Islam decides to ignore The Byzantines

bard32

Banned
Lets say that the Muslims decide not to travel into any Christian territory (they can still border them, but not invade), them and decide to got even more eastward, what happens?

The Byzantine Empire gets a little breathing room and buys a little more time but it will soon fall. Maybe to another Muslim power, or maybe, even Russia?
Why not Russia? The Russians were a rising power in the fifteenth century. Imperial Russia modeled itself on the Byzantine Empire. The Grand Prince of
Muscovy called himself Tsar, anglicized as Czar, (meaning Caesar, the same root as the German Kaiser,) for the first time. He'd married a Byzantine princess, and called Russia the "Third Rome."
 
The Byzantine Empire gets a little breathing room and buys a little more time but it will soon fall. Maybe to another Muslim power, or maybe, even Russia?
Why not Russia? The Russians were a rising power in the fifteenth century. Imperial Russia modeled itself on the Byzantine Empire. The Grand Prince of
Muscovy called himself Tsar, anglicized as Czar, (meaning Caesar, the same root as the German Kaiser,) for the first time. He'd married a Byzantine princess, and called Russia the "Third Rome."

You...you still don't quite get the whole butterfly effect concept do you, Bard? :p

Anyway, if the Byzantines had some room to breath, then they certainly could recover and fight off any future Islamic attack.
 
The Byzantine Empire gets a little breathing room and buys a little more time but it will soon fall. Maybe to another Muslim power, or maybe, even Russia?
Why not Russia? The Russians were a rising power in the fifteenth century. Imperial Russia modeled itself on the Byzantine Empire. The Grand Prince of
Muscovy called himself Tsar, anglicized as Czar, (meaning Caesar, the same root as the German Kaiser,) for the first time. He'd married a Byzantine princess, and called Russia the "Third Rome."

Er...

You're talking about a difference of eight centuries. Russians were still worshiping Svarog and Chernobog at this point, IIRC.

But yeah, they'd definitely go for Persia if the Byzantines paid them off or were too strong. After Persia, into Central Asia and India and western China.
 

bard32

Banned
You...you still don't quite get the whole butterfly effect concept do you, Bard? :p

Anyway, if the Byzantines had some room to breath, then they certainly could recover and fight off any future Islamic attack.

The Byzantines were offered the cannon by a Hungarian engineer. Constantine
XI refused it because the empire was broke. That's what I remember hearing on a PBS series that was based on historical events. It was like a network newscast. One episode of that series, whose name escapes me, was about the
fall of Constantinople. Now to answer your question, no, I still don't. I'm trying to get my head around it.
 
The Byzantines were offered the cannon by a Hungarian engineer. Constantine XI refused it because the empire was broke. That's what I remember hearing on a PBS series that was based on historical events. It was like a network newscast. One episode of that series, whose name escapes me, was about the fall of Constantinople.

There were ~800 between the beginning of Islam and the Fall of Constantinople. During those centuries, the Byzantines had been attacked numerous times, by Arabs, Bulgarians, Crusaders and Turks, at least. They were broke because they'd spent so much fighting off these enemies, and had lost important lands, like Egypt.

Now to answer your question, no, I still don't. I'm trying to get my head around it.


A change in the past will affect anything that happens afterward. There very well might not be a Russia in this TL, or it may have been more entwined with the Byzantines, or any number of other things. But a Muscovy still rising to power and considering itself the Third Rome are both highly unlikely.
 
Byzantines

This does not seem very likely. Especially with the large Semitic populations in Syria who did'nt care for Byzantine rule.
 

bard32

Banned
There were ~800 between the beginning of Islam and the Fall of Constantinople. During those centuries, the Byzantines had been attacked numerous times, by Arabs, Bulgarians, Crusaders and Turks, at least. They were broke because they'd spent so much fighting off these enemies, and had lost important lands, like Egypt.




A change in the past will affect anything that happens afterward. There very well might not be a Russia in this TL, or it may have been more entwined with the Byzantines, or any number of other things. But a Muscovy still rising to power and considering itself the Third Rome are both highly unlikely.

Very true. However, it was the Crusaders that ultimately ended it. The Byzantine Empire was always on the verge of collapse. Think of the Byzantine Empire as an elastic, or a balloon. Stretch an elastic too far, and it breaks. Blow up a balloon too big, and it pops. True, Muscovy referring to
itself as the Third Rome, would be highly presumptuous.
 
Very true. However, it was the Crusaders that ultimately ended it. The Byzantine Empire was always on the verge of collapse. Think of the Byzantine Empire as an elastic, or a balloon. Stretch an elastic too far, and it breaks. Blow up a balloon too big, and it pops. True, Muscovy referring to
itself as the Third Rome, would be highly presumptuous.

The Byzantine empire was not always on the verge of collapse. There are many Byzantinophiles who will skin you alive for saying that. Pre-Manzikert the empire could have lasted indefinitely, there was no strong power to challenge it effectively. Even post-Manzikert there was hope for the empire. It was only really dead in the aftermath of 1204.
 
What happens is that the Byzantines grow stronger and turn their greedy eyes towards Islamic regions. Afterwards, the Muslims can no longer ignore the Byzantines.

The battle was inevitable.

But the thing is, the campaign in OTL was so sweeping because the Caliphate hadn't consolidated- it was still directing the energies of the first massive expansion.

After the first fifty years or so, however, things settled down a bit and the Caliphate began to act more like an Imperial state than a central revolutionary committee (so to speak). If we delay the invasion of the Levant for 50 or so years, I feel that the Byzantine-Muslim dynamic will pretty much follow the earlier Byzantine-Persian dynamic
 
The Byzantine empire was not always on the verge of collapse. There are many Byzantinophiles who will skin you alive for saying that. Pre-Manzikert the empire could have lasted indefinitely, there was no strong power to challenge it effectively. Even post-Manzikert there was hope for the empire. It was only really dead in the aftermath of 1204.

Yeah... but its arteries were a lot harder than those in Western Europe, or of the Muslim states. Sure, it wasn't dead until after Myriocephalum and the Fourth Crusade, but the fact is that sooner or later it would lose a battle and from the tenth century on every lost battle was a significant disaster for the Byzantines.
 
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