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Hi everyone,

I am overjoyed to have discovered this forum. Rarely seen so much high quality work on the internet ... Congratulations to all. Keep it coming.

I have been thinking about a TL for some time now and would like to get some feedback / ideas / critiques. What do you think of the following premises:

  • The muslim Rashidun armies lose the battle of Yarmuk in 636
  • The blowback of this defeat forces the Rashidun caliphate towards a less militaristic and more spiritual path. After a coup, Ali becomes Caliph in 639
  • In 640 muslim armies conquer Yemen, which becomes their political homebase (Mecca remains Mecca of course).
  • For the next 50 years, the Caliphate becomes a trading state (Byzantine Egypt <--> India through the red sea). As such, they compete with Axum and sometimes clash with them at sea.
  • Muslim missionaries are sent to Axum while a preexisting Axumite christian population continues to be tolerated in muslim Yemen.
  • All the while, Byzantium goes on as before: palace coups, theological bickering, war with the persians and the slavs every 25 years. The Heraclian dynasty thrives.
  • In Axum, muslim missionaries develop a form of islam more palatable to their christian listeners: a kind of Ebionite-Muslim Synthesis. Jesus is a prophet and a man. But he is the Massih/Mahdi and will come back at the end of time to lead the believers to salvation.
  • After a century of theological debate across the Bab el-Mandeb straits, both Axum and Yemen (together with the rest of the muslim Umma) adopt Ebionite-Islam as their common religion. How this happens is a key phase of the TL and needs to be fleshed out in detail. A mix of semitic propagandistic poetry, byzantine theological arguments and reformation-like preaching is expected.
  • From 750 onwards, muslim-ebionite traders begin to colonize the east coast of Africa. Outposts in Somalia and Kenya at first, then Zanzibar, Madagascar and further south.
  • Meanwhile, in Europe, the Byzantine Empire cycles through a China-like succession of dynastic rises and falls, interspersed by periods of anarchy. Dynasties of foreign origin (Armenians, Bulgars, Franks, Varegs, etc.) periodically re-inject some vitality into the old imperial organism. As a result of not being fatally wounded by the muslims as in OTL, the Byzantine Empire will survive mostly unchanged for the next 1000 years and will even expand into Western Europe (just like China expanded into the Tarim Basin and Tibet). Northwestern Europe remains an unruly, primitive and poorly controlled backwater of Byzantium.
  • In the 930s, a muslim-ebionite colony is founded in South Africa. Contrary to the previous trading outposts, this is one is for settlement. Yemen and the Ethiopian highlands are overpopulated and there is good farmland to be had in South Africa. (any idea about how this colony could be named ?).
  • In the 1220s, traders from muslim-ebionite South Africa reach Byzantine Morocco by the Atlantic route.
  • In 1350 a muslim-ebionite South African ship blown west by a storm discovers Brazil.
  • The rest is history.
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