Your challenge is to have Ancient Mesopotamian culture survive to the present day in some form. It can be significantly different, as long as there's clearly some influence from Sumer, Akkad, Assyria, Babylonia, etc.
AHC: Ancient Mesopotamian culture survives
- Thread starter Night Gaul
- Start date
Metaverse
Banned
A difficult question. As you know, this is a highly contended area and switched hands every period of time. Cultural influence from outside from expansive and more influential cultures like Greece and Rome are inevitable. So the Mesopotamian Culture would survive with a lot of influences in a World where Abrahamic religions don't get as powerful as they did.
Modern Assyrians claim to be in ethnic and cultural continuity with ancient Assyria, and Assyria and Babylonia themselves were related to/descended from Akkadians and definitely spoke an evolution/dialects of Akkadian.
Chickennuggetscientist
Banned
Just have no Islamic invasion. Before the caliphate Assyrian, Chaldean, Aramaic and Syriac culture thrived. These were all ancient Semitic cultures that went into rapid decline following Arab conquests as these cultures were more associated with Christianity and now (except for Israel) almost all the fertile crescent speaks Arabic. I doubt a continued Zoroastrian Persian influence could have supplanted the native culture because they had already failed to do so for literally thousands of years and Mesopotamia was their richest provence. As for ERE Syriac and Aramaic were too prestigious as being language of Early Christian literature and Jesus.
Alternatively, we could have a "Islamic Invasion thrown back" scenario. Sort of an echo of Palymra. I don't know if there were any militias or forces in the area, but the idea of locals grabbing weapons and defending against the invasion could be really interesting, especially a Confederation of Mesopotamia. We could see a PoD or two around the invasion defeating the Persians, but a local force manage to ambush, and annihilate the Arab forces in the area, ideally pre-Yarmouk.
Don't know what good opportunities there could have been, but as the last force standing, that'd be a cool alt-TL, and there would be no real risk of Persia in the short term due it's civil war, and the Romans need time to breath, leaving a small period to organise and train a proper army. It'd obviously be quite a hard PoD to pull off, but quite an interesting one IMO.
I can see it being largely Nestorian religiously, but a rather effective buffer state between the Romans, Persians, and Caliphate. The Caliphate and Romans still share a border, but the buffer exists between Persia and Rhomanion. It might even be possible that a successful ambush could weaken the Caliphate enough to cause some splintering to create a new Arab client for the Romans, creating a two-state buffer. Alternatively, if they did flourish and the Caliphate had to face the Romans too, you could have the Romans ally with this Mesopotamia and create effectively a single ally state that goes from the Red Sea, up and around to Mesopotamia, and then down towards the coast. That could be an interesting state geopolitically, but also culturally. It is be definition a cross-road state, so all the ideas from Persia (partially because it was in the Persian Sphere) the Roman sphere, via trade, and the Arab sphere, also by trade could be introduced. The 'risk' (if you want to call it that) is that such a state would create an overriding Mesopotamian identity, as it is very much defined in contrast to its neighbours, and because of the potential for a cultural flourishing in the area.
There is no reason that this cannot he achieved with a modified Assyrian empire scenario. If allowed time to rest, Assyria has the power to defeat the Medes or Elamo-Persians. Even if Ashurbanipal is not slain and the Scythians do not overrun Assyria, Nabopolassar does not revolt. Without that revolt, Sinsharishkun, will rebuff and likely defeat Cyaxares, as he nearly did otl.