Arab Conquests Without Islam

Personally, I'm not sure it'd be something that interests a politically united Arabia, or at least internal politics may get in the way.

Say you have a politically united Arabia, but practising up-to 4+ different faiths. Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Judaism, and Pre-Islamic Arabic faiths.

The Christian community may significantly object to invading the Romans, the Zoroastrians the same with the Persians, etc.

So the question is what would bring all four groups together for war, or a majority of them? Trade is making them wealthy, and they can certainly emigrate - and lord knows there is plenty of work as mercenaries for either the Persians or Romans.

More likely, IMO - is they'll wait to be woo'd. From any perspective Syria or Mesopotamia are great conquests. If the Romans are quicker off the mark, they could offer the Arabs significant gold to jointly invade Mesopotamia, giving them the south - and the Romans the North. I personally think this would lead to a long-term political capital in al-Hirah.

Alternatively, the Persians may be quicker off the mark, leading to Syria and Egypt falling, leading to a similar rise for Damascus.

The key here is I'm assuming without Islam you don't have religious unification.

It would be different IMO if they were united - the religion of choice making a difference.

Orthodox Arabs, with the Patriarch of Jerusalem as their Patriarch, may be a strong ally - and supplant Aksum as an ally for the Romans.

If Zoroastrian, I would expect the reverse.

Judaism IMO makes Arabia an ally for the Persians, in order to reclaim Jerusalem, with Egypt a natural following conquest.

I have no knowledge of Arabian Paganism, so... *shrug*.

The issue is it would be hard to get a politically united Arabia given all the tribes, small states, and kingdoms there was at the time. Without Islam, or one big bending religion it would be messy getting it done in uniting Arabia. Early Islam had it civil wars and schism in the form of the Fitna as it was.
 
I think you guys are overestimating Arab discord as a reason for to not have an initial wave of conquest and migration. Arab confederations have migrated before, including many Persian and Roman allies. Sure, they split afterwards, but they still carved out not-insubstantial kingdoms. A non-Arab example would be the Mongols, who united under Genghis Khan and remained united for a while after under his heirs despite a variety of different religious influences creeping in and the difficulty of distance in managing their empire. That's not to say that future reversals wouldn't happen in Syria with the Romans or Iraq and the Persians, but I do believe an Arab Great Migration of some nature was as likely as the German one.

I think you'd have to go back earlier to keep both Byzantium and Persia capable of repelling initial migrations. Given both of those states have natural borders to make use of and territory in depth, they're good bets for coming back in and taking territories back. But the initial wave is something I think they lose.
 
One point that I have not seen covered is that the reason other than war weariness that the local populations of both old empires welcomed the invading Muslims Arabs. The fact of widespread religious persecuation, financial and political Instability in the case of the Romans was the reason to welcome a new rulership class. In the case of the Persians it was a case of the decay of the proto feudal political system, a centralising state with its own version of religious persecutions and the war that brought them down when the Arabs kick the door in!
I think without Islam what you will see is a charismatic leader uniting a portion of the Arabs in a great invasion of both powers as in otl. The rest I think will be as described by other posters on this timeline expansion followed by assimilation , destruction or in expulsion
 
Here's my take on such a scenario.
  • Egypt had been dominated by Greco-Roman culture since Alexander the Great's Empire. So much so that when the Muslims conquered Egypt, there was a time period of Arab-Greek bilingualism in the new Islamic government. Coptic as a language had little if any prestige outside the Church. Any Arabs that conquer Egypt would likely assimilate to the Greco-Roman political elite. As for any Pharaohnism arising, why did nothing of the sort arise among the Copts during the centuries of Roman nor Islamic rule? Plus why would 7th century Christian Egyptians associate themselves with pagan Egyptian kings?
  • Iberia is interesting. The Visigothic monarchy was having issues controlling its nobility and without any Muslim invasion, it is likely to have splintered apart or at the very least the King in Toledo would control very little land while the remainder is ruled by autonomous nobles in all but name like the early Capetians in France. Of course there's the possibility of an intervention by either the Franks to the north and/or the Berbers to the south. The Basques and other northern peoples have the opportunity to take advantage of Gothic disunity.
  • North Africa is most certainly a mixed bag. It's a region that was a safe space for Christian heresies and including Jewish Berber tribes. No Islam means the Exarchate survives a lot longer if it isn't conquered by either the Arabs or Berbers but its distance from Constantinople and likely any attention focused on Arabs and/or Slavs will likely force the Exarchs to declare independence (maybe declaring themselves Emperors). Punic language revival is unlikely unless the Donatists somehow reverse their decline and align themselves along proto-nationalist lines. Mind you, it'll survive a bit longer as a minority language before eventually becoming extinct and replaced by some African Roman dialect. Culturally, the Berbers would be dominant.
  • As Aramean language seemed to have done much better in the Levant than Coptic in its native Egypt, no Islam means that the region retains an Aramean cultural identity and language. Arab communities would be somewhat successful expanding in the Syrian interior. Greek communities would survive to the present day but the language would have declining relevance in a post-Roman world order.
  • Mesopotamia was the most Christian part of the Persian Empire. It was one of the areas that quickly Arabized IOTL; I don't see that changing though maybe the Assyrians and Kurds may break free from Arab rule and form their own kingdoms.
  • Persia would assimilate most of any post-Sassanid Arab conquerors while some Arab communities would become demographically dominant in culturally isolated areas (much like the Azeri, Ahvazi Arabs and Qashqai Turks). Persian would still be written in Pahlavi script.
 

