DBWI the Caliphate wins

[Galba Otho Vitelius]

With Islam in the news recently, its worth remembering that Arabia for a time was united under a theocratic Islamic state called the "Caliphate" that actually defeated the Persians and took over Mesopotamia and also took over much of Syria, before being swatted away by Heraclios and the East Romans in the little known battle of Yarmouk.

The obvious alternative history question is what would have happened if the Caliphate had survived and defeated the East Romans at least as badly as they defeated the Persians?

 

[Koprulu Mustafa Pasha]

They won't go further than Egypt. They don't have a navy to challenge the Romans and marching through the Libian desert is pointless. What they gonna do? March all the Way to Iberia? Lol

 

[Flavius Iulius Nepos]

They won't go further than Egypt. They don't have a navy to challenge the Romans and marching through the Libian desert is pointless. What they gonna do? March all the Way to Iberia? Lol

That would require an ASB amount of incompetence. No way the Romans are gonna lose all those provinces that they held for centuries, maybe something temporary could happen but the Romans would just come back with another army. The resources available to them are way too superior compared to what the Arabs had at their disposal. And since its impossible for the Arabs to bypass the Romans it would be pointless to discuss about a conflict against the Berbers or the Romano-barbarian kingdoms.

 

[ArchimedesCircle]

Holding Egypt isn't out of the question, though it does lead to an issue of the empire having to very big population centers on opposite ends of its territory. I foresee the territory splitting quite quickly, probably in only a century or two.

 

[Escape Zeppelin]

That would require an ASB amount of incompetence. No way the Romans are gonna lose all those provinces that they held for centuries, maybe something temporary could happen but the Romans would just come back with another army.

I can see the Romans losing those provinces but even then the invaders will be assimilated within a few generations. The population imbalance between Arabia and Egypt means that conquerors would never be more than a drop in the bucket and will likely be Greek-Egyptian in short order.

 

[Planet of Hats]

No way the Romans are gonna lose all those provinces that they held for centuries

Ehhhhh... there's precedent for nomadic groups punching above their weight, as demonstrated by the fact that most of the people in ex-Constantinople speak Karluk and the only people claiming to still be Rome are a few arch-traditional politicians in Afer[1] who think they're the South Romans.

Islam did fine for itself anyway once its military conquest attempts crashed and burned and it rounded into a religion of oceanic and inland traders. It's why everything south of the Sahara today is Muslim, along with a lot of coastal enclaves on the Subcontinent and a lot of southeast Asia. Arab merchants absolutely dominated a critical leg of the maritime Silk Road; that alone was enough to spread Islam around.


[1] Tunisia.

 

[Deleted member 114175]

At first the idea sounded ridiculous, but thinking about it, we underestimate the fractures that existed in the Roman Empire at the time. I could totally see the Arabs using their tactical advantages to dominate the battlefield, while so-called "Christian heretic" auxiliaries such as Copts, Miaphysites, Jacobites, Melkites, etc. who all agreed "Anyone But Constantinople", are conscripted to create what would be the world's most disciplined navy (given the importance of the ports in Syria and Egypt) and ravage the Roman's shipping lanes. They would largely fall in line with the Arabs and the Arab empire with the former Hellenistic cities would probably usher in a new golden age in the Near East. Maybe they could even siege Constantinople though I doubt it would be successful quite yet at that time period.

Ehhhhh... there's precedent for nomadic groups punching above their weight, as demonstrated by the fact that most of the people in ex-Constantinople speak Karluk and the only people claiming to still be Rome are a few arch-traditional politicians in Afer[1] who think they're the South Romans.

To be fair, who doesn't speak Karluk? That Karluk is the lingua hellenica of Europa, Tartary, and beyond doesn't negate that most nation-states in the Med. are ultimately derived from dioceses of the Roman Empires.

 

[Skallagrim]

I say that if you can march through Persia, you can march through North Africa. First off, yes, it's fairly obvious that the Caliphate could not have defeated the Romans outright (@SeaCambrian makes a good case, but it relies on "eveything goes against the Romans and favour of the Caliphate"-- that's not realistic). But consider this: the Christians of regions like egypt were chafing under the Roman Orthodoxy the most at that time, and Egypt was close to the Caliphate and less close to Constantinople. So say the Caliphate moves into egypt with everything it's got? I think it can sweet through North Africa, go down the Nile etc. -- you could be looking at an Islamic Africa TL here!

It would be very interesting if the Romans still manage to sweep Islam out of Arabia, just as they did in OTL (when the arabian heartland basically just moved east to co-opt Persia). Same thing could happen here. We'd get a sort of "Islam goes west instead" mirror-world. The main Rome-Caliphate conflict would then be across the Med! Could this mean a large-scale re-run of the old rome-Carthage rivalry? One wonders.

