The Age of the Elephant - A World Without Islam

[Huehuecoyotl]

The Pivotal Age​

The era between 447 - 760 AR [1] is sometimes referred to as a Pivotal Age in history. It was to this period that the states of modern Europe can ascribe their earliest origins, and for this reason it has been the focus of much study in the academic world, especially for the past two centuries. It was also, however, to see a pivotal event in the Arabian Peninsula which would not be intensely studied, or even understood, in the world's histories, as the origins of great states like Hispania or Polonia would be. This event, which probably took place between 529 - 540 AC, was a relatively minor invasion of a backwater region in Arabia which would have unknowably far-reaching consequences.

According to what few sources can be gleaned from Arabia during this period, a man named Abraha was the Aksumite viceroy of the region of Yemen at the time. Abraha seems to have taken offense to the pagan tribes to the northwest of his holdings, vowing to show the supremacy of the Christian faith over their 'heathen' ways, once and for all. To this end, he guided a small army into the Hedjaz, intending to march upon the city of Makka, and its shrine, called the Kaaba. Despite the best efforts of the Arab tribes of the area to halt the progress of the Yemeni and Aksumite forces, Abraha eventually reached Mekka. With the help of a war elephant (or two) [2], the Kaaba, a central holy place of the traditional Arabian religion, was demolished, and the city sacked. The Quraysh tribe, which had been the designated protectors of the shrine, was especially devastated.

With their goal accomplished, Abraha and his men continued to raid the region for another few months, placing Aksumite officials in positions of authority over the important cities of Mekka and Yathrib before returning to Yemen. Ethiopian influence over the Arabian peninsula had grown almost overnight, and would only continue to affect the region more and more in the coming years. To outside observers of this history, it cannot be known whether this event precluded the birth of a person we would know as Muhammad, whether he died during the raids of the Aksumites, or whether he simply lived his life out in obscurity.

One thing, however, is certain - for want of a shepherd, and by the whims of an elephant, the world would be changed forever.

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[1] - 'After the Resurrection'; ITTL the base year of the calender is 29 CE.

[2] - IOTL, the elephant(s) supposedly misbehaved and refused to move into the city. Here, undeterred, they allow the Aksumites to proceed with the destruction of the Kaaba.

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This is a revival of an old TL idea called The Lord Reigns in Arabia, which I largely abandoned but still toyed around with for the past couple of years. Now that I'm older, and a little bit wiser, I hope to be able to continue this TL, and examine the far-reaching consequences of a world without Islam.

I'd appreciate any comments, criticisms, or suggestions that anyone has to make!

 

[Huehuecoyotl]

Aksumite-Iranian War, 570 - 571 CE

Aksum and its domains in the Arabian Peninsula, ca. 571​

As Aksum was expanding its reach across the Red Sea, the Roman and Iranian states continued their ancient rivalry. In their vying for dominance in the near east, proxy states betwixt the two mighty empires were invariably drawn into the conflict, most commonly in the Caucasus, and in the Arabian Peninsula. The political situation in Arabia at the time was delicately balanced, the kingdom of the Ghassanids Roman foederati, and the Lakhmids under Iranian suzerainty. The conquest of the Hedjaz and the sudden rise of Aksumite power upset this balance dramatically in favor of the Romans, a turn of events by which the Sassanid state felt challenged. Determined to deliver a punishing blow to the Christians and increase the Iranian hold on Arabia, the Shah, Khosrau I, outfitted a force of 1,500 men, under the command of a man named Wahrīz, for the purpose of extirpating the Aksumites from Yemen and the Hedjaz.

From the beginning, the Iranian expedition was dogged by ill fortune: a number of the ships transporting the soldiers to Yemen were blown off course, some sinking and the rest returning to the Gulf in disarray. However, most of the force did manage to make landfall near Aden, thence north to capture San'a, the regional capital of Yemen. San'a fell relatively easily to the Iranian host, which proceeded northward into the Hedjaz with about half of its original force, the rest either lost or left behind to garrison the captured cities of Yemen. Just north of the Yemeni border, however, the Aksumites at last caught up, meeting the Iranians in battle near Najran. After two days of battle, Wahrīz was forced to order a retreat, harassed all the way back to San'a by the vengeful Aksumites. After a year of frustrating stalemates and Aksumite attacks, the invasion simply became too costly for the Iranians to maintain, and they abandoned the region. What remained of the army returned to Persia in 572 to a livid Khosrau.

