The Crescent And The Dragon: China And The Muslims Colonize The Americas First

Christopher Columbus's journey fails and he turns back. China colonizes the West Coast from California to Alaska while Arab traders bring Islam to South America and Mexico...what happens when Europeans finally arrive a century or so later? (Perhaps Walter Raleigh is the one to lead Europe to the New World? The European powers would by now be well aware that the Americas were being colonized and would no doubt want to catch up).
 
Why would China want to colonize California at that point? They had done their explorations a half-century earlier and hadn't really wanted to see that world since, and the Arabs already were rich with trade in the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean. Why would they want to colonize some place halfway around the world?
 
Why would China want to colonize California at that point? They had done their explorations a half-century earlier and hadn't really wanted to see that world since, and the Arabs already were rich with trade in the Mediterranean Sea and Indian Ocean. Why would they want to colonize some place halfway around the world?

Indeed - and with the exception of the Muslim states in Morocco, all the Muslim states in the Mediterranean would have to get past Spain in order to even reach the Atlantic.

And then there's the fact that the Muslims in Northwest Africa (and Spain) never seem to have had much interest in discovering and colonizing whatever islands and continents may lie west of Europe and Africa.

I mean, though the Muslims were aware of the existence of the Canary Islands, they never showed any interest in the Canary Islands - let alone islands further west, like Madeira and the Azores.

And if the Muslims in Northwest Africa couldn't even be bothered to settle some islands that are practically just off the African coast, then I really don't think that those same Muslims are likely to cross the Atlantic and have any real influence in Central and South America before the Europeans get there...
 
Indeed - and with the exception of the Muslim states in Morocco, all the Muslim states in the Mediterranean would have to get past Spain in order to even reach the Atlantic.

And then there's the fact that the Muslims in Northwest Africa (and Spain) never seem to have had much interest in discovering and colonizing whatever islands and continents may lie west of Europe and Africa.

I mean, though the Muslims were aware of the existence of the Canary Islands, they never showed any interest in the Canary Islands - let alone islands further west, like Madeira and the Azores.

And if the Muslims in Northwest Africa couldn't even be bothered to settle some islands that are practically just off the African coast, then I really don't think that those same Muslims are likely to cross the Atlantic and have any real influence in Central and South America before the Europeans get there...

Well,this is, undisputably, what happened IOTL. But I don't think it's that hard to imagine a TL when things go slighltly different and a united Moroccan kindom colonizes the Canary islands and eventualy, the Caribbean by the 1300s/1400s.

We just need to find a reason for doing so (and also slightly improved vessels).

Reasons such us:

1) Fishing

2) An easier way to get to West African gold (let's say, for example, a Berber sect of Shia Muslims forms a kindom in Mauritania that is hostile to sunni Morocco - or viceversa - and blocks trans-Saharan trade routes). The Canary Islands became a base for these ships. Eventualy, a ship is blown towards the West by a storm and comes back with stories of excellent land, friendly people and easy available gold (I know this wasn't true, but, if Columbus exagerated, why wouldn't his Muslim counterparts do the same). Colonization starts soon after this.

3) The Cruzaders/the Bizantines/the Mongols manage to get control of Egypt, thus blocking the trade routes between Muslmim North Africa and Persia/India. Somebody in Moroco tries to emulate what the Carthagians did, his ship gets blown to America and voilà, you have a Muslim America.

I'm sure somebody could come Pod. But I don't think that a Muslim America is so hard to get.

EDIT: And the same goes for a Chinese America (although this is a bit harder)
 
One reason Europeans went colonizing was the need for an alternative to contiguous territorial expansion. For Europe expansion was simply too costly. Other European or Muslim neighbours would put up a formidable fight.

In the case of the Islamic caliphate and most especially the Chinese, their situation was different, having weaker neighbours on their frontiers. If the rulers had expansion in mind, he would rather spend his resources expanding the frontiers than setting up overseas colonies. After all, there would be much more awareness of what's on the frontiers than in distant lands.
 
One way the Chinese might manage colonization is if after the Emperor who initially commissioned Zheng He dies, his succession isn't rife with intrigue. Say a fiercely loyal general seizes power and prevents the eunuchs destroying as much as they did IOTL. Or we have a POD where Confucius is never even born, thus preventing the Eunuchs' control of the Imperial Court to begin with?

Also, an early POD where the Crusades are largely successful and the Kingdom of Jerusalem doesn't pick a fight with the Muslims but slowly and methodically with the help of France (who doesn't abandon them like IOTL) manage to reach the Red Sea or even the Straits of Hormuz. This eliminates the Muslim middle men for access with India and Europe never looks for the alternate route. The Muslims, hearing rumor of the Chinese expedition and the discovery of land far to the east, heed the Prophet's call to spread Islam and sail initially to expand the rule of Islam and only later discover the vast reserves of gold and silver throughout South and Central America. By the time Europe even sees the new world as profitable, it's dominated by Islam and a now radically-different native population defined by their own local traditions influenced by Islamic religious tradition.

