Spain remains Visigothic

Apparently the Arab conquests were greatly accelerated by one key battle where much of the Visigothic nobility was killed. Suppose the Arabs are held in check, perhaps only to the modern area of Andalusia or maybe never establishing a presence at all. How would Spain look? Do the Arabs try again later or would they simply try to raid more?
 
Visigothic language was already declining on 8th century. It had already route of latinization. You would need much earlier POD.
 

Razgriz 2K9

Banned
No one really knows what possessed the Umayyads to send troops to Hipsania in the first place, so depending on what their goals are would largely determine whether or not they would come for Round 2.

But as Lalli said, the Visigothic language was already in decline in favor of Latin. We might see the language continue to persist for much longer, even into the modern day, but it will still be unable to hold a candle compared to Latin, and later what would become a weird twisted version of Spanish.
 
No one really knows what possessed the Umayyads to send troops to Hipsania in the first place, so depending on what their goals are would largely determine whether or not they would come for Round.
My understanding is that the conquest was opportunististic and authorised by the Caliph of Damascus. If the Moslems had received a bloody nose at the outset they would have backed off for a while or at least just raided. Instead they turned up at the time of a civil war between Roderic the Duke of Toledo and the nobles of the Vascones region.

Had the Visigoths been united they could very well have seen off the first Moslem invasion. However,as Lalli stated they were undergoing a process of Latinization both in language and religion. You would thus get a people like the modern Spaniard albeit without the brutal fighting of the Reconquista.

Moving forward sporadic skirmishing between the Visigoths and the Moslems would continue until the beginning of the Modern Era where Spain would have been in a position to take Western technology to the New World. What you would not have had would have been Portugal and thus one Iberian country going eastwards so to speak and the other west.

How this would have played out is obviously speculative. There would have been the drive to outflank the Moslems' and Venetians' control of the spice trade. One could thus see Visigoths taking control of large part of Inian along with the East Indies leaving the English, French and Dutch the entire Americas.
 
So how far would the Visigoths be Latinized? And "remaining Visigothic" means the political system does not change much, maybe "Spain Remains Christian in 711" would have been clearer?
 
I think Spain might look similar to Italy linguistically, the Northern Italian Dialects resemble Spanish and Portuguese while Southern Italian Dialects resemble Mozarabic, I think Spain could end up like OTL Italy as well
 
I think that in fact it would have been rather successful. If the Moslems hadn't arrived during the already mentioned civil war, and the monarchy had been allowed to continue it could have turned into a stronger power, regardless of the language. E.g. the Visigoths didn't divide the land into "sub-kingdoms" like the Franks did, and after reunifying the Peninsula in the early 600's had no one else to fight in it (unlike the Byzantines and Lombards in Italy.) The they could have turned outwards, perhaps into a divided France :eek: !!!
 

Anaxagoras

Banned
PODs in the Dark Ages are difficult to work with. Assuming that Spain remains under the control of Christian kingdoms, the Islamic threat to Christianity in general would have been much reduced in the popular imagination. This would obviously greatly affect the development of Christian Europre. As for Islam, it would have secondary effects but might not have greatly impacted the overall development of Islamic civilization.

The serious historical implications, however, lie in the fact that the great cultural and learning centers of Islamic Spain would never have existed. This might snuff out human knowledge of a large portion of classical learning, with tremendous butterflies down the road.
 
PODs in the Dark Ages are difficult to work with. Assuming that Spain remains under the control of Christian kingdoms, the Islamic threat to Christianity in general would have been much reduced in the popular imagination. This would obviously greatly affect the development of Christian Europre. As for Islam, it would have secondary effects but might not have greatly impacted the overall development of Islamic civilization.

The serious historical implications, however, lie in the fact that the great cultural and learning centers of Islamic Spain would never have existed. This might snuff out human knowledge of a large portion of classical learning, with tremendous butterflies down the road.

And those are huge things that must be considered. Though wasn't there plenty of classical teachings preserved in Ireland and Italy already?
 
PODs in the Dark Ages are difficult to work with. Assuming that Spain remains under the control of Christian kingdoms, the Islamic threat to Christianity in general would have been much reduced in the popular imagination.
The threat though of Christendom to the Islamic world though would be unchanged. One reason why the Moslem's attention was drawn to Spain was Visgothic support to North African cities. Without the civil war and the Islamic invasion it is conceivable that the Visigoths might decide to invade North Africa a la the Reconquista but 700 years earlier. Obviously they would need a fleet, but nothing to stop them making the attempt.
 
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