Was an Islamic or Islam-like expansion inevitable?

wormyguy

Banned
To set things straight - no, I'm not some teen who gets wet dreams about the destruction of Islam. This is a purely (*ahem*) academic question.

In the mid first millenium, the near east was dominated by two competing "superpowers" - the Roman Empire, and the Sassanid Persian Empire. Their spheres of influence met in the Levant, and it was there that they fought their endless campaigns and skirmishes, but it was also ironically the place where their authority was weakest. Having exhausted themselves in the largest of a series of wars between themselves from 602 to 638, in which both sides devastated the richest lands of the other, the Romans and the Persians were at the weakest and most overstretched point in their histories. Meanwhile, the uniting of the Arab tribes under the common banner of Islam (rather than among petty chieftains and princelings) allowed large Arab armies to mount organized invasions of Roman and Persian territory, rather than disorganized banditry and raids, and successfully defeated (and destroyed) large Roman and Persian counterattacks, eventually taking the whole of the Sassanid Empire and vast swathes of the Roman Empire (which I after this point in history call the Byzantine Empire).

My question is this - was it inevitable that at some point there would be a moment of mutual weakness among both Romans and Persians, such that the Arabs or some other forgotten nomadic minority, unified by a new ideology or religion, could defeat them both and take massive amounts of land that had been Roman and Persian for nearly a millenia? What if only one empire is tottering on rotten supports? What if there are two competing religions or ideologies, and/or conquering ethnic groups?
 
Not inevitable at all. It is true that there is a cycle of nomad conquest into the 17th, so the Arab expansion is not fundamentally out of line (the evidence is sketchy, but clearly such things happened back through the Bronze Age, and into the Qing etc.). But, I suspect the nature of the expansion and its results were highly contingent on Sassanid and Byzantine politics, including ever malleable religious politics.

Aside from those "smaller" divergences any PoD that produces earlier gunpowder empires kills off nomadic expansion,
 
I don't think it was inevitable at all. The Arabs became united at what was basically the ideal time for them to expand. Both the Byzantines and Sassanids were incredibly weakened by their great war with each other. Additionally, what really helped the Arabs was the fact that a lot of the people of the Middle East didn't really resist them at all, both the the Byzantines and the Sassanids had been persecuting local religious groups and had been imposing excessive taxes to fund the war, and beyond that Persian expansion during the war had meant that a new generation had grown up not knowing constant Byzantine rule. Added to this it's important to note that the unity of Arabia would have fizzled out eventually. Even with the success of Islam, once the government moved out of Arabia the tribes of the interior ceased to be united after a while anyways. I think it's fair to say that the Arab expansion that happened OTL was a very contingent thing. Circumstances were basically ideal for it. If the Arabs had united and tried to expand say a generation earlier, or a generation later, the Byzantines and Sassanids would likely have been able to resist them. And if the Arabs weren't successful, eventually they would start fragmenting again. What happened OTL required a lot of conditions to be met simultaneously; extremely weakened Byzantines and Sassanids, discontent populaces who would see the Arab rule as preferable to that of the old empires, and the unity of the Arabs. It's hardly inevitable that all of these things would be met at the same time.
 
As long as Byzantium and Sassinid persia bloody each other up, then yes. If they avoid War (or a prolonged decade long war anywyas), Byzantium should be capable of securing (or retaking) Syria and the Levant. Better cooperation between Heraclius and Yazdegerd can help the Byzantines win at Yarmouk and/or Persians at Qadisiyyah (or their equivalents if the coordinated Persian and Byzantine attacks changed Omar's overall strategy.
 
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It depends, really. I think the biggest factor for the Arab expansion (regardless of wether Islam emerges or not) was in my opinion the Plague of Justinian, which depopulated the Mediterranean region 80 years prior the Hegira, and which struck the Byzantine Empire in the crucial moment when it was attempting to reconquer parts in the West. Without the plague, the Byzantines would have had much larger troop strengths, and it's entirely possible that they would have defeated the Arabs with relatively little effort.

In regard for how evitable or inevitable Islam was, I have no idea. Yes, it was a brainchild of it's time, but I'm not sure if it would have emerged without the plague...
 
I don't think it was inevitable at all. The Arabs became united at what was basically the ideal time for them to expand. Both the Byzantines and Sassanids were incredibly weakened by their great war with each other. Additionally, what really helped the Arabs was the fact that a lot of the people of the Middle East didn't really resist them at all, both the the Byzantines and the Sassanids had been persecuting local religious groups and had been imposing excessive taxes to fund the war, and beyond that Persian expansion during the war had meant that a new generation had grown up not knowing constant Byzantine rule. Added to this it's important to note that the unity of Arabia would have fizzled out eventually. Even with the success of Islam, once the government moved out of Arabia the tribes of the interior ceased to be united after a while anyways. I think it's fair to say that the Arab expansion that happened OTL was a very contingent thing. Circumstances were basically ideal for it. If the Arabs had united and tried to expand say a generation earlier, or a generation later, the Byzantines and Sassanids would likely have been able to resist them. And if the Arabs weren't successful, eventually they would start fragmenting again. What happened OTL required a lot of conditions to be met simultaneously; extremely weakened Byzantines and Sassanids, discontent populaces who would see the Arab rule as preferable to that of the old empires, and the unity of the Arabs. It's hardly inevitable that all of these things would be met at the same time.
So if it hadn't happened, and someone were to suggest it as Alternate History, it would be called ASB? :p
 
Mohammed did call for bringing Islam to the unbelievers, but it's debatable if he meant all humanity or was just referring to Arabs. I finished the Wars of Islamic Expansion from Osprey a couple of months ago, and it was talking about that issue. Conversion of the Arabs was probably inevitable. Whether it would have expanded to other peoples is not so clear.
 
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