Middle East development in Altered Timeline

I have a timeline in which the Mongol conquest lasted only 10 years before they were driven out of the Middle East and Europe. The invasions are similar in many ways to those OTL between 1236 and 1241. After this the Mongols withdrew and they had no lasting influence in the area afterwards. Because there the Mongol Invasions end in 1241 the events leading to the Fall of Baghdad don't happen. There is no black death and some time in the late 1300's potatoes are introduced into the region through trade (it's a very long and rather crazy story, just go with it). How does this affect development of the Middle East?
 
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How far would we see the Sultanate of Rum going into Europe in this scenario? The Eastern Roman Empire were losing to the Rum at the time the Mongols attacked the Middle East. How long might it be until the Europeans drove Rum out of Europe?
 
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@IamtheEmps, those are good points. Perhaps a civilization in the middle east could bootstrap their scientific community back using books and scholars from different regions such as Asia and Europe? Northern Europe didn't have comparatively much scientific prominence prior to the arrival of the Roman Empire. They took influences from the Romans and based on that initial push continued on. Perhaps a scientific community in the middle east takes foreign books and knowledge and uses it for a similar push.

As for obscurantism might there be a way to reverse that?
 
@IamtheEmps, so bringing back the golden age seems out.

What would it take to see the middle east undergo their version of the Protestant Reformation, with new interpretations of the religious texts and sects appearing? In the event this happens, can these new factions survive in the middle east without getting crushed by the Sunni or Shia states in the region?
 
@IamtheEmps, so bringing back the golden age seems out.

What would it take to see the middle east undergo their version of the Protestant Reformation, with new interpretations of the religious texts and sects appearing? In the event this happens, can these new factions survive in the middle east without getting crushed by the Sunni or Shia states in the region?


OTL that happened, it is called Salafism. People here have too positive a view of the Reformation, it was essentially a civil war, in Germany, that led to hundreds of thousands of deaths, for little positive.
 
How far would we see the Sultanate of Rum going into Europe in this scenario? The Eastern Roman Empire were losing to the Rum at the time the Mongols attacked the Middle East. How long might it be until the Europeans drove Rum out of Europe?
No, it wasn't (was it?). The Laskarids, especially John III Doukas Vatatzes, did a damn good job at stabilizing the border and keep friendly relations with Konya. They only started to lose after Michael Palaiologos took troops away from Anatolia to wage war in Europe. Until then the Byzantines had an upper hand.
 
Was there ever a time when the golden age of the middle east could restart?
Define golden age. Cultural, militairy?

To both counts this is unlikely, the first as very few cultures have done this without conquest.
Rome conquered Greece, but Greece culturaly conquered Rome. Italian Renaissance, France after the defeat of Napoleon, Britain in the 60's. To name a few.

Similarly unless you have a caliph with enough power to change Sunni religious dogma, obscurantism is here to stay.
That shift happened in the 9th century, way before the sack.

Unlikely, The golden age scholars and books would still have been killed, and likely there would still have been a reaction, towards obscurantism
The opposite can happen. Some could argue that the shift toward 'obscurantism' in the 9th century is the cause for the weakening of Islam. The sack is a sign of god that 'obscurantism' isn't the way, and things have to change.
 
@H.Flashman(VC), golden age in a scientific sense.

Norway invested their resource money into a huge Sovereign wealth fund that today generates large amounts of income. Perhaps the resource rich nations in the middle east could pour the income from such funds into the sciences and tech development? A leader may pour large amounts of money into education, universities and use the money to lure foreign brain power into their nation.
 
I've got more of a general question this time. So we've got the Byzantine Empire. They've given up attempting to expand any further and are just sitting on their modest holdings (Empire of Nicea at it maximum extent). There's reliable, trustworthy buffer states in all directions so no enemy can attack them directly by land. The situation in the empire has stabilised. The only threat is their competitors attacking them by sea, which they do often.

There's an option to "Easternize" which involves retooling and retraining your military to use weapons about 2 centuries more advanced (up to a 1760 to 1800 standard) using foreign knowledge and tech. It's going to be just as expensive as that sounds. Do you sink most of your investment into "Easternizing" primarily your navy or would you spread your investment between army and navy more evenly? What rough proportion of investment would you use?

The only way a land attack is getting into Byzantium is if an enemy navy such as France's drops off a force, which they will probably try. If they're Easternized and you're not there's going to be problems although there seems to be little indication that they will try in the near future. Assume that nobody tries to attack through the buffer states for some reason.
 

