hey, all. been a while since i made a thread here.
anyway, for a while now i've had it in mind that maybe the Ottomans don't come to power in my ASB ATL so i've just had them as placeholders in new notes that i've been writing. i consider it far more important to the narrative of the TL that there be some kind of Turkish state in their place (it's especially important to one of the narrative projects within the TL since it focuses on an alternate Wallachia and i'm not changing that) and now i'd like to figure out who could potentially replace them, or if it's more likely that the Ottomans would still be around. the obvious first choice would be to use the Seljuks instead, but recently i've thought that it might be a bit more likely, or at least more interesting, to use a different, kinda-sorta pan-Middle Eastern power instead: maybe it could be an Arab state, or a larger Persian state (and yes, i know that the Seljuks were Turko-Persian, but i mean more "purely" Persian). the latter in particular could be especially interesting because i've also got a basic idea where an extensive alternate Iranian history could be grounded in a "persisting" Ilkhanate where Iranian history is mostly similar to how it was IOTL but with a Mongolic coating such as by having a Khan instead of a Shah.
so, thoughts? i'm open to ideas