No Islam

[fi11222]

Has anyone tried to think about a monophysite/messianic refoundation (or split) of the Byzantine Empire.

One reason why Islam was able to beat the Byzantines is that they were weakened by centuries of infighting over christology. The areas that fell to Islam first (Syria, Egypt) were heavily monophysite.

Would a monophysite-friendly emperor have fared better against Islam? Let us consider the following scenario.

- Heraclius dies in 629 (instead of 640) on his way to bringing back the True Cross to Jerusalem
- His son, Heraclius Constantine (Constantine III in OTL) ascends the throne.
- Persuaded by the Persian/Armenian/Arabic advisers of his father, the young emperor (17 years old) decides to set up his capital in Jerusalem instead of going back to Constantinople in order to capitalize on the enormous religious enthusiasm generated by the victory over the Persians.
- He choses a new titulature which makes him a sort of vice-Messiah on Earth, e.g: "Davidos Alexandros Konstantinos Basileus para Christos" (David Alexander Constantine sub-Christ King, any help from Byzantinists welcome to make this sound better)
- He makes sweeping concessions to the Monophysites, like authorising the trisagion with "who died for our sins on the cross" in liturgy.

The magic of having a new quasi-god on Earth generates a huge popularity boost which enables the new Emperor to silence potential troublemaking churchmen and to enact the military and fiscal reforms required to rebuild the empire from the devastations of the Persian wars.

When the Muslim military challenge comes, the army is united behind a charismatic young emperor and therefore avoids the hesitations and coordination problems experienced in OTL, notably at Yarmouk.

 

[Fredrick II Barbarossa]

Has anyone tried to think about a monophysite/messianic refoundation (or split) of the Byzantine Empire.

One reason why Islam was able to beat the Byzantines is that they were weakened by centuries of infighting over christology. The areas that fell to Islam first (Syria, Egypt) were heavily monophysite.

Would a monophysite-friendly emperor have fared better against Islam? Let us consider the following scenario.

- Heraclius dies in 629 (instead of 640) on his way to bringing back the True Cross to Jerusalem
- His son, Heraclius Constantine (Constantine III in OTL) ascends the throne.
- Persuaded by the Persian/Armenian/Arabic advisers of his father, the young emperor (17 years old) decides to set up his capital in Jerusalem instead of going back to Constantinople in order to capitalize on the enormous religious enthusiasm generated by the victory over the Persians.
- He choses a new titulature which makes him a sort of vice-Messiah on Earth, e.g: "Davidos Alexandros Konstantinos Basileus para Christos" (David Alexander Constantine sub-Christ King, any help from Byzantinists welcome to make this sound better)
- He makes sweeping concessions to the Monophysites, like authorising the trisagion with "who died for our sins on the cross" in liturgy.

The magic of having a new quasi-god on Earth generates a huge popularity boost which enables the new Emperor to silence potential troublemaking churchmen and to enact the military and fiscal reforms required to rebuild the empire from the devastations of the Persian wars.

When the Muslim military challenge comes, the army is united behind a charismatic young emperor and therefore avoids the hesitations and coordination problems experienced in OTL, notably at Yarmouk.

this scenario is quite unlikely. If heraclius son even planned on doing such a move he would basically alienate the Anatolian, Thracian, and Balkan aristocracy.
Basically going monophysite or giving concessions to monophysites at this time would mean winning the favor of Alexandria at the cost of losing the support of Constantinople.
Expect numerous revolts in the west and rebellion and/or civil war.

At this time Byzantine power was concentrated in Anatolia which formed the backbone of the ere. If Anatolia and the balkans rebel including Constantinople well I see this emperor being hard pressed to put down the revolt. You will likely end up with two emperors one in Constantinople the other in Jerusalem aka your david.

Messiah stuff would not work because at the heart of it the split beetween the greek rite and monophysites was political. In essence one could call the reason for the souring of relations between the two groups was because the patriarchate Alexandria was growing too powerful and overstretching its boundaries and in response the bishop of rome and the patriarch of Constantinople allied to curb this loss of balance of power and conveniently because the Alexandrians followed the monophysite rite they could be considered heretics.

