Hellenistic culture remains in Syria, Lebanon and Israel

Hi,

Is there a POD that allows hellenistic culture, and even greek linguage, to stay alive until nowadays in Syria, Lebanon and Israel ?
 
Butterfly the Arabic invasions, or make sure that most of the population doesn't convert to Islam, or weaken the plague of Justanian.
 
Have Muhammed convert to Christianity, as I believe Harry Turtledove did once. Heraclius would smash the Sassanids, and the status quo would probably remain for a LONG time.
 
Butterfly the Arabic invasions, or make sure that most of the population doesn't convert to Islam, or weaken the plague of Justanian.

There were going to be Arabic invasions, with or without Islam. There was already an extensive migration of Arabs into parts of modern day Syria, Jordan and Iraq long before Mohammed came along. They'll be likely be a lot more disorganized and be akin to the Germanic invasions of western Europe, or not.
 
There were going to be Arabic invasions, with or without Islam. There was already an extensive migration of Arabs into parts of modern day Syria, Jordan and Iraq long before Mohammed came along. They'll be likely be a lot more disorganized and be akin to the Germanic invasions of western Europe, or not.

Is it possible that the Arabs would end up adopting the local cultures and becoming integrated into the broader society, rather than imposing their own culture on the locals? Without Islam as a unifying force, it would be difficult to have a real Arab cultural explosion...
 
Is it possible that the Arabs would end up adopting the local cultures and becoming integrated into the broader society, rather than imposing their own culture on the locals? Without Islam as a unifying force, it would be difficult to have a real Arab cultural explosion...

The more gradual the Arab migrations, and the more spread out, the less of Arab culture will survive, and the deeper the integration.
 
Is it possible that the Arabs would end up adopting the local cultures and becoming integrated into the broader society, rather than imposing their own culture on the locals? Without Islam as a unifying force, it would be difficult to have a real Arab cultural explosion...

Dunno. The Aramaic and Coptic languages didn't decline in use because of the Islamic invasions per se but because those languages had low prestige in the areas where their speakers were dominant which made it very easy for the new Arab elite to impose their own language as well as culture on the native populations of the areas they conquered. I suppose they might adopt Greek, since they did keep it as the administrative language of Egypt during the early days of the Caliphate.
 
Greek was the language of education and power in the region, Aramaic was the lingua franca of most ordinary people. Greek as a common language tended to be concentrated around cities with Greek-speaking governance, I find. You could conceivably affect the demographics of these regions with different PODs;

  • No Islam/Arabic invasion as has already been mentioned
  • Something affecting the formation of the Sassanid Persian state or the Parthian that preceded it
  • Probably any POD involving Alexander the Great living longer
  • A different pattern of Hellenic-speaking migration into western Asia after Alexander the Great's death
  • Any timeline involving a Successor state to Alexander uniting/re-uniting his Empire
  • This one is a stretch, but possibly a timeline where Greek-speaking Buddhists from Greco-Bactria/the Indo-Greek Kingdom manage to convert significant numbers of the people in these regions
 
There were going to be Arabic invasions, with or without Islam. There was already an extensive migration of Arabs into parts of modern day Syria, Jordan and Iraq long before Mohammed came along. They'll be likely be a lot more disorganized and be akin to the Germanic invasions of western Europe, or not.

I'm not sure about that. There was, I believe, raiding into Roman Syria-Palestine, particularly after Maurice wound up the Ghassanids, but there had always been raiding, and it'd done very little damage to the surrounding area. I'm not an expert, but I'd be pretty surprised if non-Islamic Arab invasions were as dangerous as the Germanic invasions were. Even fourth century Germania looks like a verdent garden of Eden with a booming population compared to seventh century Arabia.

I think that if one is to draw comparisons to Germanic attacks, it's probably better to compare these theoretical pagan Arab attacks to those of the Germans in the second and third centuries- occasional, violent attacks that do a large amount of damage, but ultimately make very little difference to the broader strategic balance.

As for the survival of Hellenism, one can do it by preventing the Arab conquest of the Roman East, but one can do it equally well by having the Romans go under as OTL, and having the Sasanians survive. A Caliphate focused on Syria, Egypt and Palestine, but without Persian influence, is going to be a Caliphate that will inevitably follow Graeco-Roman, Mediterranean cultural norms, rather than Iranian ones. Basically, see what the Ummayads were doing, and then extend that.
 
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