 

[FillyofDelphi]

Are you talking about the Qur'an burning case that's going through the (secular) courts of Volgastan? It's a really interesting case, I'll give you that: the question of Sharia courts and their rulings' relations to secular law has been a real political bugbear for the post-Khaganate states ever since the Republican revolution back at the 1920's.

Anyways, to answer your question: an Islam that manages to crack the Romans is naturally going to find its expansionist energies drawn towards the riches of North Africa and Asia Minor, rather than being obliged to expand along the northern and eastern routes we saw historically. It's worth noting that Constantinople's richest provinces : Egypt and Asia Minor, would be vulnerable, and as pressure grows in the Balkans a Caliphate with a stronger presence could press in again during moments of vulnerability. They probably don't get further than Antioch or so in the later, but once they secured the Delta the rest of Egypt would be untenable. I imagine this leads to a stronger Coptic surviving presence (given Islam's tolerance towards minor Christian sects relative to the post-Nicean Imperial rite) and perhaps the development of an Islamic naval tradition more influences by European rather than Indian design

 

[Galba Otho Vitelius]

The Romans did lose Egypt and Syria to the Persians in the early seventh century, so the Caliphate certainly could have taken both if Yarmouk had gone the other way.

 

[El_Presidente]

At most they could have taken Egypt (and good luck at holding it with it's coptic and literate population) and Syria, but then what? They would be boxed: the Libian desert on one side, the Persian mountains on the other, and north of it the Anatolian mountains. It's just too defensible, and eventually the egyptian copts, the christian syrians or the mesopotamian zoroastrians would revolt against the "barbaric and illiterate" invaders from the desert.

 

[TachfineAlMansour]

With Islam in the news recently, its worth remembering that Arabia for a time was united under a theocratic Islamic state called the "Caliphate" that actually defeated the Persians and took over Mesopotamia and also took over much of Syria, before being swatted away by Heraclios and the East Romans in the little known battle of Yarmouk.

The obvious alternative history question is what would have happened if the Caliphate had survived and defeated the East Romans at least as badly as they defeated the Persians?

Didn't they won the battle of yarmouk ?

 

[BlazedSoulofHate]

Didn't they won the battle of yarmouk ?

(ooc: This is a dbwi or double blind what if, which is a discussion of alternate history as if we were in the universe where the change occurs. In this case, the Arabs lose the battle of Yarmouk and thus the Byzantine Empire struggles on with Egypt, the Levant and North Africa intact. This in this world Constantinople was conquered later in its history and we act as people in that universe)

With Caliphate succeeding, would we thus see a weaker Islamic influence in the Indian subcontinent ? Today Hindustan and Devanagar are bitter enemies, with the Narmanda/ Binjaluf River being one the world's most militarised borders. Maybe a more successful caliphate promotes westward expansion, and fails to penetrate the Khyber Pass, let alone into Gujarat, Delhi and the Bengal Delta?

 

[TachfineAlMansour]

(ooc: This is a dbwi or double blind what if, which is a discussion of alternate history as if we were in the universe where the change occurs. In this case, the Arabs lose the battle of Yarmouk and thus the Byzantine Empire struggles on with Egypt, the Levant and North Africa intact. This in this world Constantinople was conquered later in its history and we act as people in that universe)

With Caliphate succeeding, would we thus see a weaker Islamic influence in the Indian subcontinent ? Today Hindustan and Devanagar are bitter enemies, with the Narmanda/ Binjaluf River being one the world's most militarised borders. Maybe a more successful caliphate promotes westward expansion, and fails to penetrate the Khyber Pass, let alone into Gujarat, Delhi and the Bengal Delta?

Wow, this is advanced. Sorry, but i'm new to the forum and I didn't understood the thread when i first stumbled on it.

 

[BlazedSoulofHate]

Wow, this is advanced. Sorry, but i'm new to the forum and I didn't understood the thread when i first stumbled on it.

All good man

 

[mythmonster2]

With Caliphate succeeding, would we thus see a weaker Islamic influence in the Indian subcontinent ? Today Hindustan and Devanagar are bitter enemies, with the Narmanda/ Binjaluf River being one the world's most militarised borders. Maybe a more successful caliphate promotes westward expansion, and fails to penetrate the Khyber Pass, let alone into Gujarat, Delhi and the Bengal Delta?

That would have a whole bunch of butterflies. If there are less Islamic merchants in the Indian Ocean, maybe Al-Janubiya [Australia] gets discovered later. Would it be the Chinese to get there first, Indonesians, maybe even Europeans?