Medieval Africa

Faraday Cage

What if a counterfactual trend prevented any Middle-Eastern monotheists from forming a large-scale successful religion and Arab traders freely traded with the East African city-states without distinction; allowing fine Arabian horses and sailing vessels/methods to be adopted?

Could this lead to East African city-states sailing around the Cape and trading with the ironworking West Africans and developing into a civilization of coastal city-states with horse, iron, and later knowledge from the Library of Alexandria in the hands of the pagan Sultan of Egypt?

The Pagan Alliance (with Persia as the distant strongman) falters against crusaders until butterfly-enhanced mongol hordes devastate Europe.

Africa and Arabia remain a patchwork of Christian and Mongol dynasties assimilated into existing cultures, along with truly independent kingdoms, and have a Renaissance while similarly Hordified and far more decimated Europe stagnates.

Horde dynasties are scattered across the thrones from China to India to Persia to Arabia to Africa to Europe.

Europe staggers behind the African Renaissance and naval wars over the Atlantic Passage to the African colonies in North America lead to defeats which lead to a strange revolutionary movement (no need to reinvent radical republicanism after all) in Europe against the Horde-descended monarchs. A generation worth of on and off war is fought and the revolution suppressed, but the ideas have been spread. This encourages more cultural exchanges with Persia and India, long trading partners, and leads to naval confrontation with China over control of Indian harbors. This imperial phase is accompanied by a generation of reactionary moralists (reactionary to the excesses of the war period) in the most prominent African kingdom.

Does this sound interesting? coherent? plausible?
 
What if a counterfactual trend prevented any Middle-Eastern monotheists from forming a large-scale successful religion and Arab traders freely traded with the East African city-states without distinction; allowing fine Arabian horses and sailing vessels/methods to be adopted?

Could this lead to East African city-states sailing around the Cape and trading with the ironworking West Africans and developing into a civilization of coastal city-states with horse, iron, and later knowledge from the Library of Alexandria in the hands of the pagan Sultan of Egypt?

He'd be more likely to be a Christian ruler than pagan.

It would also be rather out of the way for the East African states to sail around the Cape. It would be much more likely for them to trade by land through the Sahel. The Sahel, in many ways, resembles a thinner version of the Eurasian steppe, and had potential to be a corridor for trade and cultural interaction that was simply never realised.

The Pagan Alliance (with Persia as the distant strongman) falters against crusaders until butterfly-enhanced mongol hordes devastate Europe.

I think you may be unaware of the influence of Abyssinian Christianity and the existance of Zoroastrianism.

Africa and Arabia remain a patchwork of Christian and Mongol dynasties assimilated into existing cultures, along with truly independent kingdoms, and have a Renaissance while similarly Hordified and far more decimated Europe stagnates.

Horde dynasties are scattered across the thrones from China to India to Persia to Arabia to Africa to Europe.

Europe staggers behind the African Renaissance and naval wars over the Atlantic Passage to the African colonies in North America lead to defeats which lead to a strange revolutionary movement (no need to reinvent radical republicanism after all) in Europe against the Horde-descended monarchs. A generation worth of on and off war is fought and the revolution suppressed, but the ideas have been spread. This encourages more cultural exchanges with Persia and India, long trading partners, and leads to naval confrontation with China over control of Indian harbors. This imperial phase is accompanied by a generation of reactionary moralists (reactionary to the excesses of the war period) in the most prominent African kingdom.

Does this sound interesting? coherent? plausible?

Interesting, but needs some plausibility checks. I do enjoy Mongols in Africa, though.
 
Horses and other beasts of burden introduced from Arabia would have serious problems with the tsetse fly. Endemic disease carried by that insect probably cripples any horse-culture on Africa's grasslands unless and until you can breed resistant animals, if that's possible with horses.
 
It does sound interesting, I'll give you that and I hope that you write it, but don't forget that there were reasons as to why Africa was not the first choice.

I know that with plausible reasons it would be, well, plausible, I suppose, but honestly..

I still think the Persian Empire and Byzantine Empire are and will always be better targets to trade with, especially because of their riches. Then again, I might be completely wrong on that one, so, give a surprise.

Good luck!
 

Faraday Cage

Well even without beasts of burden, those spiffy Arabian boats (whose name I forget) would be a good contribution in itself. Also, Chinese liked to do things human labor intensive, the African kingdoms could be the same. And maybe some imported breed could live long enough to develop into a localized strain.
 
What if a counterfactual trend prevented any Middle-Eastern monotheists from forming a large-scale successful religion and Arab traders freely traded with the East African city-states without distinction; allowing fine Arabian horses and sailing vessels/methods to be adopted?

