AHC: Muslim Roman Empire

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People seem to assume, despite Persian and Egyptian examples, that Islam will become literally semi-Orthodox Christian with icons, masses and saints had Byzantium fallen to Caliphate's machination. That just comes straight out of naive whim. I would say the marks will be more subtle, but how exactly ?

Persia gave Islam 99 names of God, Fiqh and Sufism IOTL. And even with Byzantine resisted initial Islamic conquest, we still saw salat and adoption of Classical Greek philoshophies into Islam. What will add up ? I guess it needs to be pointed out that with the absence of Islam, means the absence of an (eastern) christian contender to Islam. How will it change to relations and polemics between Islam and Christianity ?

Thoughts ? I'm not saying there won't be syncretism and all kinds of hijinks, but for orthodoxy we will assume the conservative yet if possible, ground breaking kind of change, as how fiqh and sufism proved to be.


None of that is addopted into Islam, but into muslim culture.
 
I'm curious if there's a plausible scenario that involves the Western Roman Empire converting to Islam. The West would have to survive at least another two centuries, and Islam would have to spread even further than OTL.

Basically, I'm hoping there's a way to get Rome itself Muslim.
 
I'm curious if there's a plausible scenario that involves the Western Roman Empire converting to Islam. The West would have to survive at least another two centuries, and Islam would have to spread even further than OTL.

Basically, I'm hoping there's a way to get Rome itself Muslim.

Unfortunately, the WRE surviving into the seventh century will likely butterfly Islam: although the idea of an alternative monotheistic Abrahamic faith emerging from Arabia isn't entirely crazy.
 
rome itself muslim? nearly impossible. if the muslims would even think of advancing onto the 2nd holiest city of christiandom (at the time), pretty much every christian power, regardless of sect, would be on their asses. of course, if this was during the schism between france and the papacy, then maybe not.

roman empire muslim? sultanate of rum and the ottomans were the closiest thing to a islamic roman empire. the ERE would never submit to islam (unless if the emperor hated his life)
 
rome itself muslim? nearly impossible. if the muslims would even think of advancing onto the 2nd holiest city of christiandom (at the time), pretty much every christian power, regardless of sect, would be on their asses.

It didn't happen when Constantinople fell, so I do wonder if Rome would necessarily be any different.
 
It didn't happen when Constantinople fell, so I do wonder if Rome would necessarily be any different.

That was a pretty particular situation. There were some attempts to save the city (see: Varna), but given its untenable geographical location (contrast with Rome in WEurope) and the Byzantine-Venetian animus, it was just decided to be not worth it.

Even still, some Westerners fought at the Theodosian Walls and beyond in 1453.
 
Wouldn`t the Rum Sultanate be quite a credible candidate for a "Muslim Roman Empire" ?

You've already suggested this twice in the thread, and absolutely not. It didn't claim to be Rome. "Rum" was used by the Muslim world, generally speaking, sometimes to refer to Christendom as a whole, and sometimes as the geographic label for Byzantine lands. Hence, you get "Rumelia" applied to the Balkans.

The Sultanate of Rum could probably be more aptly described as the "Sultanate in Rum".
 
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You've already suggested this twice in the thread, and absolutely not. It didn't claim to be Rome.

Indeed, and it's ruling elites didn't identify as "Roman". That's why I don't have much truck with the idea of the Ottomans as a "continuation" of the Roman state: the imperial title was just one of those adopted by the Sultan, and as far as I'm aware, there were never any Ottoman monarchs, courtiers or upper level administrators who thought of themselves as "Roman".
 
Have the Ottomans after taking Constantinople take Rome, I know their was an attempt but they retreated due to political reasons after making a beachead in southern Italy
 
Have the Muslims when at Tours and complete the conquest of Italy. Assuming they can maintain some type of control of the lands of the former Western empire, and get local elites to convert and administer for them. At some point you get a local dynasty that controls the Western empire. This new dynasty, while still outwardly loyal to the Caliphate, develops its own state, its own school of Islam, and uses Latin as its administrative and cultural language (but written in the arabic alphabet), and identifies itself as Roman. This what happened with the Samanids in the Iranian plateau/central Asia. You can then get a Latin speaking Roman empire that is Muslim.
 
One probably difficult and slightly implausible idea is Leo III the Isaurian converts to Islam during the Siege of Constantinople. The Empire's situation was pretty desperate at that time so it is not impossible to think that a Muslim Emperor might not be overthrown immediately like Emperors during other periods.
 
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