Was the Arab Expansion Inevitable, and Can It Happen Without A United Faith?

[Galba Otho Vitelius]

Before gunpower, "barbarian" empires (Jurchen, Mongols, Turks, Arabs, Berbers,etc.) were established according to the following patterns:

1. Charismatic leader unites a barbarian confederacy. Combined maybe with a population explosion, or a population depression in the adjacent civilized areas, and the barbarians being generally more proficient militarily anyway, they curb stomp the neighboring civilized states and create an empire.

2. Civilized states recruit soldiers from the neighboring barbarian areas, and eventually these recruits or mercenaries take power in the civilized areas.

3. A state that is on the civilized/ barbarian borderlands expands into the civilized core during a period of turmoil in the civilized area.

Of these, method # 2 was by far the most common. The 7th century Arab conquests followed more the pattern of #1. The classical era short lived Arab empire, Palmyra, followed more the pattern of # 3.

Given the situation in the seventh century, I think the Arabs will become more prominent, but it will follow the usual patterns of # 2 and # 3. The situation with the East Romans or Byzantines will be more of # 2 and follow the Palmyrene model. An Arab state will be established in Syria at a time when Constantinople can't do much about it, and expand into Egypt. With the Sassanian empire, I think its more likely that # 3 will happen, that the ruling dynasty will be overthrown by its Arab mercenaries, and replaced with an Arab dynasty in what is essentially an Arab -Persian empire, with maybe the Sassanians continuing as figureheads. And they may then conquer some Byzantine territories.

This wouldn't preclude a new Abrahamic religion arising later, either from Manichaeism, Zoroastrianism, or Monophysite Christianity, and this religion would look a lot like Islam. However, without Islam, Arab or Arab-Persian expansion into the Sind, Central Asia, North Africa, Spain, and Sicily is obviously much less likely, and there is no Islamic missionary activity, which IOTL was considerable and converted lots of areas that never saw an Arab army.

 

[htgriffin]

Between a demographic boom and how the Romans & Persians spent a generation wrecking one another, some level of expansion is inevitable.

The big question is unification. It could easily look more like the Germanic or Turkic migrations of various groups setting up dynasties, assimilating outright (without a Holy Book, the Aramaic languages of Mesopotamia and the Levant likely end up with Prestige Dialect clout over the quite closely related Arabic ones) save in the more marginal/war-wrecked lands.

 

[Glory2Cabinda]

They do not have to beunited we can have a bunch of Arabs tribes migrate and step up a series of petty kingdoms like Dunes of the Desert.

 

[Dolnikan]

Without Mohammed, I don't see the Arabs having their OTL success. I can imagine someone cropping up and leading some sort of conquest, but unity is much harder to achieve without a central religion and assorted divinely ordained leadership. I would expect any conquests to follow more of the standard pattern of conquest where some local elites get replaced but most things keep going as they always had before. And a far greater willingness to form truly independent states in conquered territories. Absent religious unity, it also is much harder to have generals who can be trusted to conclude campaigns in multiple directions without trying to perform a coup. So yeah, I don't really see something as spectacular as the Islamic Conquests happening.

 

[WunWun]

It was fairly inevitable, but the extent of the expansion was not. The seventh century had two major empires (byzantine and persian) that had fought each other for decades and was tired. The arabs had a growing population + military experience because of mercenary work. At some point, the carrying capacity of the Arabian peninsula would become too small and the arabs would be forced to expand or die.

Could it happen without a united faith? Yes. Even OTL, the arabs were not 100% muslim, with fairly large arab christian and arab jewish tribes being part of mohammeds confederacy.

 

[Hawabin]

The arabs had a growing population +

genuine question, How does one calculate how much population that region had or that it was growing. its not like there were written records of it?

 

[WunWun]

genuine question, How does one calculate how much population that region had or that it was growing. its not like there were written records of it?

I honestly cannot remember exactly, my post is based on what I remember from A history of islamic societies 3rd ed by Ira M Lapidus. I'll take a look and see if I can find the exact source.