Teejay

Gone Fishin'
I always thought it would be interesting if the Arab Migrations not only adopted local religions but also languages. You see a bit of it in the variety of dialects Arabic has evolved into, but suppose that a pagan Arab Migration is what we're looking for, and that they sweep into Egypt, Iberia, Levant, Mesopotamia, North Africa and Persia.
  • Egypt is easy, with the Coptic Church, Coptic language and a history of self-rule and kings evident. A sort of Pharaohnism come early, perhaps

The spoken language and the liturgical language would remain Coptic, the Arab invasions would likely strength Coptic at the expense of Greek as a intellectual language.

  • Levant has Aramean, Greek, Jewish and Phoenician communities to one degree or another. Aramean culture and language may well win out, with a neo-Aram replacing Bilad-a-Sham. Maybe a neo-Phoenicia splinters off later. Miaphysitism in Egypt and Levant could be very likely, creating sister kingdoms against the Byzantine Empire.

The Arabic script is diverted from the Nabataean script, The Nebataeans were an Arabic people who used Aramaic as an official language. It was likely that they were originally Aramaic speaking and become Arabic speaking. Large scale migration of Bedouin Arabic tribes into the Levant and Mesopotamia would change the spoken language from Aramaic to Arabic. However the culture would remain much the same being dominated by Orthodox and Nestorian Christianity. The relationship between Aramaic and Arabic is pretty close. Aramaic although remains a liturgical language, much like Latin did in the Romance speaking regions in Europe.

That process i described was how Akkadian got replaced by Aramaic in Mestopamia, namely Aramaic nomadic tribes migrating into Mesopotamia. However the Assyrian culture remained pretty much intact.

  • Persia is obviously Zoroastrian heavy, and any Arab conquerors would probably integrated in generations ala the Turks as an elite citizenry. Persia would probably retain a heavy influence in the region, and the neo-Arab kingdoms in the region might return to being clients or outright oppose it. The Persian language will of course survive as OTL, but probably have less in the way of Arabic influences.

The Turkic migrations affected Central Asia (which was Iranian speaking), however the Turks would quickly adopt Persian culture like they did in OTL. A new Perso-Turkish culture would emerge with probably Nestorian Christianity being the dominant religion, although the Turks adopting Buddhism is also possible.

No Islam in Central Asia or India has me wondering how much bigger Nestorianism or Zoroastrianism might get. Ethiopia certainly is gonna have an easier time dealing with the likes of Somalia and Yemen, and might replace the Arab trade voyages of Africa and Asia.

Hinduism would gradually marginalize Buddhism in India, a hybrid of the two religious might emerge (like that existed in South East Asia before Islam came). In South-East Asia the opposite might occur with Buddhism marginsing Hindu (this occurred among the Cambodians in OTL). Although a conversion to Nestorian Christianity in South-East (especially modern day Malaysia, Indonesia and the Philippines) could be very possible.
 
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I think you guys are overestimating Arab discord as a reason for to not have an initial wave of conquest and migration. Arab confederations have migrated before, including many Persian and Roman allies. Sure, they split afterwards, but they still carved out not-insubstantial kingdoms. A non-Arab example would be the Mongols, who united under Genghis Khan and remained united for a while after under his heirs despite a variety of different religious influences creeping in and the difficulty of distance in managing their empire. That's not to say that future reversals wouldn't happen in Syria with the Romans or Iraq and the Persians, but I do believe an Arab Great Migration of some nature was as likely as the German one.

