Make Assyria great again

Throwing an idea out there, what if Alexander is killed and the army collapses either at Issus or Gaugamela, badly weakening the Achaemenids without replacing them?
 

yourworstnightmare

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What about some kind of Manichean state. You probably need to screw Rome and Persia to pull it off, but it's not like you won't have to screw them anyways to pull of an independent Assyria.
 
What about some kind of Manichean state. You probably need to screw Rome and Persia to pull it off, but it's not like you won't have to screw them anyways to pull of an independent Assyria.

You'd probably have to screw the Arabs too, Muslim or not, considering they border Assyria.
 
I don't agree with the posters claiming ~ Assyria is doomed due to get-strategic insufficiency. I think it has many advantages...not like a perfect storm a la Egypt or Carthage or Italy, but as much as many other significant cultures. It's absolutely at a bottleneck for several important trade routes, it's astride the land connection between the Med and Mesopotamian river systems, making it a transport and communication hub, it's borders touch on several types of material resources necessary for an ancient military culture and while it doesn't have outstanding natural borders as is, it would only require moderate expansion to reach same along 3 or 4 fronts.
 
What about some kind of Manichean state. You probably need to screw Rome and Persia to pull it off, but it's not like you won't have to screw them anyways to pull of an independent Assyria.
Its fairly difficult your best bet for a Manichaen kingdom in the region outside of the steppe is Persia converting when Mani is at the court of the Shah.
 

Deleted member 97083

I don't agree with the posters claiming ~ Assyria is doomed due to get-strategic insufficiency. I think it has many advantages...not like a perfect storm a la Egypt or Carthage or Italy, but as much as many other significant cultures. It's absolutely at a bottleneck for several important trade routes, it's astride the land connection between the Med and Mesopotamian river systems, making it a transport and communication hub, it's borders touch on several types of material resources necessary for an ancient military culture and while it doesn't have outstanding natural borders as is, it would only require moderate expansion to reach same along 3 or 4 fronts.
Yeah, the Zagros, Armenian Highlands, and Sinai are pretty effective natural borders that Assyria achieved in their first imperial period and could achieve again.
 
Yeah, the Zagros, Armenian Highlands, and Sinai are pretty effective natural borders that Assyria achieved in their first imperial period and could achieve again.

The problem in this period is that unless they can develop a high quality desert cavalry tradition, any invasion from the desert threatens their existence.

You know, like the Bedouin Arabs.
 
The problem in this period is that unless they can develop a high quality desert cavalry tradition, any invasion from the desert threatens their existence.

You know, like the Bedouin Arabs.

Well the Arab cavalry wasn't as fierce as the Arab light infantry that was their hallmark. The best way to defeat Arab armies pre Abbasid era is to force sieges and use infrastructure against them.
 
There is a difference. The Arabian peninsula is both larger than the Syriac world both in Sassanid and Byzantine dominions and has a higher populace. To say that the Assyrian highlands by this point is at the same power as Arabia is not accurate in my opinion. Even sections of Arabia are more equipped for warfare than Assyria and Osroene; Yemen for example.

I agree, that's why I said Assyria wasn't the best location and why I don't think the situation I proposed is that plausible. It'd require some sort of further back POD, probably one that weakened the Eastern Romans so that some hypothetical charismatic Assyrian warlord could establish a larger powerbase. However this was the best somewhat plausible scenario I could see for a "make Assyria great again" scenario.
 
Would want to contrive some kind of situation where Bessus still kills Darius III [the king flees, but Bessus somehow rescues the battle?], thus making a good window for all the satraps in the empire to revolt; maybe the satrap of Athura picks up the remnants of the Greek army and declares a [Persian] dynasty ruling from Assyria.
 

Deleted member 97083

This isn't that bad of an idea. The assyrians still made up the elite of the Persian army at this time AFAIK.
I wonder how possible it would be to have no Alexander, but a king like Chandragupta Maurya tries to conquer the Persian Empire from the east; he gets stopped at the Zagros, but the ruined Persia can no longer hold onto the rest of the Empire, and the Assyrian contingent in the army takes over.
 
