AH.com Challenge: Modern Day Islamic Spain

Your challenge, with a POD of no earlier then 711 AD and no later then 1500, is to create an Islamic state with the great majority of its population being Muslims that controls all of the Iberian Peninsula that lasts until the modern day. Bonus points if the country is a Westernized liberal democracy. Even more bonus points if you can do it with as few changes in OTL history as possible (so that there is still a U.S in ATL, along with the EU, World Wars 1 and 2, Steve Jobs, etc.)
 
Bonus points if the country is a Westernized liberal democracy. Even more bonus points if you can do it with as few changes in OTL history as possible (so that there is still a U.S in ATL, along with the EU, World Wars 1 and 2, Steve Jobs, etc.)

most likely those things can't be done with a Islamic Spain to big of a change
 

The Sandman

Banned
Your challenge, with a POD of no earlier then 711 AD and no later then 1500, is to create an Islamic state with the great majority of its population being Muslims that controls all of the Iberian Peninsula that lasts until the modern day. Bonus points if the country is a Westernized liberal democracy. Even more bonus points if you can do it with as few changes in OTL history as possible (so that there is still a U.S in ATL, along with the EU, World Wars 1 and 2, Steve Jobs, etc.)

The last gets thrown right out the window; if we were talking about, say, New Zealand or Australia then you might have some tiny hope, but this is Spain. There's no way to introduce a major change that early that won't butterfly away virtually every specific non-geological event more than a few centuries after the POD. For Europe, the butterflies have affected the entire continent within 100-150 years tops. So the extra bonus points are ASB.

Westernized liberal democracy...tricky, but doable. It's probably a long and ugly road getting there, though, much like it was for Spain in OTL.

As far as the survival of Al-Andalus...the biggest thing would be destroying the remaining Christian resistance in Asturias. In OTL, that region was never fully conquered, and was where the Reconquista was launched from. According to ever-helpful Wikipedia (sorry, but I don't have any better sources available at the moment), the Battle of Covadonga in 722 was what kept Asturias from falling the way the rest of Iberia had. Have it go the other way, with the Muslims winning, and there are no longer any Iberian Christian kingdoms left. Any Reconquista would have to start from across the Pyrenees.
 
As far as the survival of Al-Andalus...the biggest thing would be destroying the remaining Christian resistance in Asturias. In OTL, that region was never fully conquered, and was where the Reconquista was launched from. According to ever-helpful Wikipedia (sorry, but I don't have any better sources available at the moment), the Battle of Covadonga in 722 was what kept Asturias from falling the way the rest of Iberia had. Have it go the other way, with the Muslims winning, and there are no longer any Iberian Christian kingdoms left. Any Reconquista would have to start from across the Pyrenees.

I agree with all except this. The biggest thing would be a more powerful Al-Andalus because this was its weak point. Al Andalus was never a "United Nations", always been divided between rival factions due to a kind of racism.

Covadonga only was a skirmish the tribes of the north maximized. It was something similar to the survival of Granada. Taxes, allegiance, submission, etc. A more powerful Al Andalus would not allow the "Reconquista"

About the Pyrenees, well, we would be in the same situation. If you get a more powerful Al Andalus...Who knows? The Reconquista could start in the Pyrenees NORTHWARD
 
About the Pyrenees, well, we would be in the same situation. If you get a more powerful Al Andalus...Who knows? The Reconquista could start in the Pyrenees NORTHWARD

I don't think the idea of Reconquista would still be living, at least in the way we know it, if all of Spain is already subdued by the muslims. But some kind of a crusade will be most likely inevitable.
 
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