What if either Muhammad was killed before the Hijra or the forces of the Jihad were completely defeated before the Caliphate controls all of the Arabian peninsula? How will this change history?
AHC: Islam Fails
- Thread starter Barbarossa Rotbart
- Start date
yourworstnightmare
Banned
No Islam can lead to many things:
1. Another religion is born in Arabia, that might be able to spread elsewhere
2. The Arabs are in time completely converted to Christianity, Judaism or Zoroastrianism
3. Although many Arabs are converted, some keep to their old tribal beliefs.
1. Another religion is born in Arabia, that might be able to spread elsewhere
2. The Arabs are in time completely converted to Christianity, Judaism or Zoroastrianism
3. Although many Arabs are converted, some keep to their old tribal beliefs.
Snake Featherston
Banned
In many ways, few of them for the better. For one thing the Middle East will in all probability remain divided for some time between two monotheistic empires in a perpetual war until both implode and are replaced by different versions. Given that the ERE was by far the more fragile of the two regimes the Middle East winds up being Persianized and Christianity replaced with Zoroastrianism.
How do you figure Byzantium was more fragile? It survived the Islamic expansion, Persia didn't.
Here's a thought, how would no Islam effect Christianity? Would would Christianity be like without its arch-nemesis? Would Christianity be as dominant in Western Europe without the threat of the Arabs? Maybe paganism would persist longer? At the very least Christianity would fracture more as Coptic Christianity would be stronger, possibly Egypt would split off and Christianity is divided between the Catholic, Orthodox and Coptic world.
Snake Featherston
Banned
Because of how many times the Persians captured Byzantine Emperors and the not-so-minor reality that Khosroes II had shown that the ERE was vulnerable to any sufficiently willing and capable Sassanian who attempted to finish the job. I might note that instead of Muslims ruling Jerusalem and the Coptic Patriarchate, it will be Zoroastrians, as around the time that the ERE starts persecuting the Monophysites and a foreign army comes knocking......
Christianity without Islam will fixate on Jews a lot more than it did IOTL with horrific consequences for the Jews, who will have no Caliphates to foster the growth of independent Jewish scholarships and no places of refuge whatsoever from the Church's established patterns of repression and thuggery aimed at them. Or alternately it just replaces its fear of the Muslim Other with a Zoroastrian Other and invents Medieval myths of Moloch and passing children through the fire to ensure that the Church knows the infidels are bad people. Medieval Christianity was a brutal, intolerant, xenophobic religion of thugs so it's not like it would be very difficult or cost the Church too much sleep at night to invent blatant lies about an actually non-Abrahamic religion given how they twisted and warped Islam IOTL.
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Snake Featherston
Banned
Given that the Sassanian nobility was tied to Zoroastrianism, and given that it's likely to conquer Egypt and Palestine in any renewed, post-plague, no-Islam war with the ERE and hold them, I can see it but from an opportunistic "let's make more money" POV like most of the early conversions to Islam. Zoroastrianism would replace Islam as Christianity's Bogeyman and the same types of smears, lies, and outright distortions applied to Islam would apply to Zoroastrianism. Probably the Church would invent practices of passing eldest children through the fire and associate Ormazd with Moloch instead of claiming Muslims were schismatic-heretic Christians.
Wolfpaw
Banned
I could see Zoroastrianism becoming the popular religion of the burgeoning merchant classes and urban elites of NE if the Persians are able to sustain dominance of the area for a few generations.
I agree with your sentiments on how miserable European Jewry is going to be ITTL. Persia would probably treat them well; I don't recall the Sassanids being particularly anti-Semitic. Perhaps "Next year in Jerusalem" becomes a bit more imperative and we see Jews leave Europe for the ME and North Africa.
Or maybe they move North and we get some Jewish Vikings
I agree with your sentiments on how miserable European Jewry is going to be ITTL. Persia would probably treat them well; I don't recall the Sassanids being particularly anti-Semitic. Perhaps "Next year in Jerusalem" becomes a bit more imperative and we see Jews leave Europe for the ME and North Africa.
Or maybe they move North and we get some Jewish Vikings
Snake Featherston
Banned
I could see Zoroastrianism becoming the popular religion of the burgeoning merchant classes and urban elites of NE if the Persians are able to sustain dominance of the area for a few generations.