The defeat, while not an especially major one, was nonetheless a stinging blow to Iranian pride. The Romans, meanwhile, took advantage of the Sassanids' distraction to deal with an ever-hectoring threat on the Trans-Danubian frontier...

 

[Huehuecoyotl]

Roman Victories in the West, 571 - 577 CE​

The preoccupation of the Sassanids in the Red Sea region, and their subsequent humiliating loss, meant an opportunity for the Roman Empire to focus on their western possessions. Less than a decade after the death of Justinian, the future of his conquests was in jeopardy - the Lombards were encroaching on Italy, Avars raided along the Danube frontier, and the defense of Spania against the Visigoths was rapidly deteriorating. Justin II, a nephew of Justinian's, was the emperor at this time, and was determined to secure the Empire's control of his uncle's gains. [1]

The Empire had already been warring with the Avars for a couple of years at this point, and a victory over the barbarians in Thrace the previous year had confidence in Constantinople high that a final victory could be won against the Avar Khaganate. Near Sirmium the armies met again, and the khagan of the Avars was slain during the course of the battle. As the Avars crumbled in the absence of a leader, the Lombards began raiding into Pannonia. Struggling on two fronts, the Avars turned north toward greener pastures. Within a decade, they had abandoned the areas north of the Danube, heading towards the Baltic.

Following the victories against the Avars, Roman armies turned west to Italy, ancient homeland of the Empire, to end the rampant raiding and incursions of the Germanic Lombards throughout the peninsula. The important cities of the north, namely Verona and Milan, had already fallen a couple of years earlier under the competent command of their king, Alboin. While Longinus, the exarch sent by Justin II a few years prior, had been unable to hold any but the coastal cities, the new influx of Roman soldiers gradually pushed the tide back. As Verona and Milan came under Roman siege late in 576, the center of gravity of the Lombard culture had begun to swing back in the direction of Pannonia, recently vacated by the Avars. Thus, by 577, the Lombard excursion in the Italian Peninsula was at an end, and Roman control of Italy was, at least for the time, secure.

Further west, the Empire was not so lucky - Cordoba had fallen to the energetic Liuvigild, king of the Visigoths, around 572, and all of Roman Spania was in jeopardy. Here no reclaiming of territory was possible, but the arrival of the powerful Roman navy ensured that the coastal fortresses of Gades and Carthago Spartaria would not fall to the Visigoths. His inability to extricate the Romans convinced Liuvigild to sign a truce with the Romans in 576, eager to turn his attention north towards Galicia and Cantabria. Roman Spania's future was secured, at least for the time being, leaving the Romans to gaze enviously upriver at the captured cities of Hispalis and Cordoba.

This first spate of Roman victories in the West, however, was at its end. By 577, the Sassanid armies had recovered from the Yemeni debacle, and peace could not last in the East for long...

The Roman Empire in 580 CE

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[1] - Without the stress of the Roman-Persian War of 572, Justin II never experiences the nervous breakdown he did IOTL.

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I think I bungled the Danube border on the map, but it's a minor concern at best. Comments so far?

 

[Huehuecoyotl]

Roman-Sassanid War of 577 - 582 CE​

The perennial fate of the Roman and Sassanid Empires was, it seems, to fight one another. The next round had been delayed by Persia's fumbling around with the Aksumites in Yemen, but within half a decade, the conflict was almost inevitable. Pro-Roman revolts wracked the Christian portions of the Persian Caucasus, and Khosrau was determined to make an example of the rebellious Christians to save face after the Yemeni debacle. Once the crackdowns on the revolts began in earnest, the Romans declared war in support of their brothers in the faith, and crossed the border with the intention of marching on Dvin and liberating the whole of Persian Armenia. Khosrau, who had successfully baited the Romans into open conflict, executed the first Iranian victory of the war at Bolum late in 577, forcing the Romans back over the frontier. There the Roman army wintered in Theodosiopolis, which Khosrau placed under siege.