I think you'd have to go back earlier to keep both Byzantium and Persia capable of repelling initial migrations. Given both of those states have natural borders to make use of and territory in depth, they're good bets for coming back in and taking territories back. But the initial wave is something I think they lose.
I mentioned this before but I’ll say so again. Who or what is going to unite all of the Arab tribes ittl just in time to exploit the war weariness of the two superpowers to the north of them? I mean, even if you contrive some alternate uniting force that sweeps across Arabia, why are we all assuming that this will happen just as the Romans and Persians are recovering from their Great War?

I mean, that seems to be a huge unaddressed issue with a lot of the speculation going on in the thread, and it seems almost ASB. Are we just to assume that the Arabs are destined to unite and defeat Rome and Persia? Or will their migrations continue as it had prior to the rise of Muhammad?
 

Teejay

Gone Fishin'
I mentioned this before but I’ll say so again. Who or what is going to unite all of the Arab tribes ittl just in time to exploit the war weariness of the two superpowers to the north of them? I mean, even if you contrive some alternate uniting force that sweeps across Arabia, why are we all assuming that this will happen just as the Romans and Persians are recovering from their Great War?

I mean, that seems to be a huge unaddressed issue with a lot of the speculation going on in the thread, and it seems almost ASB. Are we just to assume that the Arabs are destined to unite and defeat Rome and Persia? Or will their migrations continue as it had prior to the rise of Muhammad?

The great war between the Romans and Persians was catastrophic and Mesopotamia was extremely important for the Persian Empire. The Arab tribes in the case of both empires being quite weak quite overrun quite easily the various provinces of both empires. However without Islam the Arab empire is going to break apart pretty quickly and another Persian empire would emerge roughly along the borders of the Abbasid caliphate. The official language would be Arabic and might be officially Nestorian Christian (if large scale conversions to Nestorian Christianity occur among the Persians). It is very likely an Romano-Berber* state with an Arab dynasty would dominate in North Africa and perhaps Hispania.

*The Arabs would eventually convert to Roman Catholicism, like the Visigoths did in Hispania.
 
Feel I should mention it because it keeps being forgotten in threads like this, but the potential for Manichaeism really needs to be considered.

Despite persecution, there were significant populations of Manichaens in the Sassanid Empire, Arabian peninsula and amongst the Turks. With no Islam, Manichaeism is a strong contender for becoming a more powerful religion.
Not only was it quite good at surviving OTL in some of the harshest conditions, but its popularity amongst Silk Road traders and headway into China makes it very advantageous for any foreign conqueror to convert to.
 

Teejay

Gone Fishin'
Feel I should mention it because it keeps being forgotten in threads like this, but the potential for Manichaeism really needs to be considered.

Despite persecution, there were significant populations of Manichaens in the Sassanid Empire, Arabian peninsula and amongst the Turks. With no Islam, Manichaeism is a strong contender for becoming a more powerful religion.
Not only was it quite good at surviving OTL in some of the harshest conditions, but its popularity amongst Silk Road traders and headway into China makes it very advantageous for any foreign conqueror to convert to.

That is a possibility for the the Iranian population to convert to Manichaeism, with the Turkic tribes, Mongols and Manchu's eventually following suit. Especially if the Arab conquerors destroying a lot of the infrastructure supporting the Zoroastrian religion or at the very least stopping Zoroastrian and Christian persecution of it.

Perhaps without Islam Manichaeism could become the official religion a revived Persian Empire. I don't know how they would treat the Christian populations in the regions they would rule.
 
One thing I would like to mention on the point of the arab conquest, is that it more than anything killed Vulgar Latin, St. Isidore lamented that people where forgetting Latin, however only with the rise of islam did Court Latin die. This extends to the old languages of the Middle East. Others here are contending that bedouin migration would significantly change the demographic makeup of the middle east. This is ahistorical there are almost no instances of a complete genetic replacement of a culture, as shown most pointedly in the fact that many "Anglo-Saxon" monarchs had British Names. Similarly, the adoption of Islam and by necessity Arabic, was because of the ruling class. The reason for this is that the Quran is basically untranslatable, I mean 25% of it is unreadable/cannot be understand even by Imams versed in Classical Arabic. As a result if someone converts they basically have to learn Arabic, as much of Islam is tied up in the Quran and Hadith, which is again in Classical Arabic.

