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As you remember, the Arab Caliphate Conquest of Persia and subsequent fall of the Sassanian Dynasty was basically completed at the year 651, marking the height of Arab Domination in the Near East. For a while, it seems that the Caliphate would become a more or less permanent player in the region due to a combination of military strength, backed by their religion that follows the teachings of their Prophet Muhammad.

However, in 702 AD, Axumite Expedition under King Adre'az (or Andreas in Western literature), successfully invade Hejaz and manage to occupy Jeddah for some time, before sacking the Caliphate's holiest place, the city of Mecca.

The sack of Mecca forces Caliph Abdul Malik bin Marwan to bring his army back from Egypt and Mesopotamia in order to regain the control of their Holy City, but then the exiled Emperor Justinian II retook order of the Eastern Roman Empire and launched a series of attack to liberate the Holy Land while the Caliphate Forces being distracted.

Caliph Abdul Malik bin Marwan and his son Sulaiman bin Abdul Malik would be later killed in the Battle of Medina, which saw massive defections of his Persian troops to Axumite side, after which the Arab forces end up fighting to the last man in a house-to-house battle that occurs afterward.

It was written that Arab resistance being mostly broken afterward, even if the Axumite still face resistance when they moved on to conquer the rest of Southern Arabian peninsula. The Caliphate religion ends up mostly disappearing soon afterward, only preserved by Desert Nomads who escaped deeper into the otherwise inhospitable desert to escape Ethiopian and later Roman persecution.

But what if the Arab Caliphate never end up broken by the Ethiopians? Could the Caliphate religion end up being a permanent, dominant feature on the Near East like Christianity and Zoroastrianism? And considering how Ethiopian attack actually gave breathing room for Eastern Roman Empire, that was undergoing a period of anarchy that time, could the Caliphate actually defeat the Eastern Roman Empire like they do with the Sassanid Persia?


OOC: Yes the premise here is Islamic conquests being reversed as the 702 AD Axumite attempts to invade Arabia being successful, they do manage to occupy Jeddah for some time IOTL, and they do attempt to sack Mecca, but they failed and would later be driven back by Sulaiman bin Abdul Malik. I haven't defined the exact POD, but their attack on Mecca end up being a success instead of end up as a disaster.
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