What if: Anatolia was Slavicised?
Alternate history challange: How could Anatolia be slavicised?
Alternate history challange: How could Anatolia be slavicised?
Slavic Anatolia
- Thread starter Hvalrossen
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Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
I posted about this forever ago. The proximate cause was a more enduring Roman empire with less influence in the Middle East. Since places like Poland, Czechia, and the Balkans were already densely populated and Romanized, the Slavs had less of a vacuum to move into during the Migration period. I had them mostly go south into the Balkans with a large number settled in sparsely populated interior Anatolia by the Romans as military foederati. The interior of Anatolia slavicised in the same way it Turkicised OTL, though coastal regions mostly remain Greek-speaking.
Another possibility could be something similar to OTL turkification brought on by conquest.
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
As I think on this a bit more, no Byzantium is probably the most important thing. Even if you have a heavily slavicised Empire, it's still likely to use Greek as an official language and Anatolian peasants won't start speaking Slavic languages instead of Greek. If you have Byzantium fall, Slavs could move into Anatolia the same way they did into the Balkans.
Let's say that a Slavic warlord moves into Anatolia, either conquering the Byzantines or the Byzantines have already dissapeared. During the conquest there is large scale mortality among the residents or the surviving residents of pre slavic conquest. Similar to the decline of central asian, Chinese and Russian populations following Mongol conquest. The lowered population of non slavs will make it somewhat easier for them to survive. Another facest that might strengthen elite dominance assimilation is a caste system where people have different rights.
Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
Once you get a large number of Slavs into Anatolia, slavicising is no problem. With all the depopulations and displacements of the Migration Period, it's pretty easy to say that any tribe that moves into farming country to stay will establish its ethnic mark. We don't know a ton about how ethnic/linguistic transitions happened in the early medieval era, so the only challenge is moving in Slavic families instead of just a military elite.
Perhaps central Anatolia becomes depopulated in a war, and the Byzantines offer the land to a few Slavic tribes in exchange for their loyalty and military service. Then you might see a situation where the interior of Anatolia is Slavic-speaking, with a urban centers along the coastline remain Greek.
In OTL Slavs spread out covering large portions of eastern Europe. Infact large portions of Greece became majority Slavic, something that the Byzantines reversed by assimilation and resettlement. Till this day large portions of the Balkan is slavicised.
http://eurogenes.blogspot.no/2017/03/greek-confirmation-bias.html
The Slavs of OTL Balkan or ATL Greece does not need to be genetically similar to the original slavs. The population just needs to keep their language and some other identity markers.
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Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
Perhaps a no Islamic conquest timeline, where Heraclius invites the Slavs in as federates after the Sassanian war?
OTL the Byzantines actually did resettle Slavs in Anatolia.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_Minor_Slavs
But i believe that unless the political reality of Anatolia had changed, then Anatolian Slavs would have likely been assimilated into the mainstream of Byzantine society. Maybe a scenario were some rebeling Slavs from central Anatolia overthrow Byzantine rule, this would allow for a greater chance of Slavic continuity in Anatolia. Later this Slavic state might conquer what's left of the Byzantines, maybe leading to the longterm slavification of Anatolia? Or maybe the rebelling Slavs might take controll over the Byzantine empire during there revolt?
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Burton K Wheeler
Moderator
I didn't realize that. That's pretty close to the scenario I was discussing, but I was picturing it on a larger scale. I'm going to have to backtrack on my "no Arab conquest" idea, medieval/thematic Byzantium is way more likely to see significant ethnic changes than classical Byzantium, plus the population density in Anatolia was way lower.
What do you think might lead to Byzantium losing control over the hinterlands or the entirety of the empire, thus allowing for slavification?
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How would a ATL conquest of byzantium (Balkans and Anatolia, as i assume this is the farthest they could get) by pagan slavs affect the political evolution of Christianity? What about Islam? Might the abrahamic faiths be so weakened that the territory or the slavs would never be converted to either christianity, islam, judaism or ATL new abrahamic faith?
Would the slavic pre-christian religion be likely to centralise in such a scenario? They are closer to centralied religions with similar roots as their own, zorastrianism for one.
How would a slavic pagan world interact with the Iranian indo european religion?
Would the slavic pre-christian religion be likely to centralise in such a scenario? They are closer to centralied religions with similar roots as their own, zorastrianism for one.
How would a slavic pagan world interact with the Iranian indo european religion?
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Yeah, Bulgaria taking Tsargrad and proclaiming themselves to be the new Rome seems like a good way to get this.
Bulgaria would likely propagate Bulgarian over Greek where it could and settle Slavic populations in Asia Minor as available. I’d still put good odds on them all Hellenizing in a few decades, though—IMO there would need to be depopulation along with repopulation to keep Anatolian Slavic culture going.
Bulgaria would likely propagate Bulgarian over Greek where it could and settle Slavic populations in Asia Minor as available. I’d still put good odds on them all Hellenizing in a few decades, though—IMO there would need to be depopulation along with repopulation to keep Anatolian Slavic culture going.
The problem with that theory is that the Bulgars during that time period were Turks, not Slavs. All you would be doing would be creating an Ottoman Empire. Abit one that would be Christian and considerably more Hellenized.
TBH an early Bulgar-led "Not!Ottomans" sounds pretty neat. What would that mean for the rest of europe, if both eastern and western empires are "restored"/conquered/replaced by "barbarians"?
The Slavs would have to cross the Ionian Sea or the Caucasus Mountains, depending on the location.
First, no serious historian has ever claimed that Bulgarians were Turks. The common theory is that they spoke a Turkic language (there is not really enough evidence to prove this and it's quite likely that they actually spoke an Iranian language), which is very different from being of the Turkish ethnic group, which did not appear on the Balkans until centuries later. Second, by the 9th century the Bulgars had been assimilated into the Slavic majority as shown by the fact that the Slavic language (written in Cyrillic) was made the state language by 886. Arguably this had happened earlier. For example, the Bulgarian ruler Omurtag (814-831) gave all three of his sons Slavic names and archeological evidence shows massive mixing between the two peoples.
Most likely the Aegean sea. Slavs had already spread into the Balkans including the modern day nation state Greece, where they spread as far south as peleponnes.