Spread of Islam Past Iberia

So, we all know about Islamic Iberia/Al-Andalus. But, how could Islam have spread further then just Iberia? Could it have spread further? Say into France and possibly the British Isles.

With this could we have also seen Islamic colonies in the New World around 1500 AD like that of Spain?

Sorry if this has been asked before, I'm fascinated in early Islam and love alternate history as well. Thank you to those who answer.
 
Southern france was taken in the early days after the fall of spain. Later on so was southern italy.

The problem was you then had a frankish empire form that copied muslim cavalry practices, converted the germans and formed a bulk of christendom that pushed back into spain and italy and eventually fought the crusades.

So first thing is to remove the Franks. Stop charles martel and his heirs from creating the frankish empire. Without a strong kingdom in northern france, you could reasonably see all of spain conquered by the muslims and toulouse and southern france still held.

Now you have no franks. There's still the lombards and the burgundians and the saxons and a bunch of others. Is someone else going to form a strong frankish like empire? Are the germans and slavs still going to convert to christanity? Are the scandivanians still going to go viking against europe and then be converted in turn?

Because Islam is going to advance a lot easier if it has pagans on it's borders. We know that because look at asia and africa. Islam spread beyond the borders of land ruled by muslims when the muslim lands bordered with pagans.Even the turks and the mongols who beat the hell out the islamic states converted to islam.

Now try and imagine a christian army marching into muslim lands and converting to islam before the invasion, or christian rulers of muslim lands converting to islam. It just didn't happen. Christians outside muslim land just did not convert in the way pagans did. And the privileged position of christians compared to pagans under islamic law meant even christians in muslim lands had less incentive to convert (though obviously it still did happen, in north africa native christians died out within 500 years).

Also you need your islamic european states to be more stable and united and militarily capable than al-andalus and morocco proved to be in otl. This is controversial but I think the missing element compared to the egyptian and turkish states who won islam's greatest post umayyad victories is the lack of a slave army as effective as the mamluks or the janissaries. Moulay Ismail's black guard was the closest thing islam ever got to creating an effective slave army out of sub saharans rather than central asians or europeans. Not that there wasn't black slave infantry but it was never as fearsome as the mamluks, which is why it was replaced by them in egypt. If a closer source of mamlukesque slave soldiers existed that would be a big help for your islamic french state. And if muslim france bordered a pagan state in germany than that might be a source.

Summary: In OTl islam smashed their way into southern france due to having better troops then their enemies. Then they were massively overextended, and ran into a formidable religiously united enemy with much shorter supply lines who were able to copy their military innovations, surpass them in several arenas (most notably navally) and drive them back. In order for islam to advance further you need to posit a timeline with that obstacle absent. So they can establish themselves in relative security and then advance 50 years later. To do that you need to kil the carolinigian empire and the idea of a united christendom before it really begins.
 
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Southern france was taken in the early days after the fall of spain. Later on so was southern italy.

The problem was you then had a frankish empire form that copied muslim cavalry practices, converted the germans and formed a bulk of christendom that pushed back into spain and italy and eventually fought the crusades.

So first thing is to remove the Franks. Stop charles martel and his heirs from creating the frankish empire. Without a strong kingdom in northern france, you could reasonably see all of spain conquered by the muslims and toulouse and southern france still held.

Now you have no franks. There's still the lombards and the burgundians and the saxons and a bunch of others. Is someone else going to form a strong frankish like empire? Are the germans and slavs still going to convert to christanity? Are the scandivanians still going to go viking against europe and then be converted in turn?

Because Islam is going to advance a lot easier if it has pagans on it's borders. We know that because look at asia and africa. Islam spread beyond the borders of land ruled by muslims when the muslim lands bordered with pagans.Even the turks and the mongols who beat the hell out the islamic states converted to islam.

Now try and imagine a christian army marching into muslim lands and converting to islam before the invasion, or christian rulers of muslim lands converting to islam. It just didn't happen. Christians outside muslim land just did not convert in the way pagans did. And the privileged position of christians compared to pagans under islamic law meant even christians in muslim lands had less incentive to convert (though obviously it still did happen, in north africa native christians died out within 500 years).

