DBWI: Change the fates of Turkey and Iran

IOTL, the Ottoman Empire suddenly collapsed when Kurdish rebels sacked Constantinople in 1722. The empire quickly disintegrated as Christian powers sought to take advantage. There was a brief period when Nadir Pasha gained power and engaged in a series of devastating wars that reached deep into Germany, but after Nadir's death the Turkish empire returned to chaos.

IOTL, the Safavid Empire continued to remain a significant, if slowly declining, power all the way until the Great War.

Could the fates of these two have been switched?
 
Maybe having the Ottomans be less screwed-up with their succession system (and means of raising the royal children) as they tended to produce crazy and/or incompetent rulers?
 
[I really like how there's so many DBWIs in this forum these days. Really livens up the atmosphere.]

Easy. Have the Kurds not sack Constantinople, I suppose. Alternatively, Nadir Pasha could've actually, y'know, reformed the Ottoman system. Hard to maintain the impact of your wars if you can't keep your conquests. He reminds me of that Polish-Lithuanian fellow- his nemesis, I believe. The two of them, battling back and forth across the Balkans. The difference being that the Polish-Lithuanian chap actually had some proper reforms up his sleeve. Nadir Pasha should've done something like the old Ottoman system with the religious tolerance and whatnot. (I'm not too clear about it myself.) Mildly ironic that his name was Nadir, as a matter of fact. It raises a chicken-and-egg conundrum, I reckon- did the term nadir (the brief moment before an organization completely collapses) or the name Nadir Pasha come first?

Really, what you're asking is essentially that the Ottomans and Persians collapse in different ways. The Ottomans decay, the Persians explode. I suppose the first thing to do would be to look at the things leading up to the Persian decay. General consensus from Ceddit [TTL Reddit] is that they were overextended from conquering Mesopotamia and Turkestan. Russia breathing down their neck probably didn't help, either- once they hit their high-water point with the Siege of Delhi it was all downhill from there.
 
Personally, I think this would be quite difficult to do. While centrifugal forces were strong in both Empires, it would have been hard for some Iranian version of Nadir Pasha to gain power in the way that Nadir gained power in the Ottoman Empire. The Safavid Dynasty, or at least its individual rulers, enjoyed a sense of legitimacy that Ottoman Sultans didn't. While a number of Ottoman Sultans were murdered in the 17th century, and the reigns of power were lost to the Köprülü family (both of which set the stage for Nadir's usurpation of the Ottoman State), the Safavid rulers kept a strong hand on the state in the 17th century, and none of Persia's Shahs were murdered. Thus the Iranian system maintained some scruples about the legitimacy of the Safavid Shahs to rule.

I suppose that the revolts of the Sunni Afghans under Shah Sultan Husayn could have been a possible time to take down the Safavids, though if they had trouble breaking into the Shia areas of Persia, I fail to see how they could successfully besiege Isfahan, though the odds seem to have been similar for the Kurdish seizure of Constantinople.

So I mean, wasn't outside the realm of possibility for the Safavids to suffer the same fate as the Ottomans, but I think the Ottoman collapse and usurpation was more likely.
 
[I really like how there's so many DBWIs in this forum these days. Really livens up the atmosphere.]

Easy. Have the Kurds not sack Constantinople, I suppose. Alternatively, Nadir Pasha could've actually, y'know, reformed the Ottoman system. Hard to maintain the impact of your wars if you can't keep your conquests. He reminds me of that Polish-Lithuanian fellow- his nemesis, I believe. The two of them, battling back and forth across the Balkans. The difference being that the Polish-Lithuanian chap actually had some proper reforms up his sleeve. Nadir Pasha should've done something like the old Ottoman system with the religious tolerance and whatnot. (I'm not too clear about it myself.) Mildly ironic that his name was Nadir, as a matter of fact. It raises a chicken-and-egg conundrum, I reckon- did the term nadir (the brief moment before an organization completely collapses) or the name Nadir Pasha come first?

Agreed. The Kurds sacked Constantinople but a big percentage of their army was made of ethnic Greek troops. Had Nadir Pasha been more religiously tolerant the Greeks in Asia would probably never have risen up in the first place. And it wasn't like he needed to liberalize the country, the whole religious situation was relatively stable until he started using Christians and Jews as an unlimited piggy bank to fund his trans-Balkan wars. If he'd been able to hold onto some territorial gains to show for all the treasure spent it might have ended differently.
 
Well, I suppose you might also switch the fates of the Hapsburg a Empire and the Marathas. The Hapsburg liberation of the Balkans was instrumental in allowing them to fully consolidate their power over the HRE. The Maratha Empire, meanwhile, ultimately was beaten back from northern India by the Savavid-Mughal alliance; the Mughals even hold power to this day so you'd see a pretty significant divergence. The Hapsburgs, meanwhile, might even have lost the War of the Austrian Succession, which has huge repercussions, resulting in an almost unrecognizable Europe. Nadir Pasha almost taking Budapest, though, caused the Orinces of Germany to rally around Maria Theresia; and of course he was finally defeated in battle by the armies of Frederick the Great, loyal ally to the Hapsburgs.

Sidenote, anyone think this thread is well timed given that Grand Caliph Orhanoglu just threatened to "Liberate Konstantiyye from Hapsburg Imperialism" for the umpteenth time? Man, the Islamic Republic of Turkey is a mess...
 
I wonder how the Shun Dynasty would have been affected by a more dramatic Safavid decline and a more gradual Ottoman decline as well. Historically, the Shun defeated the Latter Jin/Qing and took over China after crushing the Southern Ming in the 17th century with Shun China entering a new golden age during this time and becoming a world power, which it is to this day.
 
OOC: technically the wreckage of their empire doesn't neccesarily mean they collapsed; the wreckage could refer to the Marathas crushing them and then they have a resurgence with the help of the Persians
OOC: In addition to this, we can say the "Afghan Empire" was a Shogunate-esque thingy with puppet Mughal Emperors continuing to sit in Delhi.
 
OOC: technically the wreckage of their empire doesn't neccesarily mean they collapsed; the wreckage could refer to the Marathas crushing them and then they have a resurgence with the help of the Persians

OOC: In addition to this, we can say the "Afghan Empire" was a Shogunate-esque thingy with puppet Mughal Emperors continuing to sit in Delhi.

OOC: Rival dynasties might be more realistic, Kabul was the old core of the Mughals. If the "Afghan" dynasty there is supported by the Persians to secure the east against the Uzbeks then their eastern (Delhi?) rivals might get vassalised by the Marathas.
 
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