Anybody have good discussions or TLs to recommend discussing Arab conquests *without* Islam?

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Some have pointed out that we cannot assume a lack of the emergence of Islam would mean no conquests by the Arabs.

Has there been any discussion or TLs sketching out some ideas of what a non-Islamic string of Arab conquests in the 600s, 700s or so on might look like, and what it's long term aftermath might be?

If not, I'd say it would be a cool thing to get started sometime.
 
I'd disagree on Arab conquest happening without Islam actually : most of the factors advanced about the inevitability of these are more or less weak (such as the supposed isolation of the Arab peninsula implying a lesser plague outback, which is at the latest hard to proove) and ignoring the huge unifying factor proto-Islam was for the various (and quite divided) Arabic city-states and tribal states.

Not to say you won't have a resurgence of huge raids in Mesopotamia, and possibly an Arab "reconquista" of lands taken over by Sassanians (such as former Lakhmid principalty), but nothing really close to the scale IOTL Arab conquests managed : (proto-)Islam, as an unifying cultural/political factor, really represented a new step that I'm not sure would be easily replaced, at least in the VIIth century.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
Is LSCatilina's view that we couldn't have Arab conquest happening without Islam universal on the board?

Or do some believe we could we see Pagan Arab migrations and conquests end up more like the European Volkswanderung, with Arabs taking over the rulership and high nobility of the regions from Iran to Morocco, adding some flavor, given names and surnames to these countries but not displacing local languages and religions in most places?
 
Is LSCatilina's view that we couldn't have Arab conquest happening without Islam universal on the board?
I don't think that's universal, I'm not nearly arrogant enough to say that : it is my viewpoint, tough.

Or do some believe we could we see Pagan Arab migrations and conquests end up more like the European Volkswanderung, with Arabs taking over the rulership and high nobility of the regions from Iran to Morocco, adding some flavor, given names and surnames to these countries but not displacing local languages and religions in most places?
I don't think that's a good exemple, actually. The whole "People's migrations" model is essentially a narrative one, directly issued from how Romano-Barbarians percieved their own historicity.

Long story short, Roman ethnography didn't saw other peoples as worthy of an history but intengible (Look at Tacitus's statement on Germania).

What did Romano-Barbarians scholars? They went trough the two big historiographical tales of the era, which is Aeneid and Exodus, and ripped them off like there was no tommorrow.
Frankish origin mythos is one of the obvious result, but Jordanes' accounts in spite of being more realistic-looking is such as well (and hence why everything it tells before the IIIrd century should be seen extremely cautiously, as all the Barbarian mythographical migrations).

It appears that while you did have various human groups moving around the IInd century, they certainly didn't formed really distinct peoples. Goths, for exemple and contrary to the nice-looking but mostly irrealistic migration map we all know, didn't existed as a people before the IIIrd century but formed a distinct political ensemble (formed out of Germanic, Iranic, Dacian, Gallic and Roman elements in Dacia) trough their relations with Romania.

Not only Barbarians peoples were romanized to a significant extent by the Vth century, trough the aformentioned symbiotic political relationship, but they were importantly made of provincial Roman elements (in the same time Roman provinces had a Germanic presence since the Ist century, trough laeti).

Eventually, it's not so much that they replaced the rulership and the nobility, that they became part of it in the IVth/Vth century. With the disapperence of the Roman state in the late Vth, Romano-Barbarian rulers (usually already integrated in some administrative and/or military hierarchy at this point) took more or less legally the provincial imperium and replaced it.

Rather than a conquest as Arab takeover of the VIIth/VIIIth was, meaning a proto-imperial structure taking over whole provinces, the Romano-Barbarian ensemble is more issued from a late Roman evolution.

Not that such evolution couldn't happen IOTL, or that a China-like evolution couldn't appear as well (with Turkic or Mongoloid peoples, for instance). But nothing looking like a redux of historical Arab conquest of the VIIth/VIIIth centuries.
 
