European Empires, Asian Sailors; Asian Empires, European Sailors

I have a vague idea, not for a detailed timeline but for an entertaining map, of absolutist land powers of rival religions backing the naval power small mercantile states of the "opposing" religion. So European Christian landpowers relying on Swahili/Zanzibari/Omani Muslim naval power city-states/small sultanates to bypass the Muslim land powers in order to trade with the Far East. Muslim land powers (maybe a Persian Empire and whoever controls most of the Arab lands whether Turkish in ruling class or some other group) relying upon European merchant republics as middlemen between them and the markets of Christian Europe.

My POD right now is the Roman Exarchate of Africa being converted not crushed by the early caliphates, with Carthage not being reduced to rubble in 682. This still allows for familiarish little Christian states with strong merchant navies to arise from the Roman Exarchate of Ravenna, such as some form of Venice.

Keep Egypt from falling into the hands of a Muslim land power or becoming a power capable of unifying North Africa itself, and you have Omani/Swahili/Zanzibari traders getting their good overland from the Red Sea to Alexandria and to all the alternate Muslim small naval power sultanates in this alternate North Africa.

Would this POD keep eventually Christianized Scandinavians from establishing river trade routes and city-states/small states from the North Sea through Europe to the Black Sea and Caspian?
 
Some critiques--What do you mean, "converted, not crushed?" The entire experience of the Arab conquest was very destabilising for North Africa, religious or not. Are you saying the Arabs get repelled, maybe by Kusaila or Kahina? That might let Carthage and whatever can be salvaged of the old order in North Africa to eventually break away from the Berber overlords in a destabilising system (Italy and North Africa could evolve similarly in terms of their decentralised, fragmented nature, definitely, thanks to geography) and create city states and/or merchant republics. But then why not just take the wealth of these city states to begin with?

The Swahili didn't arise until a few centuries later, and I don't know how Carthage being under the rule of Muslims but Egypt not could really happen minus Crusader-wank, definitely not in that era. And weren't contacts from Egypt in East Africa pretty minimal compared to those from Arabia and Persia? Egypt has a poor coast on the Red Sea, combined with the Nile Cataracts and the Sudd in the way of easy contact. Definitely a Christian Egypt and a Muslim Swahili area is plausible (assuming the butterflies resulting from it don't just turn Islam into an Arab ethnic religion in the long run or something), but it seems odd to me. Egypt probably wouldn't go for unifying North Africa, either, since the dangerous Gulf of Sirte is in the way past Cyrenaica (the overland route is almost as bad), and the lands to the west aren't nearly as rich as the lands to the east. That seems to be why Egypt's geopolitical interests always lay in the Near East since the days of the Pharaohs rather than t
 
Egypt as a sizable land buffer state might actually be good for my scenario. Some alternate equivalent of Mamluk Egypt shielding far off sultanates and emirates of North Africa and Southern Spain from actual de-facto rule by the great Caliph, whoever and wherever he might be.

That also prevents it being a complete wash in the Mediterranean with one "side" taking it over and squeezing the other. Post-Africa Exarchate Muslim sailors and post-Ravenna Exarchate Christian sailors both sailing that sea, especially if pre-Suez Canal naval to land to Medd. trade isn't really a thing; which means the North African and Spanish sultanate(s) would be sailing the long away like the Portuguese from real history or anyone else.
 
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