7th century

Marwan was the most senior living Umayyad after Muawiyah, 25 years older than Yazid, and had a lifetime of experience in governance, unlike Yazid.  In his twenties he partook in the initial invasion of Ifriqiyah alongside Hassan, Husain, Ibn Zubayr, Ibn Umar and many other companions. Then he...

Emperor (Flavius) Leontius "Leo" Augustus ruled the Eastern Roman Empire from 695 to 698. A very popular emperor, he had overthrown Justinian II Rhinotmetus, who alienated both nobles and common people with his despotic rule, land policies and taxation. When Justinian was brought before him in...

According to Runciman (1977), Heraclius I, Eastern Roman Emperor from 610 to 641, originally considered abandoning Constantinople in the war with Sassanid Persia. Constantinople had been suffering throughout the campaign against the Persians as grain was the primary source of food for the city...

So we in this forum talked about late byzantine recovery or have things never happened, but what about an earlier recovery? in this case, say after 646 how early and with that good pods in the 7th century and 8th century can the byzantine empire start recovering some land like the 9th and...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peter_(curopalates) I know it's unlikely, but say that the whole revolt ends with Peter not dead, and instead placed on the throne by the army after his brother is ousted. Would that be better or worse than Phocas becoming emperor?

What if early medieval Japan had never gone through the Taika reforms that transformed its society according to Chinese influences in the mid-7th century? What could have happened?

Challenge: With a POD from 450s to 700s, make a group of Huns survive in either Europe, Eurasia, the Caucasus, or Asia. So, make a modern-day Hunnic Ethnicity, after Attila, either a small ethnic group, or a large nation of Hunnic People. Bonus points, for a modern-day Hunnic nation(s), and...

What if Old Great Bulgaria wasn't conquered by the Khazars? How might things be different?

In 642 CE a "last stand" took place at Nahavand in modern-day Iran, where the Sassanid army lost to the invading forces of the Rashidun Caliphate. After this defeat, the Sassanid king Yazdgerd III was never again able to muster the forces to seriously impede the Arab conquest of the rest of his...

A POD that I think is underused is: what if the orthodox Muslims eventually won the Ridda wars, but only after so long and brutal a struggle that the Arab military expansion machine and unified polity permanently fell apart? It would leave a recognizable Islam (plus possibly a small remnant of...

In a scenario where Islam never existed (let's say Muhammad dies before he founds Islam), what becomes of the Byzantine/Eastern Roman Empire and Sassanian Persia? How do the two empires develop without Islam? What's the "life expectancy" for the Sassanids without Islam arising?

What if instead of Muhammad uniting the Arab tribes under the banner of Islam in the 7th century (let's say Muhammad dies a sickly infant), a Genghis Khan/Temujin-esque figure had united the Arab tribes under his banner and launched a campaign of expansion against the weakened Byzantine and...

Listo f geographic names and their OTL equivalents: Adarbaigan =Iranian Azerbaijan Albania= Azerbaijan Assyria= northern Iraq (including Irasqi Kurdistan) Betica= Andalusia Beth Qatriye= Qatar and UAE Ifriqia=Tunisia and ad Tripolitania Mazun= northern Oman Miaphysite = Oriental Orthodox...