I wonder how possible it would be to have no Alexander, but a king like Chandragupta Maurya tries to conquer the Persian Empire from the east; he gets stopped at the Zagros, but the ruined Persia can no longer hold onto the rest of the Empire, and the Assyrian contingent in the army takes over.
You probably cannot have Chandragupta without Alexander. And in any case what incentive is there for an Indian king to attempt to conquer the near east?
 
Would want to contrive some kind of situation where Bessus still kills Darius III [the king flees, but Bessus somehow rescues the battle?], thus making a good window for all the satraps in the empire to revolt; maybe the satrap of Athura picks up the remnants of the Greek army and declares a [Persian] dynasty ruling from Assyria.
Why would their be remnants of a Greek army? Just because Alexander dies doesn't mean his army goes with him. You will have a far better opportunity for this state to exist if the Macedonians effectively control Anatolia. They will be too busy dealing with a succession war to continue any further conquest, but some dynasts may have an incentive to back an Assyrian breakaway state to support their own interests, just like the diadochi would do with other semi-indeoendent kingdoms (Pontus, Pergamon, Cappadocia, Armenia, Bithynia, Nabatea). Meanwhile the Macedonian Empire might fracture along with the rest of Anatolia, buying Assyria time to expand, much like, say, the Armenian Kingdom expanded under Tigranes The Great in the fragmenting world of the early first century bce. Thus you give them the necesssry window needed to expand to defensible borders.

In my original no rome timeline, I was planning on doing something like this, except with Babylonia instead of Assyria.
 
My line of thinking is mostly that if Alexander is killed at the head of his cavalry, they're likely to break, thus allowing the Persian cavalry to have a field day on the open plains [in the case of Gaugamela], attack the Greeks from multiple angles, and run them down if they break. The Greeks are very far from their base of supply along the Mediterranean, so a defeat deep in enemy territory is extremely dangerous to the cohesion of the army. They're likely to get some reprieve, and accomplish the original objective of liberating Ionia and establishing buffers in Anatolia, since in this scenario, the satraps are too busy killing each other in the Asian interior to reconquer Anatolia. Controlling Egypt, Anatolia, and the Levant, the Greeks would likely have quite a lot of money they could send Neo-Neo-Assyria until it either became powerful enough in its own right or the Greek sphere fractured too thoroughly.
 
My line of thinking is mostly that if Alexander is killed at the head of his cavalry, they're likely to break, thus allowing the Persian cavalry to have a field day on the open plains [in the case of Gaugamela], attack the Greeks from multiple angles, and run them down if they break. The Greeks are very far from their base of supply along the Mediterranean, so a defeat deep in enemy territory is extremely dangerous to the cohesion of the army. They're likely to get some reprieve, and accomplish the original objective of liberating Ionia and establishing buffers in Anatolia, since in this scenario, the satraps are too busy killing each other in the Asian interior to reconquer Anatolia. Controlling Egypt, Anatolia, and the Levant, the Greeks would likely have quite a lot of money they could send Neo-Neo-Assyria until it either became powerful enough in its own right or the Greek sphere fractured too thoroughly.
First, you are overestimating how necessary Alexander is to the survival of the Macedonian army in battle. There was a point IOTL where Alexander was and thought to be dead and it didn't lead to a Macedonian route, if anything they rallied and what was at that point an assault that had run out of momentum, turned into them breaking into Multan and winning the siege. I don't see why Alexander's death will cause his cavalry to break. His cavalry will probably continue on, Darius will get nervous and flee, and they will circle back and save the infantry, possibly early than IOTL, since Alexander won't be tempted into chasing Darius.

Second, if Darius defeats the Macedonians, he isnt going to have his generals turn on him. They turned on him because they tired of his neverending retreat while maintaining plans for gathering another large army to reconquer his empire. His position is pretty strong if he just defeats an invasion.
 
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