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Somewhat based on the other Mongol thread.

OTL, the Arab/Islamic Explosion and the Mongol conquests are somewhat comparable. Both were mainly accomplished by novel cavalry tactics against armies which didn't know how to cope with them, both were the result of formerly divided nomadic peoples closing ranks around a new identity (national in the case of the Mongols, national and religious in the case of the Arabs). And both resulted in the (relatively) rapid conquest of more lands than one might think entirely plausible if it was suggested as a WI on here.

Perhaps the most significant issue is how longstanding these conquests were. The Yuan dynasty in China lasted a good while, the Khanate of the Golden Horde ditto, and Mongol terminology became deep-grained in languages. Have you ever stopped to consider how strange it is that Khan is a fairly common name in India?

The Arabs, of course, left even more obvious traces - Islam in most of the lands they conquered, and strong cultural influences in those that did not remain Muslim (e.g. Spain). They led to the virtual reinvention of the character of Persia and North Africa, two lands which had had an established identity since before classical times.

So, what would it have taken for - on the contrary - either the Arabs or Mongols (two different scenarios, obviously) to have overstretched and for their huge empires to have collapsed. Not into culturally connected successor states, like OTL, but by native peoples rebelling and throwing out all traces of the conqueror? No Khans in India, no Arabic spoken in North Africa, etc. Make them as irrelevant as the Avars or the Huns are to modern Eastern Europe - just a dusty name in a history textbook, remembered vaguely as a passing storm.

More victories might help. The Arabs were assisted by the fact that the Jews and Monophysites of North Africa considered Muslim rule to be more tolerant than that of Orthodox or Catholic states. But what if the Arabs had taken Constantinople and tried to absorb Byzantium in the 700s, at the same time as Persia et al? How much would it have taken before the Arabs themselves were spread too thinly for the Ummayid empire to hold together even as long as it did OTL?

Ditto for the Mongols, would they have started running down if they had made a successful invasion of India and/or western Europe and become too thinly spread and coping with a wide variety of enemies and rebellious subject peoples?

Discuss.
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