By the coming of spring, however, Justinian, the magister militum of the East, arrived with a cadre of fresh troops, raising the siege and driving the Iranians back over the border. From here, it appears, the tides turned, as the Iranian siege of Dara in Mesopotamia was thwarted in 579 by the armies of al-Mundhir ibn al-Harith [1] of the Ghassanids, and the Romans and their Armenian confederates advanced in the Caucasus. Khosrau died some time in the same year, and was succeeded by his son, Hormizd. As the Sassanids' military fortunes seemed to grow worse by the day, Hormizd, vengeful for the reverses his Empire had experienced at the hands of the Christians in his father's reign, seems to have vented his frustrations upon his own Christian subjects, the Nestorians of Persia. Long accused of Roman sympathies, the Christians of the Sassanid Empire had last been persecuted four decades before during Khosrau's reign. Despite this, the Church of Persia had striven to prove its loyalty in moving farther theologically from Roman orthodoxy.

With the arrest of the Patriarch Ezekiel, however, the Christians could tolerate no more. Across Mesopotamia and Persia open revolt flared, suppressed brutally by Hormizd. When the king's son, Khosrau, was struck dead by a Christian assassin, the vengeful king had Ezekiel executed. Distraught, the Christians of the Sassanid Empire went into hiding, their leaders fleeing abroad, largely to the Roman Empire and to Transoxiana.

As the civil strife in Persia continued, the Romans advanced in Armenia, capturing Dvin late in 581 and crushing the army of the general Adarmahan a few months afterwards. The campaign wound down to a halt when news came that the Emperor Justin had died, and that his caesar, Tiberius Constantine, had taken the throne. The new Emperor sent peace feelers to the court in Ctesiphon, where Hormizd, still overcome with rage at the death of his son, refuses. It is only when the magnates of Persia, sick of Hormizd's draconian rule and military blunders, deposed and blinded the king that the truce could come to realization.

The peace was a punishing one for the Iranians, but not one that they could contest with their armies in the condition they were - all of Armenia and Iberia would pass under Roman ownership, and the two Empires would renew their 50-year treaty of peace. The new king Bistam, brother of Hormizd, signed the peace reluctantly, wishing to end the war and to restore order in his new Empire.

The consequences of this brief but brutal war were of monumental importance. The expansion of Roman rule in the Caucasus and northern Mesopotamia would tax the Empire, which had already strengthened its control of Italy and, to an extent, the province of Spania (although the consequences of this victory on the Romans would not be seen for almost three decades). More immediately, Persia's defeat had made it weak in terms of military and prestige in the eyes of its neighbors, and its Christian populace, despite the end of the fierce prosecution, were embittered.

To the north and the southwest, vultures circled...

The state of the Roman-Iranian frontier, before and after the War of 577 - 582.

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[1] - Who was not implicated of treason by Maurice and deposed, as he had been IOTL.

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I guess I lied about there being no territorial changes.

 

[Huehuecoyotl]

This one took a while because I'm not terribly knowledgeable about Central Asian history, but on with the show:

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The Turkic Empire Rises Anew, 581 - 593 CE​

Even as the Romans and Iranians waged the latest in an unceasing string of destructive conflicts, the Göktürks were splintering. The steppe empire's quick rise had been matched by an equally quick collapse, as the Turkic state split in two: an eastern state, focused on Ordu-Baliq [1], and a western state, centered around the city of Suyab [2]. In theory the western Turkic state answered to the khagan in the east, but this state of affairs was not particularly appealing to Tardu, the yabgu of Suyab. In 581 CE, Taspar, the khagan, had died, and the east descended into civil war between his sons. The ambitious Tardu had been planning to march east and assert his authority over the entirety of the khaganate. However, in that same year, an interesting set of petitioners arrived at his court.

As persecution against the Sassanid Empire's native Christians reached its climax under Hormizd IV, Persian church officials streamed into the Roman Empire to seek refuge. A smaller delegation, led by a bishop named Isaac, took their chances and headed north to beseech the help of the yabgu. Something in the message Isaac and his cadre of Nestorians brought to Tardu seems to have made an impression on the Turkic leader, who soon converted to Nestorian Christianity [3]. Abandoning for the moment his ventures in the east, Tardu turned his eyes to the empire in distress past his southern border, the lure of the title of 'Shahanshah' far stronger than that of 'Khagan'. Ultimately, however, it was to elude him - between 582 and 586 Tardu warred with the Sassanids, but was only able to secure the Bactrian highlands and the northeastern extremity of Iran. A military victory against the Sassanids was enough, at least, to satisfy Isaac and his followers' taste for retribution. At about this time, Tardu appointed Isaac the bishop of Suyab with the interest of teaching the gospel to his people, and then campaigned briefly north of the Caspian, securing tribute from the Turkic and Magyar tribes there. The increasing intensity of Turkic raids in what we would call European Russia would, in coming decades, have dramatic effects upon Eastern and Central Europe as well.