 

[Shevek23]

Posing the question as "Is Arab expansionism independent of their adopting Islam" I think ignores materialist cause and effect. I believe Islam was a system largely called into being by the general discontents of the age and place Mohammed lived in. I think it is quite likely that if Islam itself were butterflied away, we'd still have an Arab expansion. As some here have said, the magnitude of it might depend very much on whether a new religion unifies and focuses them or not...but the probability that some such new religion, being pretty similar in form and content to Islam as we know it OTL, will exist resulting in the expansion of the religion and the Arab peoples going hand in hand much as OTL, is high, and not independent of the materialist basis of population and contacts and general sophistication of the people of Arabia. Broad materialist conditions cannot dictate the detailed form of an ideology nor guarantee one is in fact created and actually becomes culturally catalytic. But they can make such events more likely, and consideration of the conditions involved in context of ideologies already familiar in the region of interest can let us pretty well predict the likely content and drive of the new world-view offered.

So, I think if we suppose the Koranic canonical life of Mohammed and his prophetic message had not happened in a particular ATL, I still think some other movement with a similar mentality and formulated message would appeal to similar demographics and have a similar social effect, resulting in an ATL Arab expansion associated with some kind of messianic religious revolution, and the resulting expanded system would resemble the OTL Caliphate and missionary expansion of the religion beyond the reach of this Caliphate-expy.

We can't really do the experiment of "what if the Arab expansion did not involve adoption of a unifying religion?" as a high probability thing. We can imagine a low probability thing comes to pass in a minority of time lines, and consider the outcomes of a possible but less likely situation.

To be specific, I think Islam stands forth as among other things, a merchant's religion. The Arabs by the harsh limitations of their native lands perforce integrated a lot of merchant enterprise in their society, whereas both ancient Arab traditional religion, evolved in a time when this mode of survival enhancement had less scope and thus perforce less social weight, and the offerings of sophisticated Christian and Zoroastrian systems, which were more appealing to the evolving sophistication of core Arabian society for the same reasons they dominated the respective Roman and Persian political systems, gave short shrift to the legitimacy and dignity of the honest trader, casting doubts suggesting such a person is an oxymoron. In a materialist view, either Mohammed himself was a shrewd and serious philosopher who conceived a new evolution of the Semitic monotheist tendencies previously worked out by the Jewish people, that fit the general stresses and strains of Arabian society as a key to a lock, or anyway any shortcomings or divergences from this fine-hewed and sweeping system were shaken down over generations and centuries and retrospectively canonized as the perfected Islamic system. A hard and atheist materialist theory does not actually contradict in outcome a theistic belief that God actually provided this system ready-made to a humble and devout Prophet chosen to convey this message; evolved or providential, either way it has to offer answers that satisfy to have social traction.

Thus I think something pretty similar to Islam was likely to emerge and catalyze rapid and extensive Arab expansion, and that the conditions enabling Arab expansion materially also called forth such a faith on an ideological level.

 

[thezerech]

Snip

Those are good points, but I disagree, by the 7th century Christianity, Judaism, and indigenous Arabian paganism(s) were all competing and well-entrenched faiths in Arabia and they did not disappear with the coming of Muhammad or the Muslim Conquests. Arab Christians participated in the conquests, even before local levies/mercenaries began to join Arab armies more regularly from conquered territories. There are some people who claim that Muhammad or early Islam was ecumenical and trying to be compatible with Christianity or Judaism, which is wrong, they specifically call them false derivations from "true monotheism," but the fact that historians can come to those conclusions is based off some interesting facts about the confessional diversity of the conquerers which was surprising for me to learn, and also the concessions given to Christians/Jews by early conquerors who were not, immediately, interested in the conversion of non-Arabs or other monotheists. They certainly accepted converts as far as I know, but it was not a big deal for them for a while yet. I think, because of that, it's reasonable to suggest the economic and political factors which made the conquests possible and successful do not need a unifying monotheistic faith unique from Christianity or Judaism. Likewise, Islam was as unifying a force as we may think, the Arabs suffered several significant civil wars in the 7th century, and the conquests were not reversed, while expansion stopped during the civil wars after they were concluded they went right back to conquering. The Lakhmids and Ghassanids were both (non-Orthodox) Christians and wielded significant influence, and I think Jewish or non-Chalcedonian Christian Arabs conquering swathes of Mesopotamia or the Levant reasonably possible in a no-Islam scenario, I don't think religion needs to be a unifying factor, it can help certainly I'm not denying that, but even if a religion could/would emerge to spur conquests, I don't think it has to be a new religion, a more active sect of Judaism perhaps? Nomadic peoples had conquered parts of Mesopotamia before (the Arameans) without an exclusionary unifying faith as far as I'm aware.

