AHC: Muslim "Russia"

Your challenge is to make it so that the territory of OTL Russia is taken up by a single, muslim-majority nation, which survives to the present day.

It is not necessary for this nation to be called "Russia." All it needs is a warm-water pacific port and a capital west of the Ural mountains.
 
I suggest a possible Muslim traders arriving long before the Mongol armies. A Black Sea port is set up as a capital.
 
Having a stronger, more cohesive Muslim caliphate on Middle-East at the same time you have a weaker Byzantine empire could do it.

Muslims traders DID travelled in OTL Russia, and great ammounts of Abassids coins were found. So, the issue isn't there : it's more due to Constantinople being a trade magnet, a natural outcome of Volga/Don/Dniepr basin.

I would think that a Khazar Khanate sticking up to its conversion to Islam, contrary to OTL, could be an interesting religious pole, eventually converting southern slavic emporiae.
Bulgars, on the other hand and if the M-E trade proove mre incitative than Constantinople, could deal (but it would be much harder) with Northern Slavs.

The big problem is to make ERE that weak, and Constantinople far less rich.
 
Arabs capture Constantinople in the 700s in one of the sieges would do the trick. In that case all Eastern Europe would become Muslim and Western Europe would be under some strain as well.
 
I thought one of the reasons that they turned away from Islam was because of the prohibition on alcohol. Perhaps if the dietary rules of Islam were not so restrictive then various Slavic peoples would convert.
 
Muslims traders DID travelled in OTL Russia, and great ammounts of Abassids coins were found. So, the issue isn't there : it's more due to Constantinople being a trade magnet, a natural outcome of Volga/Don/Dniepr basin.

I would think that a Khazar Khanate sticking up to its conversion to Islam, contrary to OTL, could be an interesting religious pole, eventually converting southern slavic emporiae.

The big problem is to make ERE that weak, and Constantinople far less rich.

I agree.
A weaker ERE, if not fall of, as another poster suggested, in conjunction with a weaker Khazar state (unless it had actually gone full-out conversion to Islam--it was a religiously pluralistic state OTL)---the Khazars served as a Northern bulwark against the Abbasids in the 8th C. A triumphant Abbasid Caliphate that had enforced long-term conversion of the Khazars might well have begun to spread Islam well beyond the Khazaria, very well impacting the development of Kievan Rus.

If and when the Mongols finally rolled around they could be facing an Islamic Rus. But butterflies, of course....
 

katchen

Banned
The Golden Horde converted to Islam under Birkei Khan. All that would be needed to meet this challenge would be a. The Golden Horde survives as a Muslim Sultanate, perhaps with it's capital remaining at Sarai (now Volgograd/Tsaryatsin), b. the Golden Horde remains together (both the Uzbeks and the Khanate of Sibir are split offs from the Golden Horde), c. the Golden Horde extends it's conquest of Siberia (they coined the term, actually) east to encompass the Yakut Kingdom and convert it to Islam, perhaps also ecompassing the Yukagirs and Chukchi. This is not all that difficult, since the Khanate of Sibir actually extended all the way down the Ob River to the Arctic Ocean, apparently. So the Sibir Golden Horde was inclined in that direction. and d. that it withstands challenges from the Buddhist Dzunghars in the 17th and 18th Centuries and possibly the Qing, which might regard such a large Khanate as a threat and might be the biggest threat to a Greater Golden Horde of all.
 
Arabs capture Constantinople in the 700s in one of the sieges would do the trick. In that case all Eastern Europe would become Muslim and Western Europe would be under some strain as well.

The siege of 710 was really hard to make in first place : poor logistics for Umayyads, incomplete besieging, regular ravitail and reinforcements for Byzzies.
The one of the VII century had more chances, than this one.
 
Your challenge is to make it so that the territory of OTL Russia is taken up by a single, muslim-majority nation, which survives to the present day.

It is not necessary for this nation to be called "Russia." All it needs is a warm-water pacific port and a capital west of the Ural mountains.

Surviving Golden Horde which incorporates Northern Yuan after fall of Yuan Dynasty.
This entity would span from Romania to Korea.
 
There is a legend to the effect that gives "We Russians cannot live without drinking" as the reason they converted to Christianity instead of Islam. :)

Yes, and being a legend, I'm not sure what this keeps to coming as an answer on "muslim Russia" threads.
It's not like medieval Persia or Al-Andalus weren't wine production and consumtions aeras.
 
Yes, and being a legend, I'm not sure what this keeps to coming as an answer on "muslim Russia" threads.
It's not like medieval Persia or Al-Andalus weren't wine production and consumtions aeras.


Yes, I know many Muslims drank alcohol in practice (didn't one of the Ummayyad caliphs have a pool of wine?), but I just added that story because the topic of Russia's conversion came up. :)

Russia really converted to Orthodoxy because they had a strong economic and cultural relationship with the Byzantines. Weakening them early enough is the key to making Russia Muslim.
 
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