AHC: Byzantines conquer Arabia

The obvious question would be why they want the whole peninsula. They might want to control all the trade routes, but deploy an army of occupation across a vast, empty desert? As for the trade routes, if Byzantium had a greater presence in the Red Sea and greater interest in overseas trade routes (wasn't the Silk Road mostly over land?), that's a start.
 
The Byzantine Empire would never truly hold control over the entire peninsula. The Arabian desert would be far too difficult to control because of the nomads. Coupled with the scarcity of water it would never be worth it. The Byzantine Emperors may "claim" over-lordship of the varying tribes of the interior but they would only ever care about the coast and its cities.
 

katchen

Banned
Control over the Hejaz, Asir , Yemen, Hadramut and Oman (plus on the African side, as much of the Beja Coast around Suakin, Eritrea, Axum and the Somaliland cities would be all that the Byzantine Empire would need (though a harbor on the Indian side (Barbaricum (Karachi), Bharrakucca(Broach), Cochin or Taprobane ( Sri Lanka) would be nice. The Neujdi interior would only become an issue if the tribes attempted to raid the Hejaz in the wake of the Plague of Justinian. And this would very likely butterfly away Islam as we know it since Muhammad would be born and raised a Christian and very likely wind up a Greek Orthodox priest.
 
katchen I like what you did about Muhammad. Clever. I agree the Byzantines were interested in the trade Arabia could bring the empire and the taxes. Always taxes. They would never concern themselves with the subjugation of the interior. The tribesmen may meet them and the Byzantines name them nominal vassals. But I think direct control of the peninsula would not be a priority for the Byzantines.
 
katchen I like what you did about Muhammad. Clever. I agree the Byzantines were interested in the trade Arabia could bring the empire and the taxes. Always taxes. They would never concern themselves with the subjugation of the interior. The tribesmen may meet them and the Byzantines name them nominal vassals. But I think direct control of the peninsula would not be a priority for the Byzantines.

Was a plot point in Turtledove's Agent of Byzantium. He was a famous poet-theologian and hymn writer in that universe.
 
Thats interesting. I've never read a Turtledove novel. The ones that I have seen at my local library, have always seemed to fantasy like to catch my attention:p. Do you believe that the Byzantine Empire would ever have tried to conquer Arabia?
 
Thats interesting. I've never read a Turtledove novel. The ones that I have seen at my local library, have always seemed to fantasy like to catch my attention:p. Do you believe that the Byzantine Empire would ever have tried to conquer Arabia?

Me personally?

Question is when and what happened in between. I don't like answering questions that are too broad, sorry.

Post-400 the only obvious openings are when Egypt is stable and the Arab client kingdoms are cooperative. Have to find when that was.
 
Why on earth would they ever conquer the Nejd? Thats just a death sentence, even Cambyses the Mad wouldn't do that.
 
Why on earth would they ever conquer the Nejd? Thats just a death sentence, even Cambyses the Mad wouldn't do that.

And even if you did find an emperor mad enough to try, his soldiers would replace him faster than you can say "coup".
 
Easy enough. Have the Roman/Iranian cold war for mastery of the Arabian peninsula continue, and have the Romans make much more effort to subdue the Hijaz and Yemen, or even wrest these areas from Iranian control. The area would initially be controlled by vassal states, I would imagine, but it's not ASB to imagine that at some point an Emperor might want to take direct control of the situation, as happened in Armenia, for example. The southern coast would become the tug-of-war area in the way that the Caucasus and northern Mesopotamia were IOTL.
 
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