AHC: Persia Remains Relevant

kernals12

Banned
How can we have the Persian Empire be a Great Power by the turn of the 20th Century? Is there any way they could replace the Ottomans in defeating the Byzantine empire?
 
Defeating Byzantium by taking Constantinople is impossible. Becoming a great power is possible but you need to have several great Shahs who can hold Mesopotamia and potentially conquer into either the Punjab, the Stans or to Arabia/Hejaz from Mesopotamia. The latter would allow them to be seen as defenders of Islam and Mesopotamia would provide a fertile ground for Persian settlement and defense from the Ottoman Turks. To do this, I suggest a decisive victory at Chaldiran, which while unlikely would allow the Safavid dynasty to hold Eastern Anatolia and work towards preventing an Ottoman conquest of the Levant/Egypt.
 

yeetboy

Banned
I would assume that any nation in the near-East that embraced industrialisation as well as the Europeans did would have a great platform to become a great power during the 19th and 20th centuries.
 
More generally, I think you’d need the land routes to maintain the relative importance of land routes from Asia to Europe for a while longer and then when the shift happens towards sea routes have Persia better able to take advantage of it by a major port on a commercially important body of water like the Indian Ocean or the Mediterranean. Perhaps an eastwards conquest could secure Sind or even Gujarat.
 
How can we have the Persian Empire be a Great Power by the turn of the 20th Century? Is there any way they could replace the Ottomans in defeating the Byzantine empire?

It needs to have at least Afghanistan and Central Asia. Subduing that is easier than conquering Syria AND Anatolia.

I do not understand your last sentence..?
 
difficult
1. Persia, ME, North Africa, and Southern Europe had declined in land productivity for various reasons : climate change, soil salinization, desertification, etc
2. Better agricultural package (heavy plow, potato, winter wheat) had made Northern latitude ( Germany, Russia, Manchuria, etc) much more productive than in Ancient Times
3. Even Ottoman is much weaker compared to past empires in same areas because new rival arisen North of them.
 
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