AHC: Muslim discovery of the Americas

ThePest179

Banned
Your goal, if you choose to accept it, is to have any of the Muslim civilizations discover the Americas by 1492 or earlier. Good luck....
 
What follows is not the most creative alternate history scenario I've proposed, but whatevs...

In the 1200's, the last remaining Christian kingdoms south of the Pyrenees are crushed, the population of resisting Christians* forcibly converted and Islamic rule is solidified.

The Ottomans still rise as per OTL.

In the 1400's, dynastic struggles in Morocco result in some of the Iberian sultans being blacklisted from both the Saharan and Mediterranean trade-they supported a different pretender to Morocco's throne than the Ottoman sultan, and lost out in the power struggle.

They decide that since they're cut off from trade, they'll just have to go around the people cutting them off, and begin sending ships down the coast of Northwest Africa to reach the sources of gold and salt to the south.

By 1492 AD, their ships bump off the coast of Brazil. A new land has been discovered-and new people to convert to the true way, praise be to Allah.



*Christians who surrender are probably tolerated as per OTL

EDIT: I realized that the first line looked like I was telling the OP they weren't being creative, it was actually referring to my post. Whoops, sorry OP.
 
Last edited:
Some day I would like to write an AH about Abu Bakr II discovering Brazil and successfully returning home. OTL he is supposed to have abdicated from the Throne of Mali in 1311 to go explore the ocean, but what happened next is not clear...

I need to read up on my West African history before I could write such a TL well however.

fasquardon
 
Some day I would like to write an AH about Abu Bakr II discovering Brazil and successfully returning home. OTL he is supposed to have abdicated from the Throne of Mali in 1311 to go explore the ocean, but what happened next is not clear...

I need to read up on my West African history before I could write such a TL well however.

fasquardon

I started one, but abandoned it after I got bogged down in school, research, and writer's block.
 
I started one, but abandoned it after I got bogged down in school, research, and writer's block.

Do you have a link to the TL?

Also, did you find much material on the sea-travel technologies of West Africa at the time? I have found very little so far, which makes it rather difficult to conceive of a PoD to result in more successful voyages.

fasquardon
 

ThePest179

Banned
Bumping to ask this:

How would a Muslim discovery of the New World influence it and the Europeans who would come later?
 
How would a Muslim discovery of the New World influence it and the Europeans who would come later?

Depends greatly on which Muslims discover the New World first.

A Moroccan discovery will play out differently from an Ottoman discovery or a Malian discovery.

One thing that will be interesting is that this will slow down the diffusion of New World crops into Europe, while speeding the diffusion into the Islamic world. There is good evidence that these new crops were what enabled the agricultural revolution and that the agricultural revolution was what allowed the industrial revolution. It is conceivable that the industrial revolution might then start somewhere in the Islamic world. On the other hand, while Europe would have a weaker hand, it may still get played well enough that it still overtakes the Islamic civilizations only at a slower pace than OTL.

Of course, depending on who exactly makes it to the new world first, the diffusion of new crops may go East into Persia and India before it spread North into Europe. Again, the changes from that could be very large.

Depending on when the PoD is, Europe's own age of discovery may be derailed completely, or it may go ahead much as OTL, only with another competitor in the mix.

fasquardon
 
Top