This is compounded by the fact that modern genetic studies show that the so called "Arab" populations of the middle east are genetically, Aramaic, Phoenician, Palestinian, Assyrian or whatever, discounting minorities like Turkomans, or Yazidis. Overall the dominance of Arabic is unlikely as the Migrants would likely just leave an impact in words, which considering modern Aramaic has many Arabic words, would not be much different, but the Tribesman would assimilate and the Sheikhs, would just learn Greek, Aramaic or whatever the local prestige language is. I mean we saw this OTL with the Abbasids learning Persian. A Middle East without Islam, would therefore, likely preserve the mix of languages it had historically, likely up until the rise of Nationalism.
 
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I'm not too convinced the Arabs could even invade North Africa west of Cyrenaica on their own without someone inviting them in. Granted, this is a very plausible course of events, since both the Germanic peoples and the Slavs were invited into places they later conquered (not to mention the entire idea of the foederati) and no doubt the Arabs would make great soldiers. They'd do well in allying with the Romanised Berber kingdoms to put an end to Byzantine rule there, where you'd probably get a gradual spread of African Romance languages across most of the countryside except in more remote areas. The last holdouts of Punic would probably be completely extinct by 1000 AD or so, barring certain circumstances like maybe they spread to Malta (mostly abandoned in Late Antiquity IIRC) or adopt a religion different from that of the central government and survive persecution to become an ethnoreligious minority like some groups of Kurds, Zoroastrians, and of course the Jews, which incidentally Punic is very closely related to Biblical Hebrew.

Incidentally, North Africa was a pretty religiously diverse place in Late Antiquity, with several flavours of Christianity, whatever was left of Manichaeism (see St. Augustine), Berber and Greco-Roman paganism (the former being pretty vibrant), and Judaism. A mix of different Arab tribes introducing their own religious beliefs would be quite interesting.

I wonder to what degree Arab invasions might cause a cultural renaissance in places? In Egypt and the Near East/Mesopotamia, this would break centuries of Greco-Roman dominance even if it's mainly replacing the secular elite with Arab sheikhs. I like the idea of reconciling Christianity with the history of those nations, even if it that might not be the first thing which occurs (after all, it took Byzantium quite a while to tap into the Hellenic past). The Persians reconciled their past with Islam too. So it doesn't seem too unreasonable to imagine a similar process occurring with the Egyptians and Syrians. You can use stories from the Bible like Jonah or Joseph to help prove your point.
 
The issue is it would be hard to get a politically united Arabia given all the tribes, small states, and kingdoms there was at the time. Without Islam, or one big bending religion it would be messy getting it done in uniting Arabia. Early Islam had it civil wars and schism in the form of the Fitna as it was.

True, but I was trying to consider both scenarios. It'd be hard to get a full Arabia, but it'd be an equally interesting possibility - a form of early civic nationalism (anachronism alarm), or identification of themselves as neither Roman nor Persian, but Arab, and tired of being pushed around!

I think you guys are overestimating Arab discord as a reason for to not have an initial wave of conquest and migration. Arab confederations have migrated before, including many Persian and Roman allies. Sure, they split afterwards, but they still carved out not-insubstantial kingdoms. A non-Arab example would be the Mongols, who united under Genghis Khan and remained united for a while after under his heirs despite a variety of different religious influences creeping in and the difficulty of distance in managing their empire. That's not to say that future reversals wouldn't happen in Syria with the Romans or Iraq and the Persians, but I do believe an Arab Great Migration of some nature was as likely as the German one.

I think you'd have to go back earlier to keep both Byzantium and Persia capable of repelling initial migrations. Given both of those states have natural borders to make use of and territory in depth, they're good bets for coming back in and taking territories back. But the initial wave is something I think they lose.

True, but the question was both all the Arabs. I don't doubt ability, I doubt interest, or divergent interest.

One point that I have not seen covered is that the reason other than war weariness that the local populations of both old empires welcomed the invading Muslims Arabs. The fact of widespread religious persecuation, financial and political Instability in the case of the Romans was the reason to welcome a new rulership class. In the case of the Persians it was a case of the decay of the proto feudal political system, a centralising state with its own version of religious persecutions and the war that brought them down when the Arabs kick the door in!
I think without Islam what you will see is a charismatic leader uniting a portion of the Arabs in a great invasion of both powers as in otl. The rest I think will be as described by other posters on this timeline expansion followed by assimilation , destruction or in expulsion

I personally quite like the idea of an Arab Migration that effectively repopulates the Levant and Mesopotamia. Winning for a generation, in both Persia and the Roman Empire - but because OTL has to be considered a wank IMO, and in an ATL would probably be considered ASB - I think you're likely to have a lasting Arabic influence on the region - with re-entry perhaps leaving those Arab influences hybridising with the other local cultures to produce more pronounced regional variances than IOTL - alongside a smaller common Levantine Arab or Mesopotamian Arab culture throughout.