You could even see both of these happening, though I doubt Islam would travel west to get to the new world when they could just island-hop their way to California.
 
I don't think its that implausible, and I'd love, love to see a timeline or story about the Islamic conquest of Mexico. Something about the idea of the muezzin echoing from the top of a Mayan steppe pyramid is highly intriguing. Native American-styled prayer rugs. Veiled women leading llamas. Yeah it could be damn :cool:
 
There is a POD for this and even a book about it....of course it eliminates Europe in its entirety as potential competitor for the Americas but I don't think that is what you had in mind.
 
There is a POD for this and even a book about it....of course it eliminates Europe in its entirety as potential competitor for the Americas but I don't think that is what you had in mind.

However on a different note... the point would seem to be to give the Muslims a reason to take to the Sea.

A Surviving Crusader state in the Levant and Christian conquest of Egypt such that the Entire Nile Valley Down through the Nubian states of Makuria and Alodia also survive as Christian states by the time of the Renaissance and age of Exploration and the Muslims of North Africa would have had to find a way round the Continent somewhat earlier, though trans Saharan travel would have suffice in the interim Its not the same as direct access to their bretheren that would be to the east of these Christian states. They would have a larger focus on their immediate Christian neighbours to the North so perhaps this butterflys into a surviving Muslim Songhai Empire as well. Is lam may then come to Meso America but probably not as conquerors...They are more likely to be trade partners...The coast of Brasil though is another story, perhaps the Cape, as way stations around the continent to reach Arabia and the Middle East and Muslim India. Sail and Naval technology would have to reach a point though that they can sail against the prevailing winds ( That won't be until the 14th C probably. That gives the Crusaders and Christians in general 3 centuries to consolidate their hold on the Levant and the Nile Valley. Make the Roman Empire of Constantinople stronger as well, and you have a formidable wall between the Muslims in North Africa and those in Mesopotamia, Arabia and further points east) These North African and West African states would probably have no interest in the East coast of Nth America because its not on the route they would want to travel, at least not initially. Their traders would bring news of this land east with them to the Middle East and India which would then travel to China through Muslim traders in the SE Asia and the Far East.

Whether China decides to go exploring itself though, to find the islands in the Vast Sea between them, does require a change of mindset with the Emporer's court.
 
Well,this is, undisputably, what happened IOTL. But I don't think it's that hard to imagine a TL when things go slighltly different and a united Moroccan kindom colonizes the Canary islands and eventualy, the Caribbean by the 1300s/1400s.

We just need to find a reason for doing so (and also slightly improved vessels).

Reasons such us:

1) Fishing

You're gonna have to come up with a better reason than that - when islands so close to the coast of a continent remain virtually untouched by the local seafaring Muslims for that long (we are talking about a period of at least 700 to 800 years here), then there's bound to be a pretty good reason for that.

It propably has something to do with the fact that (IIRC) the waters around the Canary Islands are subject to some pretty strong sea currents that make it awfully hard to get from the islands to the Moroccan coast.

And IIRC (though I could be mistaken in this), the main reason the Spanish settled the Canary Islands in OTL, was that they needed supply depots for ships going to Africa or the Americas, and Canary Islands provided a proper alternative for bases on the Moroccan coast, which was rife with pirates and usually hostile local states and tribes.

The Maghrebi Muslims, on the other hand, simply don't have a reason to avoid the Moroccan coast, as they're the ones who control it.

2) An easier way to get to West African gold (let's say, for example, a Berber sect of Shia Muslims forms a kindom in Mauritania that is hostile to sunni Morocco - or viceversa - and blocks trans-Saharan trade routes). The Canary Islands became a base for these ships. Eventualy, a ship is blown towards the West by a storm and comes back with stories of excellent land, friendly people and easy available gold (I know this wasn't true, but, if Columbus exagerated, why wouldn't his Muslim counterparts do the same). Colonization starts soon after this.

Not plausible - a situation much like that existed in OTL: Shi'ism was traditionally very strong in the area of northern Morocco and northern Algeria (Fez was, in fact, founded by the Shi'ite Idrisids), and Isma'ili Shi'ism remained popular in the region until it was rooted out by the Almoravids, who arose in southern Morocco only after the local (IIRC only recently Islamized) Berber tribes adopted the Sunni doctrine after contact with Sunni scholars from Kairouan and the Abbasid Caliphate.

And yet, the conflicts between the Shi'a and the Sunnis in the Maghreb never led to either party blocking the trade routes to West Africa.

What's more; in OTL, the only Moroccan states that were truly powerful enough to control (and thus block) the West African trade routes, were also powerful enough to subjugate the northern Berbers and even conquer Islamic Spain, in spite of the religious differences.

In other words: a southern Moroccan Muslim state powerful enough to block off the trade routes would have to be so powerful, that it could afford to go much further than just blocking off traderoutes - such a state could (and most propably would) take over the entire Maghreb, just like the OTL Almoravids and Almohads.