For now, however, Tardu's attention turned back from the west to the east, where, by 590, Taspar's nephew Talopien had successfully secured the throne from his rivals [4]. Tardu's armies, high off of victory over the Iranians, easily tore through Talopien's depleted, post-civil war forces at Turfan, capturing Ordu-Baliq in the summer of 592. Thus, under the leadership of the first Christian khagan, Tardu, the Empire of the Göktürks was restored after an eleven-year period of civil war. The Roman Empire and the newly-established Sui dynasty of China looked on uneasily, Sassanid fortunes looked grimmer than ever, and the seeds of a great demographic upheaval were sewn in the Russian steppes...

The Empire of Tardu, 593 CE (sans tributary regions)

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[1] - In northern Mongolia.

[2] - In Kyrgyzstan.

[3] - Whether this is due to any actual theological resonance with the yabgu or if it was a purely political move is still hotly contested by TTL's historians.

[4] - IOTL, Tardu's aims in the east protracted the civil war and forced Ishbara Khagan, one of the eastern claimants, to seek the aid of Sui China.

 

[Huehuecoyotl]

King Liuvigild and Hispania, 568 - 583 CE​

When studying the history of Hispania from the 5th to the 8th Centuries, it's important to realize that the kingdom which then occupied the Iberian Peninsula could not yet be identified with the nation-state we know of today (not least because the concept of a nation-state did not yet exist). In this period, the post-Roman kingdom in the former provinces of Hispania was based on a tenuous cooperation between its Arian, Germanic ruling class, and the Ibero-Roman, Catholic masses [1]. A Hispanian identity was centuries away, and so this state is more accurately termed the Kingdom of the Visigoths.

Nevertheless, the greatest monarch of this period is included in the ranks of the great 'Hispanian' national heroes, filling the textbooks of primary school history classes all over the Iberian Peninsula. Born around 525 CE, Liuvigild in his earliest years is poorly attested, perhaps because he had not been born into the family which then ruled the Visigothic kingdom. He enters the realm of historical knowledge in 567 as the brother of a usurper, Liuva I, who rose to the throne upon the death of Athanagild.

Liuva was crowned at Narbonne, the center of Visigothic Septimania, likely due to the threat of possible Frankish intervention in the Visigothic succession, and made his brother his co-king, assigning him to the east. As it was, however, the Franks were embroiled in yet another one of the internecine wars to which they were prone, and as such interfered little in Hispania. When his brother passed away in 572, Liuvigild became sole king of the Visigoths, inheriting a kingdom which had faced an uncertain future since the Battle of Vouille in 507. It was his efforts to reinforce the position of the Visigoths on the peninsula which would earn him his legacy, and, eventually, form the nucleus of a Hispanian state.

Even before ascending to the position of sole king, Liuvigild had captured the cities of Asidona and Malaga, lost to the Visigoths at the hands of Justinian at the beginning of Athanagild's reign. Although he seized Cordoba, Malaga fell again to the Romans in 575, and the coastal cities of Carthago Spartaria and Gades, supplied by the powerful Roman fleet by sea, were outside of his grasp. By the next year, Liuvigild was compelled to offer a ceasefire, seeing that little more could be gained from the conflict. Although the coastal cities and Asidona would remain under Constantinople's purview, Seville and Cordoba, along with the rest of the cities of the rich Guadalquivir valley, were secured for the Visigoths. This accomplished, the king turned his attention away from the Romans, who were embroiled in a brutal war with the Sassanids, to secure the untamed, mountainous north for the Visigothic kingdom.