I do see an Arab conquest in the sense of the Umayyad, however, it is plausible to say the Arabs had the ability and their society was moving towards such a development after centuries of development on the fringes of the classical world.

However, a pagan Arab nation in the manner of the Umayyad or simply decentralized states all invading I cooperation , I am not sure would expand into the Mid East. I would personally argue, that Islam's greatest short term effect on the Arab was reverting its population and expansion to the north as opposed to the south into Nubia, Aqsum and Somalia. Even later in Arab history, we see after the fall of the Umayyad who was the state most melded to Islam, the Abbasids go to the lands of Africa and extend its economic power there in the form of the slave trade.

My argument thus would be that, Arab expansion would occur, but into Africa, which perhaps had already occurred in the past. By the past, I refer to the possibility that the Semitic language originated at some point in the Mid East and eventually found its way into Ethiopia. However, this in itself is controversial, especially if you are of the opinion that Amhara, Tigrinya and Ge'ez are not Semitic.
 
I'm not too sure if "Pagan" Arabic states would be even a good depiction in this case : many Arabic entities at this point are tied up to Judeo-Christian (in a broad sense, meaning it does include heterodoxial teachings such as Judeo-Nazôreism) continuum. Culturally, they were far from being cut off Mediterranean or Iranian continuums. As you said, Arabic entities were going trough a development on the fringes of the classical and post-classical world but the big post-classical hegemonies were there to largely influence and contain their development into certain features.

Lacking a proto-Imperial structures, I agree that most of the development (altough, again, I think it's possible that an Arabic resurgence in Mesopotamia could take place in the VIIth century thanks to a possible Sassanian crisis or decline) would be centered in Southern Arabia : but I don't think it would be really easy.

The natural outlet of Yemenite city states and tribal states in Africa is the mountainous region between Nile and the Horn, that requires some serious pressure to be subdued (it took centuries IOTL, even with a world-scale Arabo-Islamic continuum) : and at the contrary of, say, Axum that could rely on natural defenses against foreign projection, Southern Arabia was relatively vulnerable to foreign intervention would it be ponctual or more lengthy : namely the Persian interventionism in the peninsula up to Yemen in the late VIth century.

Giving that IOTL expansion of East African trade wasdue to the existence of a huge economical continuum between Mediterranean basin and Middle-East, it may be significantly lowered or delayed ITTL. Not we shouldn't discard the relative prosperity of pre-Islamic Hedjaz in the VIIth century, would it be only because it became an alternative trade road during the VIth century, due to the troubles in Southern Arabia. You had the development of western Arabic entities that weren't directly tied to the traditional political centers, and that could lead to a different geo-economical set-up : with time and good conditions, you could see a differenciated development of Western and Southern Arabic presence in Africa (mostly depending on who they're rooting for) that could lead to a semitisation of southern Red Sea up to the Horn.

That would be less of a conquest, tough, and more of a slow coastal progression, even if it could lead (with time) to some sort of Omani-like presence in Africa.
 
Well, it's technically possible, if we remember that Scandinavian raiding is the result (altough far from the only one) of the trade crisis of the IXth century.

Regardless of the PoD, we may see a more or less rough equivalent to a commercial crisis that would destabilize Arabian mercantile city-states, leading to clanic/"mercenary"/brotherhoods raids along trade nodes in Africa.
That said, there would be major differences : namely a lesser naval tradition in medieval Arabia (at the exception of southern-eastern Arabia, that is), and a more important political development of Arabic entities compared to VIIIth Scandinavia (at the possible exception of Danish petty-kingdoms, true).

I'd say that such Arabic piracy would be less anarchic and overwhelming than most Viking raids (but again, the specific Danish exemple might be more interesting), but possibly more looking like what existed in Xth/XIth western mediterranean basin : which is establishment of autonomous outposts (as in Fraxinet) with a more important relationship to peninsular polities.