Also you need your islamic european states to be more stable and united and militarily capable than al-andalus and morocco proved to be in otl. This is controversial but I think the missing element compared to the egyptian and turkish states who won islam's greatest post umayyad victories is the lack of a slave army as effective as the mamluks or the janissaries. Moulay Ismail's black guard was the closest thing islam ever got to creating an effective slave army out of sub saharans rather than central asians or europeans. Not that there wasn't black slave infantry but it was never as fearsome as the mamluks, which is why it was replaced by them in egypt. If a closer source of mamlukesque slave soldiers existed that would be a big help for your islamic french state. And if muslim france bordered a pagan state in germany than that might be a source.

Summary: In OTl islam smashed their way into southern france due to having better troops then their enemies. Then they were massively overextended, and ran into a formidable religiously united enemy with much shorter supply lines who were able to copy their military innovations, surpass them in several arenas (most notably navally) and drive them back. In order for islam to advance further you need to posit a timeline with that obstacle absent. So they can establish themselves in relative security and then advance 50 years later. To do that you need to kil the carolinigian empire and the idea of a united christendom before it really begins.

Is there anyway Islam could spread even with the Franks?

Because what your saying is to take out the Franks entirely but that's not entirely realistic they had a strong shot at being a major power during and after the fall of Rome.

So if the Franks still survived as they do in our history, could Islam have still spread into Western Europe past Iberia?

Also while I'm at it, because you mentioned Islamic Sicily. Could Islam have spread into Italy and/or past Byzantium before the Ottomans even existed?
 
Is there anyway Islam could spread even with the Franks?

Because what your saying is to take out the Franks entirely but that's not entirely realistic they had a strong shot at being a major power during and after the fall of Rome.

So if the Franks still survived as they do in our history, could Islam have still spread into Western Europe past Iberia?

Also while I'm at it, because you mentioned Islamic Sicily. Could Islam have spread into Italy and/or past Byzantium before the Ottomans even existed?

I don't think there was any possibility of the Frankish Kingdom, as it existed, being supplanted by the caliphates. But if it fell apart to civil war, bad rulers, ect it would be a different story.

When I said remove the franks, I meant remove their success rather than remove them entirely. Sometimes nations roll 1s.

And yeah it's entirely possible that the arabs could have taken constantinople in 718 and knocked the byzantines out of the game for good. If that worked then sicily, which was mostly defended by byzantines, could fall centuries earlier and you could see a stronger islam march up italy (assuming again that charlemagne's franks aren't in the position to drive them out again).

The other great advantage of the byzantine empire completely crumbling in 718 the way the persians did a century earlier is it gives the caliphate a much larger border with pagans, which is vital for both islam spreading beyond the caliphate and the aquisition of slave soldiers. In 718 europe is mostly pagan, the bulgars haven't christianised yet nor have the magyars,, the poles, the russians, the baltic tribes, the germans or the slavs.

I know people disagree but I honestly do think that islam could easily become the dominant religion in europe if it wasn't for the resiliance of the franks and the byzantines.
 
I don't think there was any possibility of the Frankish Kingdom, as it existed, being supplanted by the caliphates. But if it fell apart to civil war, bad rulers, ect it would be a different story.

When I said remove the franks, I meant remove their success rather than remove them entirely. Sometimes nations roll 1s.

And yeah it's entirely possible that the arabs could have taken constantinople in 718 and knocked the byzantines out of the game for good. If that worked then sicily, which was mostly defended by byzantines, could fall centuries earlier and you could see a stronger islam march up italy (assuming again that charlemagne's franks aren't in the position to drive them out again).

The other great advantage of the byzantine empire completely crumbling in 718 the way the persians did a century earlier is it gives the caliphate a much larger border with pagans, which is vital for both islam spreading beyond the caliphate and the aquisition of slave soldiers. In 718 europe is mostly pagan, the bulgars haven't christianised yet nor have the magyars,, the poles, the russians, the baltic tribes, the germans or the slavs.

I know people disagree but I honestly do think that islam could easily become the dominant religion in europe if it wasn't for the resiliance of the franks and the byzantines.

I absolutely agree. Islam could have easily become the dominant religion in Europe if the Caliphates played their cards a little better, or if Muhammad made it through Byzantium.

One more question, if you don't mind.

With all of this, imagine Islam is the dominate religion. Islam is in Iberia, France, Southern Europe and modern day Turkey and likely the Baltic's as well, probably further. Do you think these new Islamic Sultanates/Kingdoms would by 1500 ADish have a Columbus type of senerio where the New World is discovered and they try to colonize it?
 
