Arabia conquered - is there still islam?

No. Spread of Islam depended too much on tribal Arabic society, its divisions between several alliegances, its role as a new terrestrial road due to Romano-Persians wars, and a geopolitic situation where Persia wasn't able to get eastern and southern Arabia back under its domination.

You could have some more or less close equivalent to Islam, but with Muhammad's position probably butterflied and the whole situation not allowing political takeover, it wouldn't be Islam and most probably wouldn't come to expand ITTL.
 
Probably not. Depends when, who and how long conquest would last.

OK how about parthia (they had part of Arabia at one time so if they survived they could have went after the rest. So let's say full conquest around 350 AD, and I do not know how it would last (Oh and the parthians were zoroastrian) but let's say Arabia is still in control of parthia as ether fully integrated or as a satrapy (probably the latter) at least when Muhammad is alive. So would islam exist and if it would would religion be as wide spread as it is?
Edit:nvm just found answer.
 
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No. Spread of Islam depended too much on tribal Arabic society, its divisions between several alliegances, its role as a new terrestrial road due to Romano-Persians wars, and a geopolitic situation where Persia wasn't able to get eastern and southern Arabia back under its domination.

You could have some more or less close equivalent to Islam, but with Muhammad's position probably butterflied and the whole situation not allowing political takeover, it wouldn't be Islam and most probably wouldn't come to expand ITTL.

So pretty much in TTL it would just a unpopular cult/ heresy.
 
If it even appears at all, IMO, as enough large or organised enough belief. Frankly, it could likely not appears at all.
So everything about islam forming or becoming a power was possible only because of the tribal system. Even if it did manage to form it would most likely be disorganized and would eventually die out due to it not having enough followers to make it spread or to even keep it stable.
 
OK how about parthia (they had part of Arabia at one time so if they survived they could have went after the rest. So let's say full conquest around 350 AD, and I do not know how it would last (Oh and the parthians were zoroastrian) but let's say Arabia is still in control of parthia as ether fully integrated or as a satrapy (probably the latter) at least when Muhammad is alive. So would islam exist and if it would would religion be as wide spread as it is?
Edit:nvm just found answer.

It's as if millions of butterflies suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.
 
So everything about islam forming or becoming a power was possible only because of the tribal system. Even if it did manage to form it would most likely be disorganized and would eventually die out due to it not having enough followers to make it spread or to even keep it stable.

I may have misphrased it, and should be more clear.

Tribal situation doesn't mean disorganised. It means organised into a tribes, themselves on extended families.

Pre-Islamic Arabia had several religious groups : Arabian rites, Judaism, Christianism (actually, the whole set of Christian sects : melkites, nestorians, monophysists, post Judeo-Nazoreans, you name it), Persians religions, etc.

These didn't depend from personal choice or beliefs only but from the social/political bonds you had.
It could still be possible to arise socially and politically with a different religion, it asked some already established power to do so, and eventually situation was stuck with families having "identitarian" religions (while still possibly under the thumb of a tribe where another religion was dominant).

Muhammad, IOTL, managed to call (from the original support of his extended family) to lower social classes and to Beduins against tribes of Hejaz and extending his political/religious from there.

With an unified Arabia under foreign control, playing on tribal structures likewise would be met with unified answer. (Not that tribes would simply disappear, of course), assuming the religious diversity still exist after some point (both Byzantium and Persia tended to try to uniformise this IOTL).

It doesn't mean that Islam power was about tribal organisation, but that it develloped itself on a divided tribal organisation, managed to integrate them under a religion without foreign "obligations". And it didn't went without troubles, such as Ridda Wars.

Basically : no favourable political situation, likely decline of the religious diversity that allowed Islam (as a religious corpus) to appear...

A foreign conquest of Arabia as you depict it would have several issues : while Persian Empires regularly ruled over (or at very least dominated) Eastern and Southern Arabia IOTL, and didn't have much reason going outside this as it was already over the main Mediterranean/Indian Ocean trade roads. Going for more would be largely ressource-wasting critically with comfrontation with Romans that would barely have to push their Arabic allies (historical, and the new ones) into desertic/semi-desertic warfare against Persians while they attack them on Mesopotamia.

Romans had even less interest and ressources to waste going for the whole of Arabia, and doing so would lead to the reverse situation, only with Persians pointing and laughing at the invader this time.

And it does put the issue of Muhammad's appearing, not only as a prophet or preacher, but as an human living being. There's a concept used on this board, called "butterflying". Basically, the causal chain of events, if broken by a Point of Divergence (the moment where we "change" history, would likely devellops differently.

For exemple, having the Arabian situation changing centuries before Muhammad even born, could prevent the causal chain that led to his conception and birth to ever devellop.

It's as if millions of butterflies suddenly cried out in terror and were suddenly silenced.

You're there since mere months and already this helpful? How promising.
 
You're there since mere months and already this helpful? How promising.

It was just a light-hearted joke, not an attack. As you yourself have already said and gone into detail to explain, butterflies in the timeline would have kept Mohammad from ever being born.


Well that was a mistake by me. Mohammed's great great great whatever probably would have been killed. :p I still have to get my head around this whole butterfly thing.

One thing to keep in mind is that while changes in the timeline would butterfly away specific individuals from being born, there would still be historic trends that carry a lot of inertia. So while Mohammad may have not been born, some of the cultural and political climates that lead to Islam being founded and taking hold may still be present and a similar unifying religious belief might appear.
 
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