Byzantine Empire and Persia.

The Persian Emperor Chosroes II is completely victorius is his wars against the Byzantines and succeeds in capturing Constantinople. Heraclius is killed in battle. How does this effect the rise of Islam.?
 

Philip

Donor
The timing is critical. If Persia has enough time to recover, it should be able to contain the Arabs rather easily.
 
The timing is critical. If Persia has enough time to recover, it should be able to contain the Arabs rather easily.

Philip

Probably but how will the Persians treat the Christians in the lands they now rule? Think they were fairly generous to the Monophysitics during the conquest as both groups were hostile to the Byzantium/Orthodox. However, having gained control of the area they might be less tolerant.

On recovery time it depends on how the war goes. If Heraclius is killed fairly early on, or follows his earlier idea of retreating to Carthage, the war could be far less costly to Persian.

In that case I could see the Arabs possibly overrunning Mesopotamia, Syria and Egypt but Persian holding its heartlands and possibly Anatolia.

After that things could go in any number of ways. The Persians could last for centuries against the Muslims but face a 2nd front against various nomads from the steppes. This is a greater danger for them than Byzantium. On the other hand they have more experience of handling such attackers and lying between them and the bulk of the Islamic world if any Turkish invaders conquer much of their heartland they wouldn't be likely to be Muslim so their more likely to be absorbable. Of course if TTL has a Mongol horde things get really messy.

Stevep
 
Top