As with Roman Spania, however, the rugged backwater of Cantabria was to prove equally frustrating for the king. Although the major regional center of Amaya fell quickly to the much larger armies of the Visigoths, the Cantabrians proved a resilient foe, holding out to the north of the Cantabrian Mountains. By 578, Liuvigild ended the campaign, establishing the Duchy of Amaya [2] around the captured city as a means of governing the unruly, newly-conquered region. The frontier was a to prove a nebulous one, as for the next decade, the vengeful Cantabrians continued to raid Visigothic positions, even assailing Amaya several times. The new duchy would prove to be almost a legal fiction, and banditry the law of the land. Although the failure stung, Liuvigild's hands were tied as a major Catholic rebellion flared in recently-reconquered Seville.

Although the Visigothic state had been relatively fair to its Catholic subjects in the past, the change of the city's control from an orthodox state to a heretical one led to considerable insecurities amongst the Catholics of Seville. Several Catholic priests who were alleged to have spoken against their new overlords were arrested in the later months of 577. The ensuing public outcry faded by the new year, but the embers of discontent in the city were fanned again when, in March of 578, rumors spread in the city of Visigothic soldiers harassing Catholic women as mass was letting out. Whether true or not, riots wracked Seville as a result, and the ensuing putting down of these riots only exacerbated the situation. As summer began, the entire area of Seville, as far afield as Carmona, was in a state of revolt.

It should come as no surprise that the revolt could not remain a going force for long once the king and his armies arrived, as full royal control in the city was reestablished before 579. One Leander, a promising Benedictine monk [3], was accused of helping to spark the revolts. Leander fled east, narrowly ahead of the Visigoths, arriving first in Carthago Spartaria, his family's original home. With little promise of returning to his home in Seville, Leander departed further east, to the city of Ravenna in Roman Italy, hoping to make his mark in the Empire rather than in his native Hispania. Liuvigild could turn his attention north once more, although sporadic rebellions springing from those of 578 would continue to plague the heavily Catholic countryside until the 590s.

Seeking to drive home his superiority over the Catholics, Liuvigild looked to the northwest, towards the only major region of Hispania that remained outside of Visigoth control - Gallaecia. In the northwestern corner of the peninsula, the Suebi, another Germanic people who had taken control of former Roman lands in the west, had recently converted to orthodox Christianity, abandoning the Arian faith which had previously been common to many of the 'barbarian' kingdoms of western Europe.

After some time to prepare his forces for war, Liuvigild took his armies north to Gallaecia in 581. The Suebi king, Miro, met Liuvigild near the city of Portus Cale, and after a week of fierce fighting, was routed, fleeing north to the capital at Braga. The coming of winter forced Liuvigild and his men to winter in the captured city of Portus Cale, and the campaign resumed the following spring. The Suebi, fortifying their capital with all of their might, frustrated the assaults of the Visigothic army, but as the months pressed on, the garrison of the city began to grow weary. Just as the Suebi were near capitulation, however, fortune struck - Liuvigild became violently ill [4], and the Visigoths wavered. At the urging of his son, Hermenegild [5], Liuvigild settled for a simple declaration of fealty from Miro (who acquiesced, although his fealty would be in name only), lifted the siege, and returned home in disappointment.

Liuvigild lingered at the palace in Toledo for another year, eventually succumbing to his illness on 4 April 583. Hermenegild, who had been associated as co-king three years before, became King of the Visigoths, inheriting a kingdom markedly more powerful than it had been a decade and a half before. Although historians would criticize Liuvigild's reign as one of only half-successes, he left his kingdom more stable and militarily more powerful, and brought the Visigoths their first significant gains since Vouille.

It would be six decades before another great monarch would rule the Visigothic nation.

The Visigothic kingdom at Liuvigild's death, in 583 CE.

Olive Green: Visigoths. Red: Roman Empire. Gray: Suebi. Yellow: Cantabrians. Pale Blue: Vasconia. Pink: Kingdom of Charibert I. Green: Kingdom of Sigebert I. Lavender: Kingdom of Burgundy.

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[1] - Pun absolutely intended.
[2] - In OTL the Duchy of Cantabria, although the fact that it is so reduced in size ITTL and so neutered in power has lent itself a less impressive-sounding historiographic term.
[3] - IOTL, St. Leander of Seville, who was instrumental in converting Liuvigild's sons to Catholicism.
[4] - Later Visigothic and Hispanian historians blame the foul air and water of Gallaecia.
[5] - Who has not converted to Catholicism and rebelled as he did IOTL.