I absolutely agree. Islam could have easily become the dominant religion in Europe if the Caliphates played their cards a little better, or if Muhammad made it through Byzantium.

One more question, if you don't mind.

With all of this, imagine Islam is the dominate religion. Islam is in Iberia, France, Southern Europe and modern day Turkey and likely the Baltic's as well, probably further. Do you think these new Islamic Sultanates/Kingdoms would by 1500 ADish have a Columbus type of senerio where the New World is discovered and they try to colonize it?

I'm reluctant to say the caliphates should have played their cards better because what they did was already far beyond what anyone else has ever done. They rolled a lot of 6s.

But ok so islam is the dominant religion, most of southern europe is run by muslim states. Would the conditions for the age of explaration be there? Well, no. Because islamic states will control the spice road and be able to sail to india and china from the indian ocean so they don't need to try and find another way to east asia. Ibn Battuta went to china and indonesia from morocco simply by walking east. He didn't need to go west or around the cape to get to where he was going so he never explored those areas.

You need either a motive why your western muslims want to bypass the eastern muslims (Maybe a worse shi'a/sunni/ibadi split) and find a trade route that skips them out or some other less practical reason why european sultans would invest in exploration.

Possibly your best bet is for an existing small christian state in say britain to discover the new world trying to bypass the islamic med trade and then the muslims follow them west.
 
Even with no Franks, it's highly unlikely you have Islam spreading much past Septimania without some other butterflies. To the Muslims, Tours was just a minor skirmish - they were there for a raid. Even Iberia was a raid that got lucky - Jabal ibn Tariq's team was really just a couple tens of thousands of raiders, if that.

The real limiting factor in this period is the Berber Revolt, which almost inevitably will cut off western Islam from Damascus unless you somehow remove the Berbers.
 
Even with no Franks, it's highly unlikely you have Islam spreading much past Septimania without some other butterflies. To the Muslims, Tours was just a minor skirmish - they were there for a raid. Even Iberia was a raid that got lucky - Jabal ibn Tariq's team was really just a couple tens of thousands of raiders, if that.

Tours isn't the point. The point is that the franks reconquered southern france and supported the formation of the hispanic march. They're the only christian power other than the byzantines the muslims ever cared about. You simply can't go north with the carolingian empire in the way. You have to have a less successful frankish kingdom if islam is to expand into france, not the least because otherwise they'll never get the time to stabilisie in iberia.

The real limiting factor in this period is the Berber Revolt, which almost inevitably will cut off western Islam from Damascus unless you somehow remove the Berbers.

I mean, I see your point. The berber revolt was disastrous, not the least because of the way Al-Andalus exploded with ethnic tension in the aftermath. And the islamic navy simply wasn't strong enough to supply iberia from the middle east so the result of it was spain and north africa were left on their own. But being cut off from the caliphate didn't stop the islamisation of the sahel. I don't think you definately need the caliphate to control iberia for islamic power to spread from there.

The real problem with the berber revolt is what I said in my first post, it meant mamluks and turkish slave soldiers didn't flow into morocco and al-andalus like they did into egypt. If you want an Ottoman equilivant in spain, you need janissaries. They were without question islam's trump card against it's enemies from 1000-1800. I think a black guard or a german guard are your best bets there.
 
Tours isn't the point. The point is that the franks reconquered southern france and supported the formation of the hispanic march. They're the only christian power other than the byzantines the muslims ever cared about. You simply can't go north with the carolingian empire in the way. You have to have a less successful frankish kingdom if islam is to expand into france, not the least because otherwise they'll never get the time to stabilisie in iberia.



I mean, I see your point. The berber revolt was disastrous, not the least because of the way Al-Andalus exploded with ethnic tension in the aftermath. And the islamic navy simply wasn't strong enough to supply iberia from the middle east so the result of it was spain and north africa were left on their own. But being cut off from the caliphate didn't stop the islamisation of the sahel. I don't think you definately need the caliphate to control iberia for islamic power to spread from there.

The real problem with the berber revolt is what I said in my first post, it meant mamluks and turkish slave soldiers didn't flow into morocco and al-andalus like they did into egypt. If you want an Ottoman equilivant in spain, you need janissaries. They were without question islam's trump card against it's enemies from 1000-1800. I think a black guard or a german guard are your best bets there.


