#0: Premise. Shia China: Challenge accepted!
yboxman
Banned
This idea has been kicked around a few times. And its an attractive concept because Islam is an effective antidote for China's tendency towards isolationism from the Song (or even post An Lushan Tang) onwards - the Haj alone would ensure constant traffic and exposure of China with Central Asia and the Middle East. It is also a uber China-Wank: because China would be the largest and most powerful political entity within the Dar-el Islam by far and would hence be able to exercise significant leadership, perhaps even sinification, in a cultural-political zone streatching all the way to the Atlantic.
But there's a reason why no one has offered a likely scenario for this happening.
Basically, the problem is that :
a. On the popular conversion level Budhism arrives in China too early, and its coexistence with Taoism and Confucianism (the state ideology) leave little spiritual void for Islam to fill. Besides, Islam does not do peaceful conversion too well - with the indonesian (and Cham and Khmer) exception armed missionaries + one way conversion and marriage is how it has hisorically spread. Which is how the Hui came to be - Central Asian merchants, soldiers and conquerers (well, hangers on to Xia, Jin and Mongol conqurers).
b. Conversion from the top doesn't work well either - you would need the emperor to be exposed to it before conversion becomes political suicide, especially given how "conventional" Islam would view the well established rituals he must publicly perform to maintain the mandae ofheaven. There is also the problem that until the collapse of the Abbasid Caliphate conversion essentially means becoming an Abbasid tributary which is something no CHinese Emperor would contemplate.
c. Conversion by conquest requires that the conqurers be Muslim. And the problem is that the core territories of China's historical conqurers (Liao, Jin and even the Mongols) are too far from Muslim influence to be realistically converted. I won't go into the insanity of believing that the Umayyads or Abbasids can push much further east than they did OTL before they collapse.
So what does that leave? Basically a POD in which Timur comes rescue the Northern Yuan earlier, somehow flips the fairly Budhist commited Yuan and/or absorbs them, and then manages to leave a stable Muslim ruled northern China. Aside from Timur's Empire coming apart at the seam almost as soon as he died, the best, best case scenario here is a Mughal/ Delhi sultanate type Hierarchy of Muslims at the top with a few pockets elsewhere. It's too late to make too many inroads amongst the Han masses - who will eventually revolt against the foreign overlords/religion.
However, I have thought of a silver bullet to fix all these issues. I present to you.... Shia China. POD - the battle of Karbala. It's not worth trying if you won't go for broke.
But there's a reason why no one has offered a likely scenario for this happening.
Basically, the problem is that :
a. On the popular conversion level Budhism arrives in China too early, and its coexistence with Taoism and Confucianism (the state ideology) leave little spiritual void for Islam to fill. Besides, Islam does not do peaceful conversion too well - with the indonesian (and Cham and Khmer) exception armed missionaries + one way conversion and marriage is how it has hisorically spread. Which is how the Hui came to be - Central Asian merchants, soldiers and conquerers (well, hangers on to Xia, Jin and Mongol conqurers).
b. Conversion from the top doesn't work well either - you would need the emperor to be exposed to it before conversion becomes political suicide, especially given how "conventional" Islam would view the well established rituals he must publicly perform to maintain the mandae ofheaven. There is also the problem that until the collapse of the Abbasid Caliphate conversion essentially means becoming an Abbasid tributary which is something no CHinese Emperor would contemplate.
c. Conversion by conquest requires that the conqurers be Muslim. And the problem is that the core territories of China's historical conqurers (Liao, Jin and even the Mongols) are too far from Muslim influence to be realistically converted. I won't go into the insanity of believing that the Umayyads or Abbasids can push much further east than they did OTL before they collapse.
So what does that leave? Basically a POD in which Timur comes rescue the Northern Yuan earlier, somehow flips the fairly Budhist commited Yuan and/or absorbs them, and then manages to leave a stable Muslim ruled northern China. Aside from Timur's Empire coming apart at the seam almost as soon as he died, the best, best case scenario here is a Mughal/ Delhi sultanate type Hierarchy of Muslims at the top with a few pockets elsewhere. It's too late to make too many inroads amongst the Han masses - who will eventually revolt against the foreign overlords/religion.
However, I have thought of a silver bullet to fix all these issues. I present to you.... Shia China. POD - the battle of Karbala. It's not worth trying if you won't go for broke.
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