In reality the consensus beetween constatnopel and rome was that christ was both mono and dual at the same time. Which meant th emonophysite could be easily tolerated but politically that was not what constanople or rome wanted. Therefore your senario would not be relaistic and could actually make things worse for the byzantines because Jerusalum is a far less well fortified or as rich and prosperous of a city during this era as Constantinople. There was a reason it was known as the queen of cities.

IMO No islam would not necessarily butterfly away the advancement of science. In South Asia at this time you had a flowering of buddhist universities and centers of learning such as Nelanda university or the the various hindu and Jain tempels in India where vast corpus of literature was stored. At the same time you had the silk road still going strong. In China you also had a flowering of technological progress and growth independant of the west where information was also stored in large corpuses. Besides I dont see why the Sassanids would close the silk road or trade routes. Which means information continues to flow from China, India, and persia to the west and vice versa.
At the same time the ere while it did destroy documents, it kept the major corpuses of literature from the greek philopshers. Library of Alexandria was burned in the 5th century yes, but it was rebuilt afterwords, burned again and then rebuilt again, burned once more. Hek that Library would always get burned regardless of who controlled it.

What does develop differently is the north African or west African states. At the same time you have a completely different southeast asia dominated by buddhism and hinduism. The turkik tribes going either nestorian or buddhist or even Zoroastrian. So in that sense yeah the world would be markedly different but a development of the Renaissance could still occur. However this Renaissance would be based around the Eastern Roman Empire and perhaps the HRE if the HRE doesn't collapse in the West.

However with the flow of trade from europe to asia and asia to europe I see no reason why a rennasance couldnt occur. As for a three continent spanning empire, err the Byzantines did it. They at this point controlled parts of spain, North africa, Egypt, levant, Anatolia, most of italy, the Balkans, etc and were able to hold everything together.

 

[fi11222]

this scenario is quite unlikely. If heraclius son even planned on doing such a move he would basically alienate the Anatolian, Thracian, and Balkan aristocracy.
Basically going monophysite or giving concessions to monophysites at this time would mean winning the favor of Alexandria at the cost of losing the support of Constantinople.
Expect numerous revolts in the west and rebellion and/or civil war.

"Unlikely" is a bit harsh, I think. This era was a time when many "unlikely" things happened, like the Persians reaching Egypt and the shores of the Bosphorus. And Islam? Wasn't THAT unlikely?

Regarding the fact that the northwestern parts of the Empire would revolt, this is indeed quite likely and we would indeed end up with 2 emperors. But this sort of thing happened many times over in the past. The question is: who would win?

Basically, the rationale of this scenario is to replace an aging emperor by a young one. Heraclius was old and exhausted by his endless campaigning in the Persian wars. As a result, he chose the "safest" option after the end of the Persian wars: go back to Constantinople and try to "reconcile" the church factions, even though this approach had failed time and again under Justinian and other previous emperor. But he was a tired old man at this point and it is hard to innovate when you are.

Would a young emperor, ascending the throne in a context of unprecedented opportunities, think in the same way? The Persians were vanquished and there was tremendous millenarian expectations. Christians everywhere were half expecting to see the Messiah coming back or at least to see the dawn of a new era. Could'nt a youg emperor, advised by easterners (Armenians, Persian turncoats like the son of Sharhbararaz, Ghassanid Arabs) choose to seize the moment and try something really new?

At this time Byzantine power was concentrated in Anatolia which formed the backbone of the ere. If Anatolia and the balkans rebel including Constantinople well I see this emperor being hard pressed to put down the revolt. You will likely end up with two emperors one in Constantinople the other in Jerusalem aka your david.

I do not think anyone knows where the backbone of Byzantium was at that very time. Anatolia BECAME the heart of the empire AFTER the Muslim conquest. But in 629 it was still a devastated wasteland following the Persian wars.

Messiah stuff would not work because at the heart of it the split beetween the greek rite and monophysites was political.