Feel I should mention it because it keeps being forgotten in threads like this, but the potential for Manichaeism really needs to be considered.

Despite persecution, there were significant populations of Manichaens in the Sassanid Empire, Arabian peninsula and amongst the Turks. With no Islam, Manichaeism is a strong contender for becoming a more powerful religion.
Not only was it quite good at surviving OTL in some of the harshest conditions, but its popularity amongst Silk Road traders and headway into China makes it very advantageous for any foreign conqueror to convert to.

To be fair, so is Nestorianism. A Nestorian Arabia would be a TL of note as well IMO.

I do love hte idea of Manichaenism becoming the religion of trade on both land and sea - imagine, Manichaenism in Indonesia! :eek:
 
The great war between the Romans and Persians was catastrophic and Mesopotamia was extremely important for the Persian Empire. The Arab tribes in the case of both empires being quite weak quite overrun quite easily the various provinces of both empires. However without Islam the Arab empire is going to break apart pretty quickly and another Persian empire would emerge roughly along the borders of the Abbasid caliphate. The official language would be Arabic and might be officially Nestorian Christian (if large scale conversions to Nestorian Christianity occur among the Persians). It is very likely an Romano-Berber* state with an Arab dynasty would dominate in North Africa and perhaps Hispania.

*The Arabs would eventually convert to Roman Catholicism, like the Visigoths did in Hispania.
You completely avoided my point. Who or what could possibly unite the Arabs in time to exploit the temporary weakness of both empires after the Great War?
 
@RogueTraderEnthusiast

I could see Manichaeism doing really well in Indonesia actually, certainly its position as a polytheistic abrahamic religion makes it more compatible to the local culture than Islam has been historically.
 
I mentioned this before but I’ll say so again. Who or what is going to unite all of the Arab tribes ittl just in time to exploit the war weariness of the two superpowers to the north of them? I mean, even if you contrive some alternate uniting force that sweeps across Arabia, why are we all assuming that this will happen just as the Romans and Persians are recovering from their Great War?
Depends on what you set up really. I'm starting to consider an Ibn Battuta POD prior to the Islam POD, but Yemeni, Tanukhid, Ghassanid or Lakhmid events could be conceived.

I mean, that seems to be a huge unaddressed issue with a lot of the speculation going on in the thread, and it seems almost ASB. Are we just to assume that the Arabs are destined to unite and defeat Rome and Persia? Or will their migrations continue as it had prior to the rise of Muhammad?
The details are up for discussion certainly. I just think that removing Islam alone is not going to stop a Arab Migration period, any more than removing the corruption and weakness of the WRE is going to stop the Germanic Migrations. The butterfly can't extend that far into history. The WRE being stronger means that the Germanic Migrations might be blunted or stopped entirely, not that they wouldn't happen. We're talking generations of population buildup that needed an outflow.

Now, whether or not it's a united event or waves of different tribes is something up for discussion and perhaps as a prelude to a timeline. But I think that some sort of migration attempt was going to happen, and it would happen regardless of the conditions of Byzantium or Persia. The same thing goes for the Turkic migrations or the Germanic migrations or the discovery of the New World. Something was going to happen at some point. It's just a matter of the particulars.
 
One scenario I don't think we've covered, what if this is more of a Timur-style scenario than Mongol? A single warlord unites all of Arabia, goes out, conquers, and then on his death the confederacy/empire shatters?

It doesn't seem implausible to me
 
One scenario I don't think we've covered, what if this is more of a Timur-style scenario than Mongol? A single warlord unites all of Arabia, goes out, conquers, and then on his death the confederacy/empire shatters?

It doesn't seem implausible to me

Seems extremely plausible. That is more or less what happened, just with a series of religious-oriented leaders instead of purely political ones. I can certainly see this happening and without Islam to create an overarching purpose to align the individual factions it collapses after a generation or three from internal political pressures, very similar to the Mongols or Alexander's empire.

With no religious purpose to drive further expansion and promote a conversion of the conquered peoples the factions work to solidify their individual gains and begin to assimilate.
 
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