I couldn't disagree more... The Mamluk system was one of the worst institutions in Islamic history. It caused incredible decadence and the extreme atrophy of the Arab war waging abilities, look at the devolution of the Fatimids for the clear evidence on the matter.
 
I couldn't disagree more... The Mamluk system was one of the worst institutions in Islamic history. It caused incredible decadence and the extreme atrophy of the Arab war waging abilities, look at the devolution of the Fatimids for the clear evidence on the matter.

The fatimids could not build a succesful mamluk army due to their preexisting berber forces and the block of new recruits from central asia by the sunni states in between. They had the military schools but the principles of mamluk armies simply weren't effectively taught. Their Ayyubids and mamluk successors did build effective mamluk armies and were much more miltarily succesful.
 
The fatimids could not build a succesful mamluk army due to their preexisting berber forces and the block of new recruits from central asia by the sunni states in between. They had the military schools but the principles of mamluk armies simply weren't effectively taught. Their Ayyubids and mamluk successors did build effective mamluk armies and were much more miltarily succesful.

Yes but all those states were failed in comparison to the early Fatimid and Umayyad state. Further, the Mamluk is only part of the issue, which is a racial segregation within the army ranks, which causes decadence within the Arab rulers, which in turn weakens the entire population. It also was a major reason for the collapse of the Caliphate during the 800-900s.
 
Tours isn't the point. The point is that the franks reconquered southern france and supported the formation of the hispanic march. They're the only christian power other than the byzantines the muslims ever cared about. You simply can't go north with the carolingian empire in the way. You have to have a less successful frankish kingdom if islam is to expand into france, not the least because otherwise they'll never get the time to stabilisie in iberia.



I mean, I see your point. The berber revolt was disastrous, not the least because of the way Al-Andalus exploded with ethnic tension in the aftermath. And the islamic navy simply wasn't strong enough to supply iberia from the middle east so the result of it was spain and north africa were left on their own. But being cut off from the caliphate didn't stop the islamisation of the sahel. I don't think you definately need the caliphate to control iberia for islamic power to spread from there.

The real problem with the berber revolt is what I said in my first post, it meant mamluks and turkish slave soldiers didn't flow into morocco and al-andalus like they did into egypt. If you want an Ottoman equilivant in spain, you need janissaries. They were without question islam's trump card against it's enemies from 1000-1800. I think a black guard or a german guard are your best bets there.
Well, you can have a surviving Muslim power in Iberia. I'm working on a TL to this effect, as it happens. The Islamization of most of the peninsula was well apace even before the Fitna and the Almoravids showing up. But you still have the problem of whether or not your western Muslim power is sustainable, and it probably comes down to who is doing the conquering in Iberia and France. There's presumably a route for the region to be swamped beneath a wave of Berber rigorists centuries before the Almohads, if you posit a successful enough Berber Revolt.

Actually the mamluk-alternative popular in al-Andalus was to have "Slavic" slave-soldiers. A lot of palace servants were eastern European eunuchs and some in power had slave armies of them (presumably of the non-eunuch variety). They were even strong enough to form one or two of their own taifas during the Fitna (Denia specifically).

OTL the military muscle the Arabo-Andalusians used was mostly Berber tribesmen lured over from the Maghreb, reaching its natural apex with Almanzor. We all know how that turned out.
 
To the Muslims, Tours was just a minor skirmish - they were there for a raid.

This is debatable; Arab sources refer to Tours/Poitiers as the "battle of the Palace of Martrys" after all. They invaded north-central France following the same blueprint they'd used for their other conquests, and it seems that they had a substantial army, although we can't be certain of its exact size.
 
This is debatable; Arab sources refer to Tours/Poitiers as the "battle of the Palace of Martrys" after all. They invaded north-central France following the same blueprint they'd used for their other conquests, and it seems that they had a substantial army, although we can't be certain of its exact size.

In general I would say that until the Umayyads conquer Italy or Byzantium, it couldn't break through France as the tribal entities which made the Umayyad army pump was becoming sparse over a great expanse with many different zones of war, being Ionian islands, Sicily, South Italy, Aksum, Nubia, Afghanistan, Punjab, Anatolia, Caucus/Khazaria, etc... Thus it was immensely difficult until one of these fronts is removed to have the power to break through the third most difficult (behind India/Punjab and Anatolia).
 
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