I believe that this is a (very common) modern misconception. "Political" does not exist as a category in people's minds at the time. Everything is religious and this is why, for example, Islam was so successful. The Persian-Roman wars had upset the religious balance in the whole region and this was reflected in the numerous apocalyptic texts that we have from this era. People were expecting tremendous RELIGIOUS change and this is indeed what they got, in the form of Islam. What if the change had taken another form, a persian-christian synchretistic messianic form ?

In the early 4th century, Constantine had gambled that he could work with the Christians and this gamble paid off. Couldn't a yound Byzantine Emperor gamble that he could work with the Monophysites in the 630s? The monophysite influenced provinces were rich, at least potentially. And there were also many monophysites in Persian controlled areas that could probably be conquered quite easily given the state of the Persians. And there were the Armenians. All this makes for a pretty good power base. Of course, the catch was that you had to give up Constantinople and its conservative elites. But what was Constantinople at the time? A city impoverished by war and with hostile Avars and slavs on its doorstep. And, holding Egypt, you could starve Constantinople by witholding the grain supply. Of course, a rival Emperor would appear there in the scenario considered here. But would he win ?

 

[Delvestius]

1) The Arabs remain disorganized, and Arabic did not replace a bunch of Semitic languages in West Asia and North Africa.

Coptic is considered an "Egyptian" language and Berber languages are Hamitic. The only Semitic language Arabic replaced was Aramaic in Syrian and Mesopotamia. These are all Afro-Asiatic languages, however.

2) The Eastern Romans might be able to survive until modern days, and Asia Minor would remain Greco-Christian.

No.

As far as Asia Minor goes, it is much more likely that it will have a high number of Persians/Zoroastrians, possibly Turks.

3) Iberia remains Christian. Although the small Visigothic ruling class was going to fade away at some point in time. That means no reconquista, no overt religious zeal which brought far-reaching consequences to Spanish and Latin American societies.

No Islam would mean an earlier Spanish exploration and colonization.

4) Persian Empire was going to survive.

Unless the Turks have anything to say about it. In my own "no Islam" TL I have many Turkic groups convert to Zoroastrianism and join tribal confederacies allied with Persia, but the threat of a Turkic invasion exists in any timeline.

5) India was still going to be invaded by foreigners, but none of these foreigners would be able to alter the Indian worldview in a significant way. In a long run, they were going to assimilate and become Indians.

If the Persian empire does survive, which it probably would, it would mean tons of neo-Persian political, cultural and religious influence in North India.

6) Central Asia and Southeast Asia would be mainly under Indian (and Persian) influences.

More so under Persian and Chinese control with Turks being wildcards.

7) No Battle of Talas would mean a better fate for General Geshu Han the Tang Dynasty, but the long-term consequences of Islam on China is negligible until the Ming Dynasty. # # Although there would be more direct links to the Fulin or eastern Romans, as well as the Hellenize cultures in Central Asia.

Chinese influence abroad would be much greater. By the time of Islam, there were no longer any central Asian Hellenic states.

8) Africa would be spared Arab slave traders, but in turn, African Kings might not have so many ulema and imam as advisers. I know too little about Africa to make any comment, but and Indianized East Africa anyone? Pidgin Tamil instead of Swahili?

Colonizers of East Africa would more likely be Yemen or Persia. Inland, we may see the earlier rise of African states, as the Alexandrian church would be inclined to send missionaries across the desert and into the veldt.

9) Without a trans-continental Abbasid Caliphate, different cultures might not have a chance to converge and mingle in Baghdad's House of Wisdom. And without translation movement many Ancient Greco-Roman scripts might be lost. (Although some Christian monks faithfully copied classic scriptures, many other parchments were wiped clean to write Gospels on them.)

10) I heard that while the Ancient Greeks, Romans, and Middle-age Europeans emphasized on theoretical reasoning, the early Arab scientist focused more on evidence and experimentation. And that turned out to be a cornerstone for Renaissance ideas.

While many scripts would have been lost, I do not think the Arabs necessarily "saved" classical culture, they just studied it in a new light and made it interesting to Europe again. They did preserve many works that would have been lost without them but the renaissance was not dependent on them.

