AHC: Buddhist Balkans

In OTL, the Buddhist Kalmyks emigrated in the eartly 17th century from Central Asia to the lower Volga. In TTL they migrate to the lower Danube instead and manage to keep their religious identity in the Ottoman Empire.
 
There would have had to been an earlier Buddhist push into Central Asia that mingled well with the local Tengriism and Zoroastrianism. The only way to get that is to prevent the breakup of the Sassanid and Tang Empires.
 
There would have had to been an earlier Buddhist push into Central Asia that mingled well with the local Tengriism and Zoroastrianism. The only way to get that is to prevent the breakup of the Sassanid and Tang Empires.

But again, the real coup de grace was the arrival of Islam in the end (and the death of the former empire as well as a problem to later) - there was buddhism in Afghanistan!
 

katchen

Banned
Actually, a Kushan or Hepthalite Central Asian state beginning with the Massagetae, extending from Gandhara to the Urals to Lake Baikal or even the Khingnan Mountains, conquering the Goturks, the Kirghiz and the Ugric tribes that become the Onogur (the Ten Arrows) and thence the Magyars and the Khazars, leading to the conversion to Mahayana Buddhism of these tribes and nations would likely do the trick. If the Turks were Buddhist rather than Tengriist before they encountered the Muslims would likely result in these tribe's minds being closed against Islam by the time Islam got to them. And for that matter to Christianity.
 
If Islam was either butterflied or else did not succeed in conquering Sassanid Persia, Central Asia would remain a mixture of Nestorian, Zoroastrian, Manichean, and Buddhist peoples. Presuming the Turkic expansion happens roughly as IOTL, you could end up with a Seljuk Turk like group which espoused Buddhism, eventually leading to a Buddhist "Ottoman Empire" and the conversion of some Christians in the Balkans to Buddhism.
 
If Islam was either butterflied or else did not succeed in conquering Sassanid Persia, Central Asia would remain a mixture of Nestorian, Zoroastrian, Manichean, and Buddhist peoples. Presuming the Turkic expansion happens roughly as IOTL, you could end up with a Seljuk Turk like group which espoused Buddhism, eventually leading to a Buddhist "Ottoman Empire" and the conversion of some Christians in the Balkans to Buddhism.

The Turkish expansion is not likely to happen as IOTL in this scenario or Katchan's, however. Even if they don't later convert.
 
In OTL, the Buddhist Kalmyks emigrated in the eartly 17th century from Central Asia to the lower Volga. In TTL they migrate to the lower Danube instead and manage to keep their religious identity in the Ottoman Empire.

There are really not that many Kalmyks though. They'd be totally swamped if they ended up somewhere more populous.
 
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