Testaments, but the Christians and Jews have perverted it. That's why you often hear Muslims speak of Ibrahim "khalil Allah" (Abraham the Friend of God) as the first Muslim. Muhammad is merely the vehicle by which God's final revelation was made, and the seal of the prophets; Islam is most certainly not his work at all, given that he was just a normal man (although, according to the Muslims, the best man that ever lived, but a man nonetheless).
 

Hapsburg

Banned
aye. thanx for clearing that up.
in any case, islam makes the most sense of the 3 abrahamic relgions, in that it has a god, and all the acoutrements of christianity, without most of the unbelievalbe crap like turning water into wine and making the dead rise again.

if ya ask me, the bible is just a book about wine and fairly unbelievable sh*t. i think the wine came first, you know?
 
I see a major difficulty in the Roman emperors converting, and it is the issue of the Caliphate (which, by definition, is only one). I might see the Roman empire conquering the Islamic regions, and the emperor assuming the title of Caliph: OTOH, this "Caliph" would hardly be the traditional one, and there would be an unacceptable strife with the Christian component of the empire.

Conversely, I do not expect any special difficulty in having Roman citizens converting to Islam (not by militant missionary imams, though), provided that they pay their dues to the emperor (and here there might be the sticky issue of sacrifices to Rome and the Emperor). Obviously, this would work if there is a shift from the "all Christian" imperial philosophy toward something more practical (what I've in mind would be something "Chinese"): maybe Julian wins, and the tide is reversed. The "new" empire is more accepting of different religions and beliefs.
 
Actually, I do believe that the "non-fall" of the Western empire would be likely to result in a stagnant society.
I do realise that this is not the majority view (on this Board at least) :rolleyes:
 
LordKalvan said:
Actually, I do believe that the "non-fall" of the Western empire would be likely to result in a stagnant society.
I do realise that this is not the majority view (on this Board at least) :rolleyes:

Well, depending on the circumstances of the Western Empire's survival, it could really go both ways. If, say, Theodosius lives for another fifteen to twenty years (which, given that if I recall correctly, he was only in his early fifties at the time of his death - so him making it to early seventies would not have been unheard of at the time), by then the nature of the Empire would have significantly changed due to introduction - and the increased power of - Christianity, but its social institutions would have stayed relatively similar, and thus without a need to innovate, there probably would not have been much of that. Or, maybe if Justinian succeeds in reconquering the West with less difficulty, say, the reconquest of Italy being finished by 540 or so, and no plague that hit afterwards, the continuation from the Roman tradition would make this more like a "traditional" Roman Empire as opposed to the two successor states (Byzantium, which IMO is the evolution of Christian, non-pagan Rome, and HRE, which IMO is less of a true successor state, but still deserves a mention because of its very similar claims). Such an Empire would not be too different in character from the one that was ruled by Constantine - and if it successfully beats off any threats from the outside, there is going to be a lack of impetus to develop both socially and technologically.

On the other hand, if Rome was not the only superpower, that is, Eastern and Western Empires develop very different, separate identities that often clash with each other (which is the eventual premise of a "ATL Dark Ages Map" TL I am writing), there is the standoff that results in participants trying to get an edge, which comes from a variety of sources. Even if the Western Empire survives in a diminished state, the last chance for which IMO save for reconquest from the East would have been during the reign of Majorian, the loss of outlying provinces like North Africa and Gaul, and potential threat from the East could have created a more robust culture and society.

Of course, if we had a Roman Empire that is still in its pre-division borders and at a comparable level of strength, the sheer amount of manpower this empire would be able to muster would be too much for any Islamic eruption to handle, unless there are other factors, like plague, or series of exhausting wars against another power, etc etc. IMO in OTL Islam had a major break because it happened to be in the right place, at the right time... had Mohammad's hajj occurred twenty years after it did in OTL, Islam would have probably ended up as a purely Arabic religion, and would not have gotten to the proportions it did. Without the circumstances turning out "just right", Islam would not have been more than a regional heresy, in terms of the number of believers and their influence on the world at large. A powerful Roman Empire that is not exhausted from wars or other factors would have been too much for it to handle, unless it were to take a similar route to Christianity, that is, finding a champion for the faith that would do same things for Islam as Constantine did for Christianity. Without such a champion, and without outright conquest, in such ATL Islam would not have been able to make it out of Arabia, and possibly east coast of Africa.
 
ArchdukeofAustria said:
That's not true at all. It took centuries before Islam became the majority religion in most of the eastern provinces, and Anatolia was basically re-settled by turks.

That's pretty quick. I didn't mean overnight. And obviously I meant the areas conquered, like Syria, not Anatolia, which the Romans held onto for centuries more.

You can't say that Anatolia was resettled by the Turks. First of all, the Turks were Mongoloid when they arrived, and the quickly became Europeanized, so there must have been a whole lot of interbreeding going on. This dude doesn't even have brown eyes:

mehmedII2.jpg
 
LordKalvan said:
Actually, I do believe that the "non-fall" of the Western empire would be likely to result in a stagnant society.
I do realise that this is not the majority view (on this Board at least) :rolleyes:

Well, it's certainly not mine. The Empire rose and declined several times. The Byzantines, who lasted much longer, rose, fell, rose, fell, rose, fell, rose, then fell. It adapted and revived continuously. France has been around for 1,000 years, as has Britain, and Japan and China even longer. They have had their ups and downs, but certainly have not been stagnant. That's a very 19th c view.
 
Abdul Hadi Pasha said:
That's pretty quick. I didn't mean overnight. And obviously I meant the areas conquered, like Syria, not Anatolia, which the Romans held onto for centuries more.

You can't say that Anatolia was resettled by the Turks. First of all, the Turks were Mongoloid when they arrived, and the quickly became Europeanized, so there must have been a whole lot of interbreeding going on. This dude doesn't even have brown eyes:

Very true. I've thought about this before myself. Linguistically, the roots of the Altaic family are somwhere in eastern Siberia (as Mongol and Tungus are the furthest removed, and recently it has been suggested Japanese and Korean are extremely old turkic languages). Groups like the Turks, Azeris, and Turkmen are probably mainly the same populations that existed there before the Turkish invasion genetically, much as only 30% of Hungarian's genetic material comes from their linguistic ancestors in the Urals, the rest being very similar to the groups around them.
 

Leo Caesius

Banned
Turks (at least the Anatolian Turks) are also quite serious about shaving off all body hair (with the exception of the moustache). A friend of mine was once turned away from a bathhouse because he was not properly unshaven (they could care less about my body hair, being a western barbarian). I guess that's what happens when your society is dominated by Asiatics for several centuries.
 
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