?

Uh, I don´t get your POD. Arab traders DID freely trade with East Africa. Where do you think the Muslims in Mocambique come from?
 
What would the eastern city state's goal be in sailing across the cape? The Europeans had the demand for spices and silks to satiate as a reason to try to sail to China. On the way there they happened to find a whole bunch of other useful trade goods. The east Africans though seem to have everything they might need around the Indian ocean. Manufactured goods, fine spices, and all sorts of other things.

The one thing that might be useful on the West side of Africa would be Gold. However I am not sure if there was local gold mining in East Africa.
 
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=127937
I am writing an ATL entitled: A World Without Mohammed in which the Prophet (‘peace be upon him’) is defeated at the Battle of the Trench in 627. Medina is subjugated to the power of Mecca, and the Mohammedans never regain their former momentum becoming yet another political-religious group within the convulsing Arabian landscape of the early 7th century.
This could fit the purposes of your TL and you are more than welcome to contribute to the thread in developing a plausible setting for the development of a neo-Swahili civilization of city-states in
Eastern Africa.

Here is some information about the thread so far:

In a no-Islam timeline, the Arab impact will still be dramatic and significant. The comparison could made with the Vikings. The kind of broad long-lasting impact on northern European civilization the Vikings had could be mirrored in the
Near East by the Arabs, providing linguistic and cultural input as well as becoming the ruling class of many places. But just as the Vikings were in some sense absorbed by the Christian civilization of Europe, so the Arabs of this ATL (lacking the sense of unity that Islam provided) will be absorbed linguistically, culturally and religiously.

For the thread, check out:
https://www.alternatehistory.com/discussion/showthread.php?t=127937
 
What if a counterfactual trend prevented any Middle-Eastern monotheists from forming a large-scale successful religion and Arab traders freely traded with the East African city-states without distinction; allowing fine Arabian horses and sailing vessels/methods to be adopted?
Arab merchants did trade freely with East Africa as far south as Madagascar! Perhaps there was less trade with Ethiopia since they refused to convert, but that's the only exception.
Arab horses couldn't be used effectively in Africa south of the Sudan because of the climat and diseases
The Swahili city states used arab dhows and knew just as much about building them and using them as the arabs in arabia! The ruling classes in East africa (except Ethiopia) was arab in culture until the European colonization, and the Swahili language is based of Arabic and african languages. If anything, the arab influence on Africa is going to be smaller without Islam

Could this lead to East African city-states sailing around the Cape and trading with the ironworking West Africans and developing into a civilization of coastal city-states with horse, iron, and later knowledge from the Library of Alexandria in the hands of the pagan Sultan of Egypt?
They ha iron before the arabs IOTL, horses were pretty much useless. The Great Library was destroyed long before Islam because the christian mobs in Egypt considered it pagan.
Before the Muslim conquest of Egypt, it had already been converted to christianity

The Pagan Alliance (with Persia as the distant strongman) falters against crusaders until butterfly-enhanced mongol hordes devastate Europe.
Persia was zoroastrian, a monotheistic religion that probably had vast effects on judaism (and indirectly also Christianity and Islam) and it's not considered pagan

Africa and Arabia remain a patchwork of Christian and Mongol dynasties assimilated into existing cultures, along with truly independent kingdoms, and have a Renaissance while similarly Hordified and far more decimated Europe stagnates.
There never was a renaissance outside Europe, and the renaissance in Europe pretty much only affected the arts

Horde dynasties are scattered across the thrones from China to India to Persia to Arabia to Africa to Europe.
More then IOTL, but not impossible
 

Philip

Donor
What if a counterfactual trend prevented any Middle-Eastern monotheists from forming a large-scale successful religion

I am confused by this. Are you suggesting No Islam or No Abrahamic Religions?

Could this lead to East African city-states sailing around the Cape and trading with the ironworking West Africans and developing into a civilization of coastal city-states with horse, iron, and later knowledge from the Library of Alexandria in the hands of the pagan Sultan of Egypt?

Um, why not just trade across the Sahel? Why make an exceeding long and dangerous sea voyage when there is a straightforward land route?

The Pagan Alliance (with Persia as the distant strongman)

Why would the monotheistic Zoroastrians of Persia be part of a 'Pagan Alliance'?

falters against crusaders

Who are these crusaders? What are they crusading against? Doesn't your PoD threaten their very existance?

until butterfly-enhanced mongol hordes devastate Europe.

I am not sure how much you can enhance them without falling into the realm of ASB. They did a fairly good job of maximizing their conquests.

