Arabia's Eastern Wind

Faraday Cage

The 1001 Arabian POD's thread has inspired me. Specifically "WI Arabian sailors discovered Japan?" when I was already thinking "Hey, the Arabians had good ships and the Indian Ocean is known for being a peaceful one that has been crossed by men in canoes, so what if there had been more Arabian exchange with India?".

So this thread is sort of a Arabian age of sail wank discussion. If you can use meiji as a generic term to describe a culture rapidly modernizing, here let's use swahili as a generic term for cultures created by colonization/intermingling with Arabian sailors. So why not Swahili Indians or even Swahili Chinese, Japanese, and Oceanian Aboriginals? What if this grew into an "Eastern Wind" to spread Islam or was an attempt to bypass Persia's monopoly as the middle-man in Silk Road trading?
 
Actually, this is arguably OTL. Arabs dominated Indian Ocean trade for a long time, extending far enough to spread Islam in southeast Asia, trade with Korea and harass southern Chinese shipping at various points.

Still, though, there room to wank it, I suppose. Perhaps an Islamicised Ceylon and southern India could be achieved. Islamicistion of India from the south might be interesting.
 

Faraday Cage

From Ceylon to Indonesia to the Phillipines to Oceania... a hybrid trading empire that eventually makes Australia the largest jewel in it's crown once things have advanced enough where they have the time, effort, and inclination to go mining there for it's valuables.

And they could get the ironclad from the Koreans.
 

Faraday Cage

A thoroughly Swahilized Indian Ocean and, if one is feeling more adventurous, Pacific Ocean too. Lots of possibilities. More of a "counterfactual trend" alternate possibility than a specific POD.

Any thoughts or suggestions?
 
You would need to find some sort of POD for an Arab group to want to colonise part of Australia - lack of easily exploitable resources (say minerals/food/slaves/other goods) is a big problem though.

Maybe have a splinter group (some sort of religious or political faction) try and set up a homeland along the Western Coast, then perhaps quickly reintegrate that back into the rest of the Arab trading network somehow. Maybe a squash the heretics of some kind war? Then you would have a small but established Australian settlement that might serve as a launch point for bigger things
 

Faraday Cage

Australia would just have space, once trade with the oceanian islands had built up to a point that the sailors would want a Southern harbor in the Pacific, they'd built a settlement on the Australian coast that could lead to further developments later.

And anyways, might the Arabians that make it to the Pacific get caught in the naval power plays of the Chinese and Japanese (see: the attempted invasions of Korea)? And if so, is it too much of an implausibility to see them getting the notion of ironclads from the Koreans?
 
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