Christian Arab Empire

Teejay

Gone Fishin'
I am mostly agreeing with the historic hypothesis proposed by Tom Holland in his book In the Shadow of the Sword. In that the Arabs who conquerored the P and much of the Eastern Roman Empire, werent Muslims as we know today. In that the Islam familiar to us only started to take shape decades after Muhammad supposedly lived, around the reign of Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan.

The POD is instead of adopting Islam as the state religion the rulers of the Arab adopted either Monophysite or more likely Nestorian Christianity as the state religion. Similar to the process of the Germanic tribes who ruled in the former Western Roman Empire eventually becoming Catholic and adopting Roman culture. In this case the Arabs would become Persianised, although the Iranian civilization would eventually become a Christian rather than Zoroastrian Civilization.

One big effect would be that the Arabic language would be restricted to the Arabian Peninsula, Levant and Mesopotamia. Aramaic would be a liturgical language, while Egypt remains Coptic speaking, North Africa would remain Berber and Romance speaking.
 
This roughly becomes a no Islam scenario then because the Arabs were due to expand due to demographics regardless of religion. If the Arabs expanded into Rome/Persia without Islam it is more likely they’d adapt Christianity as their faith. Without Islam, however, the Arab Empire might be less unified than OTL, more like the Germanic invasions in Europe. In that case, you might see separate Arab states that assimilate into wherever they conquer, say a Coptic Egypt, an Aramaic/Nestorian Syria and a Zoroastrian Persia.
 
It took me about five seconds on the Google to find an abundance of information completely discrediting Holland and his work.

Yeah, Holland is an ideological fool. BUT, that doesn't mean that the thread itself is without merit. There were certainly large Christian (and other faith) communities within Arabia at the time. Its certainly possible that a charismatic preacher who is an adherent of one could rise up and his/her group could unite Arabia and lead to the conquests. So, lets play around with that. Now, just to be different, lets assume that its the Nestorians who manage to unite Arabia under a single ruler and then expand into Persia and Byzantium. How does this play out?
 
This roughly becomes a no Islam scenario then because the Arabs were due to expand due to demographics regardless of religion.

Not necessarily; if Muhammad's new realm adheres to a branch of Christianity other than that held in the Byzantine Empire or Mesopotamia, they might end up going to war to liberate these lands from the heretics. Allah lo vult!
 
Monophysites from Byzantine provinces conquered by Arabs welcomed Arab army as liberators due to their neutrality in inter-Christian theological disputes. So they'll welcom Monophysite Arab invasion with even bigger enthusiasm.
 

Kaze

Banned
It does not mean that there would not be a Crusade. Remember there were some wars between the Byzantine Orthodox, Coptic, and the Papacy over religion; the whole of the Wars of Reformation was considered nothing more than one-long massive Crusade by some. Just because you ASB the Prophet into a Nestorian does not mean there is going to be peaceful cooperation - it was the Middle Ages, war was second nature and religious war was seen as holy.
 
I personally thought of a unified Arabia under Ebionitism, but its degree of being a Christian sect was, at best, likely to be far.
 
It does not mean that there would not be a Crusade. Remember there were some wars between the Byzantine Orthodox, Coptic, and the Papacy over religion; the whole of the Wars of Reformation was considered nothing more than one-long massive Crusade by some. Just because you ASB the Prophet into a Nestorian does not mean there is going to be peaceful cooperation - it was the Middle Ages, war was second nature and religious war was seen as holy.
Hell part of the reason the Crusades got started in the first place was to get the various Christian Kingdoms to stop fighting each other for five minuets.
 
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