But as far as many Arabic entities would be concerned, I think that terrestrial raids would be favoured, as they were historically so since centuries at this point. Still, it's true that naval raiding and coastal outposts (possibly takeover of Somali city-states) have more chances to end with a form of conquest, altough I'd think that, as Scandinavian settlements went, Africano-Arabian outposts and presence would certainly go more easily native than IOTL without an institutionalized form of cultural superiority over Africans.
 
It depends how much Indian Ocean trade would be in a vaacum, and how much Arabian entities would depend on it. I'm under the impression that, in a reckognizable ATL, proper Arabian presence in the Indian Ocean would be significantly less important (while not absent) that it went IOTL with the establishment of an Arabo-Islamic continuum.

That said, disruption of Red Sea trade and on the Horn will have consequences in the Indian Ocean : how much would it lead to an Arabian presence there is up to the PoD and how the TL folds so far.
 
So basically any Arab raids/conquests in the Indian Ocean would require a political and economic vacuum beforehand a la the 9th century trade collapse and the Vikings?
 
Absent Islam, you don't have any sort of unified Arab state so you would have a hard time getting enough military strength to challenge the Byzantines for example. While you had Arab armies conquering significant territories you really did not have a massive population movement like the various tribes who moved from Asia in to Europe (such as the Magyars) and the movement of tribes from Eastern Europe westward. To the extent you had true "Arab" populations move out of the Arabian Peninsula they were tag alongs with the armies. There was no drive other than Islam to move Arab populations out of the Arabian Peninsula such as new tribes pushing them out or major climate effects causing a loss of food sources etc.

While I don't discount the possibility of more localized Arab "conquests" or some piratical incursions that lead to permanent settlements/enclaves absent the driving force of Islam which first unified the Arabs, and then gave them a powerful drive to conquer larger territories I don't see anything like the maximum Arab empire(s) happening. No Islam means huge butterflies, although the various local factors which would lead top Mongol and Osmanli Turk incursions later on would probably still exist. Of course what would happen as these folks moved west/south would be different.
 
Some have pointed out that we cannot assume a lack of the emergence of Islam would mean no conquests by the Arabs.

Has there been any discussion or TLs sketching out some ideas of what a non-Islamic string of Arab conquests in the 600s, 700s or so on might look like, and what it's long term aftermath might be?

If not, I'd say it would be a cool thing to get started sometime.

I know, that is from another period, earlier, but Arabic elements were influential at the rise of the Palmyrene Empire, and no Islam was needed.
I guess, something like that might have happened in the 600s, 700s. I mean non-Islamic string of Arab conquests.
Why not?
Good fighters...
 
Absent Islam, you don't have any sort of unified Arab state so you would have a hard time getting enough military strength to challenge the Byzantines for example. While you had Arab armies conquering significant territories you really did not have a massive population movement like the various tribes who moved from Asia in to Europe (such as the Magyars) and the movement of tribes from Eastern Europe westward. To the extent you had true "Arab" populations move out of the Arabian Peninsula they were tag alongs with the armies. There was no drive other than Islam to move Arab populations out of the Arabian Peninsula such as new tribes pushing them out or major climate effects causing a loss of food sources etc.

While I don't discount the possibility of more localized Arab "conquests" or some piratical incursions that lead to permanent settlements/enclaves absent the driving force of Islam which first unified the Arabs, and then gave them a powerful drive to conquer larger territories I don't see anything like the maximum Arab empire(s) happening. No Islam means huge butterflies, although the various local factors which would lead top Mongol and Osmanli Turk incursions later on would probably still exist. Of course what would happen as these folks moved west/south would be different.

Agreed.

( filler )
 
The Palmyrene State was less Arab and more Roman and if anything Greek.
still Arab thouh...
upload_2016-11-29_20-32-47.png

palmyrian arabs
 
Last edited:
Top