Conquest of Medina

What if, during the Siege of Medina, it slips Salman's mind that in his native Persia trenches were used to counter cavalry? Mohammad's forces were outnumbered three to one, and although a few months previously he'd managed to turn around a predicament with similar proportions, it's not certain he'd be able to manage a repeat performance- especially seeing as that previous battle, at Badr, involved only a tenth as many men. So, what if, due to the lack of an effective way to counter Persian cavalry, the Battle at Medina is lost. To make it more interesting, what if Mohammad is killed in the battle. What happens afterward? Does Islam get nipped in the bud, or is the genie already out of the bottle? Is Mohammad seen as a martyr, or a threat to the peace? Does Islam spread along trade routes, or remain a local phenomenon, eventually withering away altogether? If it spreads, what happens in Persia and Byzantium?
 

PhilippeO

Banned
Probably nipped in the bud, Islam would survive as one of many sect/religion on Arabia.


no one knows really. There are too many POD that can change fate of Islam / Arabia at this stage. Riddah wars that unite Arabia still in the future, Khalid ibn Walid still not join Muslim cause, its still too unpredictable.
 
What if, during the Siege of Medina, it slips Salman's mind that in his native Persia trenches were used to counter cavalry? Mohammad's forces were outnumbered three to one, and although a few months previously he'd managed to turn around a predicament with similar proportions, it's not certain he'd be able to manage a repeat performance- especially seeing as that previous battle, at Badr, involved only a tenth as many men. So, what if, due to the lack of an effective way to counter Persian cavalry, the Battle at Medina is lost. To make it more interesting, what if Mohammad is killed in the battle. What happens afterward? Does Islam get nipped in the bud, or is the genie already out of the bottle? Is Mohammad seen as a martyr, or a threat to the peace? Does Islam spread along trade routes, or remain a local phenomenon, eventually withering away altogether? If it spreads, what happens in Persia and Byzantium?

Probably your standard no-Islam scenario, I would think. Much of the Muslim community would surely be killed or captured in the ensuing sack of Medina, and the rest would almost certainly wind up scattered around the Hejaz, with no organized clergy and no definative version of the Quran (one wasn't compiled until several decades after your POD)-if any remnant "Islam" survived at all, it would probably be some kind of folk religion, eventually absorbed into Christianity.
 
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