AHC: Make Arabic the Lingua Franca in Europe without an Islamification of it

Truedat. Spain is the best bet there, at the very least they can bring Arabic to the Netherlands, who in turn could perhaps bring it to Britain after the Glorious Revolution. I'm thinking of Arabic as a language of Academia here, if it is taught in private schools and used in medical terminology etc.

From what I heard, Arabic was taught in some medieval-renaissance schools/universities already in OTL, to a certain point.
 
To be fair, he does allow for limited conquest - Balkans, Spain, Sicily, and the Russian Steppe.

Which won't make a difference in ttl as that is what happened in otl. The key of controlling Europe lingua Franca is the non existence of a powerful Christian state, France has to disappear, roman east has to disappear and the Holy Roman Empire has to disappear, Christianity has to disappear.

All these requires an earlier timeline which the op didn't give. But then again, if Christianity didn't exist, will Islam exist as well?

Truedat. Spain is the best bet there, at the very least they can bring Arabic to the Netherlands, who in turn could perhaps bring it to Britain after the Glorious Revolution. I'm thinking of Arabic as a language of Academia here, if it is taught in private schools and used in medical terminology etc.

I don't know how you can make an Arabic Spain take control of Low Countries without military conquests beyond otl. Spain otl did that thru royal marriage which requires you to be Christian.
 
What if Islam never exists and Christian Arabs conquer all that land? Is that permitted under these requirements? If there is no religious barrier, Arab civilization will be much more attractive to Europeans.
I'm of the opinion that the Arab Conquest could have happened even without Islam. The POD has to be after the start of Islam though, so I think that's tough to do.

I know that Muslims started dusting off their copies of Aristotle before Christians did. Maybe in the 13th century there could be a prominent Scholastic who is a fanboy for Arab philosophy and it becomes standard curriculum. But as sloreck said, everything they thought was worthy of translation got translated.

Is there a way for there to be a class of Arabs in Europe that does record keeping and advisory work for royalty? Basically, somehow a whole bunch of educated Arabs have a reason to immigrate non-Arab countries.
 
What if Islam never exists and Christian Arabs conquer all that land? Is that permitted under these requirements? If there is no religious barrier, Arab civilization will be much more attractive to Europeans.

Well... In my opinion language is a tool. A useful tool to swap ideas and other stuff.

In ancient times, in Mediterranean area, there were two "international" languages: Aramaic (since Persian Empire - VI BC, and Greek (since Alexander - IV BC). After Alexander, Greek displaced Aramaic language as international one, but in the Middle East there were areas (Syria, palestine, Mesopotamia), where Aramaic remained as "regional"/"second international" language.

When the Romans conquered the Mediterranean area, and a New Persian (Sassanid) Empire was established, Greek remained an international language (educated Romans were bilingual, it was a language of scholarship and diplomacy).

Aramaic was used again by the Eastern Churches to popularize Christianity in the Middle east, It was always used as a "second" international language there anyway. That made the role of this language more important, the use of greek was declining, the Aramaic-speaking Christian scholars were translating Greek books into Aramaic.

On the west, the economic crisis of Rome and further barbarian conquests made Greek out of use there, leaving Latin as lingua franca there. There was not enough people speaking greek to keep it as useful tool. Similar thing happened as in the East - the Bible was translated into Latin.

So - at the eve of Arab conquest there are 3 regional languages to compete as future lingua franca.

In a TL with non-Muslim Arabs conquering the Middle East, they enter on Aramaic language territory - similar to Arabic, but already established as scholar and church language. As not many conquerors were able to write, it would've been easier for them to use an existing tool. So probably the second generation of non-Muslim (Christian?) Arab conquerors would probably learn to read/write and then speak Aramaic. Probably some of them would learn a few words of Greek as well.

If the conquest goes as OTL, we have TL with Aramaic-speaking world in most of Mediterranean. And if Arab/Frankish and Arab/Western Christianity connections are strong it might give some impulse for Aramaic as lingua franca. Not Arabic, I'm afraid.

To use this language as a tool, we need stronger connections (cultural, trade) between Aramaic Arabs and Latin speaking people than OTL. With both groups as a Christians, it could've been stronger than OTL, but - Aramaic-speaking Arabs in this TL are members of Eastern churches, so the gap with the west still exists.

And with those connections there is still another tool to use - Greek. Aramaic scholars knew it well, and at least some West-European scholars knew it, or may use Byzantines from Italy as translators...

I'm sorry, but IMHO there's no chance for widely-spoken Arabic language without Islam. Aramaic might have a chance in this TL.
 
I would like to add even if we did have an ASB that allowed Arabs to conquer all of Europe, islamic or not, arabic would not be that wide spread. We would see the diffusion of Arabic into languages like in the case of English, but never a full scale lingua franca. There is to much space between peoples for it to remain a unified language. Heck Iraqi Arabic and Morraccan Arabic are almost unintelligible from each other imagine a Arbaized-german. *shudders*
 
Somehow decrease the hostility between Muslims and Christians (not sure on a specific PoD here) and allow Islamic science to stay ahead European science (weren't there some very pro science branches of Islam, perhaps they can be more successful?). European scientists/intellectuals will travel to Arabia to study with the Arabs, many nobles will pick it up too. Since nobles all over Europe have learned Arabic (in addition to the Islamic states that use it) it will be a good language for diplomacy since people all over the Europe and the Middle East speak it.
 
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