Europe staggers behind the African Renaissance and naval wars over the Atlantic Passage to the African colonies in North America lead to defeats which lead to a strange revolutionary movement (no need to reinvent radical republicanism after all) in Europe against the Horde-descended monarchs.....

I think you are jumping way ahead of yourself.

Does this sound interesting? coherent? plausible?

Interesting? Yes, if you can work out the details and explain what you mean.
 
I'm somewhat of the opinion that a Mongol conquest of Europe wouldn't last long. The Mongol rule would be fractured and would splinter over inheritance issues, as IOTL. Even if there was a Europe-only Khan who kept his state, likely a generation on there would be another split or power-struggle which would make the remaining Khans too weak to hold back the tides. Since the Mongols seemed to work on preserving much of the local rulers in a system of tribute and vassalship, and I find it unlikely that the European Kings would thrive on and enjoy this system, eventually they would pick their moment and rise up. It might take a few battles but the Mongols wouldn't last forever - they were too far from their traditional power base with their supply lines easily cut - that's if they could call the east a supply base anymore, more likely the other Mongol Khans would treat any European Khans as rivals rather than allies. Eventually the European system would be restored, and even if the Mongols had destroyed key cities, ravaged the land and set Europe back some decades, Europe would pick itself up and start catching up with Africa. After all, Europe's resources were far superior to Africa's, and they could become far wealthier to encourage their advance.
 

Faraday Cage

Perhaps a counterfactual trend alternate rather than a POD alternate, examining the one of all possible worlds where the random dice of history throw all plausible breaks to African civilizations. Carthage defeats Rome and colonizes the Sahel, making trade contact with the tribes pushed out of central Africa by a Bantu empire. This same Bantu empire meets Zoroastrian Arab-East-Africans on the Cape, through third-party vassal-kingdom traders.

The Lower East Africans successfully convert the Bantu Empire to monotheism, while the Phoenician-North-Africans are assimilated into Arab Zoroastrian civilization. Meanwhile the Persian Empire falls to decadence and the spread of Buddhism.

North India and the Buddhist part of Persia are eventually put under an empire, and have a great intellectual age, which spreads to the African cultures. However the Buddhist Empire is later devastated by the Mongolian hordes.

Europe is split between post Carthage North African-Arabian monotheistic civilization and Norse pagan civilization.

The Bantu empire's successor kingdoms in Central Africa are eventually assimilated into the North-African-Arabian-monotheistic-civilization, while those on the Cape are assimilated into the Lower East African civilization which is schismatic from the greater NA-Ar. religion.
 

Faraday Cage

Perhaps just going with Carthage razing Rome. The Carthaginian empire conquers Arabia and imports camels, thus allowing the sea-faring Phoenician descended Punics to colonize West Africa (Ghana) and create a redundant land-route to their Nubian-Egyptian province. Other vassal states would include Aksum/Abyssinia/Ethiopia in some form.

With Jesus and Mohammed butterflied away, perhaps the decadent Carthaginian empire finally falls to Zoroastrianism and Spanish mercenaries and fractures. Aksum makes a vassal of Nubia-Egypt, there's a Holy Punic Emperor in Spain, (Ghana) continues with domination of interior (Sahel) trading and converts the Central African Bantu to Zoroastrianism, and (Swahili) city-states in the former provinces of Lower East Africa and Arabia merge into a Zoroastrian Empire of their own and experience an intellectual Renaissance.
 

Philip

Donor
Perhaps just going with Carthage razing Rome. The Carthaginian empire conquers Arabia

Why and how? Why do they target Arabia? That is, what is the point of conquering Arabia? And why conquest rather than economic domination? And what happened to the Seleucids and Ptolemies? Wouldn't they have something to say about the Carthaginian expansion?

With Jesus and Mohammed butterflied away,

It is foolish to assume that there will not be other people and religions to take their places.

perhaps the decadent Carthaginian empire finally falls to Zoroastrianism

(Neo-)Platonism, Stoicism and others (including ATL religions based on these) seem more likely.

there's a Holy Punic Emperor in Spain,

'Holy' meaning Zoroastrian? Is he supposed to be an analog to OTL's HRE? If so, there are many cultural developments that need to take place before you can have such. Further, many of the changes you have made will make these cultural changes unlikely.

What is happening in Europe at this time? What are the Celts, Germanics, etc, doing? They can have a large effect on what happen on the southern shore of the Med.
 

Faraday Cage

That last comment makes me want to find a way that vikings could colonize Africa and form a hybrid civilization.
 
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