Deleted member 97083

I've got more of a general question this time. So we've got the Byzantine Empire. They've given up attempting to expand any further and are just sitting on their modest holdings (Empire of Nicea at it maximum extent). There's reliable, trustworthy buffer states in all directions so no enemy can attack them directly by land. The situation in the empire has stabilised. The only threat is their competitors attacking them by sea, which they do often.

There's an option to "Easternize" which involves retooling and retraining your military to use weapons about 2 centuries more advanced (up to a 1760 to 1800 standard) using foreign knowledge and tech. It's going to be just as expensive as that sounds. Do you sink most of your investment into "Easternizing" primarily your navy or would you spread your investment between army and navy more evenly? What rough proportion of investment would you use?

The only way a land attack is getting into Byzantium is if an enemy navy such as France's drops off a force, which they will probably try. If they're Easternized and you're not there's going to be problems although there seems to be little indication that they will try in the near future. Assume that nobody tries to attack through the buffer states for some reason.
Byzantium wasn't less advanced than their neighbors. They just didn't have the revenues they had before. Virtually every possible pre-gunpowder military tactic was known to the Byzantines at least one point in time.

As for the Byzantine navy, it received less and less funding until it was a non-element. Eventually, pirates and Italian traders dominated the Aegean.
 
@Achaemenid Rome, in the timeline an early industrial revolution in China boosts tech development in the east. Byzantium staying abreast of developments does raise an even more interesting scenario though. Perhaps if they turn into an early gunpowder empire like the OTL Ottomans (butterflied away) could we see them hold their own against all their enemies? If they hold out could we see the Finnish ally with Byzantium and its allies in Eastern Europe to resist the Swedish?

Why did naval funding drop off in Byzantium?
 
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Could we see a version of the Mongol's horse archers in the age of the gun? Perhaps horsemen armed with revolver rifles to perform in a similar role to those horse archers?

This is not for the Mongols, I'm just referring to an army that heavily leans towards light ranged cavalry but perhaps with a bit more investment in other cavalry types, artillery and some infantry to make an army that is mixed but never the less heavily orientated towards light ranged cavalry.

Which nation would be best to pull off such a tactic?
 
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If anyone does it it could be the Ottomans. Machine guns such as the Maxim would be a defense against such an assault though.
 
Why did naval funding drop off in Byzantium?

Initially, lack of necessity; later, lack of means. After the reconquest of Crete there was no serious challenge to Byzantine power on the sea aside from Sicilian raids on Byzantine Italy. Over the late 10th and 11th centuries, the empire's Muslim adversaries declined or disappeared as naval powers (the Fatimids, Crete, Sicily), while the new threats to the empire were wholly land-based (the Bulgarians, Pechenegs, and Turks). Under such circumstances, beggaring the navy to expand the army made sense, and the Byzantines cut funding, neglected the fleet, and in the case of the Adriatic outsourced their protection to Venice, which at the time was a friendly power and a nominal vassal state. After the loss of Anatolia, the state's revenue plummeted and mere survival on land became essential, and by the end of the century Venice and its fellow Italian republics had grown too powerful at sea to be seriously challenged without a naval revival that the Byzantine state could not afford. The Komnenids, particularly Manuel, made efforts to restore their naval power, but money was always just a bit too tight. Given its dangerous opponents on land, the later Byzantine state rarely had the luxury of building serious naval power, and their attempts in that direction were fitful and short-lived owing to scarce resources.

A late medieval Byzantine naval revival isn't impossible, but the question is one of priorities. An army is always necessary; a fleet is only necessary under certain conditions. I'd expect the Byzantines, like any state, to alter their spending based on their perceptions of the challenges they face. If the empire's land borders are really as secure as you suggest and the greatest threat is maritime, that suggests more naval spending; but nice little empires surrounded by pliant yet resilient vassal states don't tend to stay in such stasis forever. Indeed, a strong army is what keeps those vassal states pliant in the first place, whereas they may not fear a strong navy depending on their geographic situation. Good luck intimidating the Bulgarians with ships.
 
@Carp makes sense. If the Byzantine empire survives and the Ottoman Empire is butterflied away, how might that affect the renaissance? People fleeing the weakened Byzantium helped begin the renaissance in Italy. If Byzantium stays stable could we see it far more restricted to that region now that less of their scholars are leaving? How might that influence Europe?

On another note, how effective were Byzantine Plumbata?
 
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