(The reason why recently Islam turned out to be so conservative and close-minded remain a topic of fierce debate. Al-Ghazali might have been wrongfully blamed for it and the real cause might actually be the inward turn Islam incurs on itself after Mongol Conquest.)

The Sack of Baghdad 1258 is the definitive event for the paradigm shift of Islamic conservatism.

 

[Socrates]

That just rings hollow to me. I mean do you have any evidence that the "logicalness" of Greek writing was in anyway exceptional, or that it upset the thought process of medieval Europe in any meaningful way? Because frankly it just seems like this entire idea is Whiggish.

He didn't say it was exception. He just said it was better than medieval Europe. There was clearly a vast literature on logical thinking that was widely known among the intelligensia in the classical world that was lost to medieval European states. There was clearly a movement away from deduction from first principles, to belief in the authority of scripture (and the church).

And for all "Whiggish" history is used as a term of abuse, I would argue that the Whigs basic belief in a general arc of human progress has been shown to be true in the last couple of centuries.

 

[9 Fanged Hummingbird]

On a more minor note regarding preservation of ancient stuff, it's possible the Sphinx might retain its nose into the modern day. Granted, it's just as likely a Christian fanatic would hack it off as a Muslim did IOTL, but by no means guaranteed either.

Besides that, I wonder if Afghanistan might remain a Buddhist country. Being on the Silk Road and all, it's possible that Buddhism could spread even more than OTL.

 

[Albireo Dreamweaver]

This might be a tiny and somewhat out-there idea, but what about (of all things) stirrups?

OTL, they were introduced into Western Europe via Calihate invaders, which would pretty firmly not exist in this TL. While i'm not going to say it wouldn't necessarily of been thought up by Western Europeans, without the impetus of the Caliphate's heavy cavalry, it would likely be a long time coming.

No stirrups means no development of the knightly order as we know it, thanks to a lack of effective heavy cavalry. While the feudalistic order doesn't completely break down at that point, it certainly would be...quite different from OTL's.

At the very least, it would -completely- change military tactics up until their introduction, which might not be for centuries later than happened OTL.

Just an interesting thing to think about, if a bit minor.

 

[9 Fanged Hummingbird]

Stirrups would still spread into Europe I'm sure, albeit not through the Muslims. Even so, the idea of an aristocratic class defined by their use of horses existed even in Rome, as in the case of the equites.

 

[Albireo Dreamweaver]

Stirrups would still spread into Europe I'm sure, albeit not through the Muslims. Even so, the idea of an aristocratic class defined by their use of horses existed even in Rome, as in the case of the equites.

Yes, but the function of the equites was significantly different from that of the later cavalry. They functioned more for skirmishing and routing already broken formations, as opposed to doing the breaking themselves.

I'm also sure they would spread, just curious as to the time period, and how that would defect the tactics of the period. I certainly agree a mounted aristocratic class would evolve, since maintenance of a warhorse could really not be afforded by anyone else, and even light cavalry was still crucial to the tactics of the time.

I'm just more interested in the strategic differences. Even had their been no horses in Europe, i'm sure an aristocratic class would find -something- to unite them and start the wheels of feudalism a-turning.

 

[LSCatilina]

Stirrups would still spread into Europe I'm sure, albeit not through the Muslims. Even so, the idea of an aristocratic class defined by their use of horses existed even in Rome, as in the case of the equites.

Stirrups were widespread not by Muslims OTL, but by steppe peoples as Avars. That said, I agree with you : the existance of a "shock" cavalry precedated stirrup in western world, and probably the existance of a "mounted" aristocracy as well.

I'm just more interested in the strategic differences. Even had their been no horses in Europe, i'm sure an aristocratic class would find -something- to unite them and start the wheels of feudalism a-turning.

Aristocracy and horse are two different stuff : you had an aristocracy class in Francia or Anglo-Saxon England well before stirrups where of widepsread use. What defined them, contemporary and historically, was their "honours" : aka lands and/or titles and/or charges that weren't always tied to military prowess (even if it was largely the case).

The best argument on this is that depsite being widespread as well in Western Europe than Eastern part, and as well in Arabo-Islamic world, feudality develloped itself only in this region. That it played a role, maybe, but that it was the main factor?