I agree with your sentiments on how miserable European Jewry is going to be ITTL. Persia would probably treat them well; I don't recall the Sassanids being particularly anti-Semitic. Perhaps "Next year in Jerusalem" becomes a bit more imperative and we see Jews leave Europe for the ME and North Africa.
Or maybe they move North and we get some Jewish Vikings
Eh, the Sassanians had bouts of persecution and were rather more zealously Zoroastrian than other Persian dynasties were. I doubt they'd match the ERE or Christian states in that regard but that's not a ringing endorsement.
I'm not sure about Persia stability following Heraclius' campaigns, though it is conceivable that if they had time to recover they could have taken Egypt and Syria. I think by that point it was just a matter of time before the Byzantines lost that for good. But at this point the Byzantines still control North Africa, Italy and parts of Spain. The Visigoth Kingdom would also survive for the forseeable future, and may stay Arian.
That would be extremely interesting with Zoroastrianism taking the place of Islam in the West as the enemy. I guess Hinduism would probably stay more prominent in South Asia and maybe the Tang Empire would last a bit longer in China. This would make for a very interesting timeline.
Umm, no.
I don't know why I'm back from my self-imposed leave for this, but whatever.
Zoroastrianism was a dying religion. A sign of social status rather than a real religion, it had little hold among anyone but the inhabitants of Fars and the Magi who so fervently preached it. There's a reason that Mesopotamia was so Nestorian. Find yourself a better 'version' of Zoroastrianism, or just give up on it, because it was on the way out. And no, neither Persia nor Byzantium are in any state to fight each other, and Persia is almost certainly worse off. The amount of crap that happened to her leaves her ripe for any invasion by the Zunbils or some other bordering peoples.
No, they will not stay Arian, because they were already Catholics. The Visigoths adopted Catholicism and the Roman-Iberian culture during the rule of King Rekhared I between 586 and 601.
Snake Featherston
Banned
Without Islam they *will* have that time to recover as their only real menace would be the ERE who will have the same problems recovering it did IOTL.
At the very least Indian culture will be dramatically butterflied and affected without Perso-Islamic influences on it. How that effect develops long-term I'm not sure.
The Persians greatest enemies were in the east, not the west, and Constantinople is much more defensible than Ctesiphon, by location alone.
The Persians will never take the Romans capital, the Romans sacked the Persian's capital on many occasions. They couldn't conquer each other, but I'd say that the ERE is more likely to survive a war with Persia.
Snake Featherston
Banned
I agree the ERE as a whole can and will survive, but whether it holds on to Palestine and Egypt forever is an interesting question, though I can't see Persia holding on to them for any very long period of time either. Hmm....Coptic equivalent of the Fatimid Caliphate, anyone?
It’s possible that another religion would have appeared in Arabia since the islamic prophet encountered at least 4-5 other rival prophets in Arabia and then there are the Hanifs / Hanifism which could have evolved into a organised religion rivalling (even surpassing) islam.
Also possible is that if a great game of Arabia never materialized between the Byzantines and Persians that Arabia itself could eventually become a battleground between Axum, Byzantine, Persia and from further afield either the Guptas or the Chalukyas, with some Arabs becoming Indianized via the spice trade from Indian merchants in a similar manner to how Hinduism/Buddhism and later islam dominated southeast asia in real-life.
No islam would have also meant a more religiously diverse asia / north africa, with the Tang and Persian Empires possibly expanding into central asia as well as no Mongol invasion of west asia after the Kara-Khitans (unless the Mongols began invading due to the Sassanids suddenly persecuting Nestorians since many Mongols apparently embraced Nestorianism).
Also possible is that if a great game of Arabia never materialized between the Byzantines and Persians that Arabia itself could eventually become a battleground between Axum, Byzantine, Persia and from further afield either the Guptas or the Chalukyas, with some Arabs becoming Indianized via the spice trade from Indian merchants in a similar manner to how Hinduism/Buddhism and later islam dominated southeast asia in real-life.
No islam would have also meant a more religiously diverse asia / north africa, with the Tang and Persian Empires possibly expanding into central asia as well as no Mongol invasion of west asia after the Kara-Khitans (unless the Mongols began invading due to the Sassanids suddenly persecuting Nestorians since many Mongols apparently embraced Nestorianism).
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Flocculencio
Donor
Antiochus;5567493 Hinduism would probably stay more prominent in South Asia[/QUOTE said: