Arab expansion without islam

How could nationalism be butterflied away? It's basically tribalism on a larger scale.


Because without Islam to unite and tell all the tribes that they are all Arabs and not little bity tribes fighting over oasis in the desert. Arabs outside of Arabia had no political power or aspiration (except maybe Lahkmids), so idk who else other Arabian Arabs that could actually make a conquest.
 
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A couple of years ago I read a very interesting and thought-provoking book:
Empires of the Silk Road by Christopher I. Beckwith (http://www.indiana.edu/~ceus/faculty/beckwith.shtml). The subtitle of the book is "A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present" and Beckwith paints - in broad strokes but with firm foundations in archaeology and linguistics - a fascinating picture of what happened all over Central Eurasia during the last five millennia.
The confines of what Central Eurasia encompasses have moved back and forth, and at times have encompassed everything between Portugal and Korea, and from Tibet and India to the Arctic.
Arabia is not included in this geographical definition, but when the Arabs boil out of their subcontinent they become completely part of the Eurasian mindset and behave in ways very similar to countless empire builders over the the past (more or less) known history.

Coincidentally Beckwith explores in the same chapter the expansion of the Arabs and of the Vikings, and the similarities are striking.
There were reasons for the Arabs to go and conquer, even if - at least at the beginnings - the idea of "empire may have not been there. These reasons include disruption to traditional trade routes, climatic changes, a power vacuum on the borders, long-lasting economic crisis and depopulation of the border regions. Religion is not there, or at least if is there is in the same way as the future king is sired by a god on a noble maiden, is abandoned to die and nourished by animals and when is grown up presents himself to the court of the old evil king, gains the loyalty of a group of heroes and go forth to depose the king, marry a princess and build an empire. In other words a founding myth, which worked - more or less word by word - for hundreds if not thousands of empire builders (including the legendary founder of Rome).

I find Beckwith convincing, and therefore I don't believe that Islam was a significant reason for Arab expansion. I would add that while pre-islamic Arabia was not unified it was not the nest of vipers Islamic hagiographers line to depict. Coastal Arabs and Bedouins from the interior were at times fighting but most of the time cooperated, were part of a society: Beckwith convincingly demolishes the myth of the predator nomad, stealing with violence the fruits of the labor of settled populations.

I do recommend this book without reservations. The only warning is that it is not an easy book to read belonging to academia more than to popular history. A review of the book can be found at https://escholarship.org/uc/item/67z5m9d3#page-1
 
Is it still possible to have the Arabs expand if Islam didn't exist?
Holding this trainwreck constant?

It would be almost inevitable, but would have much more in common with the Germanic Volkswanderung. No unity and vastly less penetration to start with (the Levant and Mesopotamia are almost certainly lost, Egypt is a coin-flip, odds are the Persian highlands fend off the worst of it, and the Romans ride it out a lot better than OTL no matter what); while in the long term Arabic never gains the prestige of OTL even among the successor states that do not adopt Aramaic/Coptic/Greek/Perisan outright
 
We should also consider that it is unlikely that the early conquest armies were not uniformly Muslim; its just demographically improbable. Many were just looking for opportunities for loot and glory and adventure without totally abanoning their prior faith, and those motives would still be present without a religious unifiers.
 
While the Byzantines and others on the periphery including the Persians had some serious internal issues at the time the Arabs began to expand making it easier for them. However, the Arab expansion rested on two things, a united Arab "nation" and some impetus to expand so aggressively (rather than simply push back against Persians, Byzantines, etc.). Islam provided both unity and an aggressive expansionary drive.

Given the very fractured state of the Arabian peninsula at that time, can't see unity as complete as you saw OTL between conversion, conquest, expulsion etc. Also, there wasn't some drive to expand such as population, crop failure, etc. At this time the difficulties in surrounding "states' did not amount to an easily filled vacuum - it took a united and motivated Arab force to do it.

IMHO absent Mohammed/Islam there may be some Arab expansion at some point depending on how much vacuum is created around them, but nothing like OTL.
 
We should also consider that it is unlikely that the early conquest armies were not uniformly Muslim; its just demographically improbable. Many were just looking for opportunities for loot and glory and adventure without totally abanoning their prior faith, and those motives would still be present without a religious unifiers.

Once the first incursions into Byzantine border territories are successful there will be a lot of other groups (both from Arabia proper and from Syria or other areas in the Levant) volunteering to join. These will be marginal ethnic groups, non-conformist believers or simply borderers impoverished by high taxation and war ravages. Nothing like success to attract fellow travelers. The same thing happened a lot of times all over Eurasia when smaller "nations" (in the Latin definition) were coopted and willingly joined successful leaders.
Even when a smaller "nation" was defeated not all (in many case not even a majority) of its members chose to flee or were killed outright. The more common pattern was for the defeated to swear fealty to the conqueror and follow his banners.
 
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