And on the other hand, I really don't think that a state isn't capable of
conquering a rival Muslim state in the north, has what it takes to completely block off the trans-Saharan trade routes.

And lastly; for a state like that, blocking off the trans-Saharan trade routes is likely to hurt its own economy more than anyone else's. At least during the Medieval Ages, the trans-Saharan trade was a very important part of the Moroccan economy.

Also keep in mind that, should the trade routes through Morocco and Mauretania be blocked off, it is more likely that the trans-Saharan trade routes would shift eastwards (IIRC there already was an important caravan route from Kairouan to various cities in the Sahel IOTL, and the richest Sahel states were inland states that were easy to reach by caravan), and that nomads like the Tuareg would come to play an (even more) important role in it, as the nomads of the Sahara won't be under the control of whatever state is calling the shots in southern Morocco.

3) The Cruzaders/the Bizantines/the Mongols manage to get control of Egypt, thus blocking the trade routes between Muslmim North Africa and Persia/India.

A complete, long-therm Crusader conquest of Egypt would be very hard, if not impossible to pull off, and the only realistic way to have the Byzantines control Egypt, is by not letting it fall to the Muslims in the first place.

As for a Mongol conquest of Egypt; that'd be a tad more plausible than a Crusader or Byzantine conquest of Egypt, but that's about it.

..
IMHO, the only non-Muslim nation that ever had half a chance at conquering and holding on to Egypt during the Medieval Ages, was Makuria.

However, you'll need a pretty early POD in order to get a plausible, long-therm Makurian conquest of Egypt - the best POD for this would be somewhere during the 740's, when the Umayyads were collapsing and when there were a few Coptic revolts in Egypt (IIRC there were seven or eight major Coptic revolts in Egypt between 700 and 850, but I don't know wether there was a major revolt during the 740's).

But in this scenario there's the problem that, if the Makurian's OTL attitude to Muslim merciants is anything to go by, it's very unlikely that the Makurians would block the trade routes between Egypt and the Middle East, so even though you'll get a very interesting scenario in which the Muslim world is divided into a western and an eastern half, you propably won't get a situation in which desperate Muslim merciants try to round Africa.

Somebody in Moroco tries to emulate what the Carthagians did, his ship gets blown to America and voilà, you have a Muslim America.

...that's got to be one of the worst oversimplifications I've seen on this site.

Suppose the crew doesn't get shipwrecked, suppose they don't die from thirst, hunger, disease, scurvy, or starvation, suppose they're not killed by hostile natives, and suppose they want to return at all ("we drifted thousands of miles over unknown seas, we finally found an island - and a suprisingly hospitable island to boot - and now you want risk our lives again by going all the way back!?"), even then it's far from likely that we'd see an Islamic America as a long-therm result.

If they, like Columbus, just end up in the Caribbean, then they'll encounter nothing but a few tropical islands with weird-looking natives that still live in the stone age - not exactly something that's worth crossing the ocean for.

And even if they encounter one of the richer Amerindian civilisations and bring home some curious jewelry (which would be a best-case scenario), then it's still not likely that the local ruler would send out his ships to the New World or that that would have any lasting results, because hey, why bother risking a lot of resources and manpower on crossing the Atlantic and establishing colonies on the other side, if you can gain even greater riches from empires (such as the Songhai Empire) that are practically right next door?

...which ties in with tallwingedgoat's point; the Muslim nations (and Morocco in particular) simply have much more room to expand in the Old World. Couple that with the fact that Morocco had far less resources and manpower than Spain, and you have a few very good reasons for Muslim nations like Morocco to be uninterested in the Americas, and focus on more realistic goals and targets.

I'm sure somebody could come Pod. But I don't think that a Muslim America is so hard to get.

Sorry, but I really to beg to differ.

I'm not saying that an Islamic America is impossible, but in order to realize such a thing, you'll need a POD that's much more radical than a few Moroccan fishermen that accidentally cross the Atlantic.

I'd say that you'll at least need to maintain a strong Islamic Spain, and you'll also need to take the potential naval powers in Christian western Europe out of the equation somehow.
 
And then there's the fact that the Muslims in Northwest Africa (and Spain) never seem to have had much interest in discovering and colonizing whatever islands and continents may lie west of Europe and Africa.

I mean, though the Muslims were aware of the existence of the Canary Islands, they never showed any interest in the Canary Islands - let alone islands further west, like Madeira and the Azores.

And if the Muslims in Northwest Africa couldn't even be bothered to settle some islands that are practically just off the African coast, then I really don't think that those same Muslims are likely to cross the Atlantic and have any real influence in Central and South America before the Europeans get there...

There are some theories that during the reign of Abu Bakr II of the Mali Empire (~1310-1312) reached the New World. However, this is not really accepted in any seriousness. But the POD could be that it actually happened: I think there was a demonstration at one point which proved that Malian ships of that era were capable of traversing the Atlantic.
 
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