 

[Silver01]

Those are good points, but I disagree, by the 7th century Christianity, Judaism, and indigenous Arabian paganism(s) were all competing and well-entrenched faiths in Arabia and they did not disappear with the coming of Muhammad or the Muslim Conquests. Arab Christians participated in the conquests, even before local levies/mercenaries began to join Arab armies more regularly from conquered territories. There are some people who claim that Muhammad or early Islam was ecumenical and trying to be compatible with Christianity or Judaism, which is wrong, they specifically call them false derivations from "true monotheism," but the fact that historians can come to those conclusions is based off some interesting facts about the confessional diversity of the conquerers which was surprising for me to learn, and also the concessions given to Christians/Jews by early conquerors who were not, immediately, interested in the conversion of non-Arabs or other monotheists. They certainly accepted converts as far as I know, but it was not a big deal for them for a while yet. I think, because of that, it's reasonable to suggest the economic and political factors which made the conquests possible and successful do not need a unifying monotheistic faith unique from Christianity or Judaism. Likewise, Islam was as unifying a force as we may think, the Arabs suffered several significant civil wars in the 7th century, and the conquests were not reversed, while expansion stopped during the civil wars after they were concluded they went right back to conquering. The Lakhmids and Ghassanids were both (non-Orthodox) Christians and wielded significant influence, and I think Jewish or non-Chalcedonian Christian Arabs conquering swathes of Mesopotamia or the Levant reasonably possible in a no-Islam scenario, I don't think religion needs to be a unifying factor, it can help certainly I'm not denying that, but even if a religion could/would emerge to spur conquests, I don't think it has to be a new religion, a more active sect of Judaism perhaps? Nomadic peoples had conquered parts of Mesopotamia before (the Arameans) without an exclusionary unifying faith as far as I'm aware.

well muhamed in the very early years of islam did trying to potray himself to as prophet to the jews and chirstians i mean he even said things like the gospel been the word of god despite that the gospels contradicts all core tenants of islam with a few execeptions and the quran also saying But how do they come to you for decision while they have the Tawrat (Torah), in which is the (plain) Decision of Allah;

but 630s muhamed there you are rigth there is clearly by the text the opinion of jews and chirstians is untrue monothiest or curruped ones , as for the civil wars the ridda wars were more religous but the first fitna for example was more of a political religous war and the second one was more of a succession crisis than a religous one

 

[thezerech]

well muhamed in the very early years of islam did trying to potray himself to as prophet to the jews and chirstians i mean he even said things like the gospel been the word of god despite that the gospels contradicts all core tenants of islam with a few execeptions and the quran also saying But how do they come to you for decision while they have the Tawrat (Torah), in which is the (plain) Decision of Allah;

but 630s muhamed there you are rigth there is clearly by the text the opinion of jews and chirstians is untrue monothiest or curruped ones , as for the civil wars the ridda wars were more religous but the first fitna for example was more of a political religous war and the second one was more of a succession crisis than a religous one

Your points about the civil wars are right, they have varied causes. I think what I was trying to the get across was that there was a lot of tension among the conquerors despite their unifying faith.

Although, I think, without a unifying faith you'll see much less unity I agree. I think, from my understanding, is that Islam gradually created a strong sense of identity as Arabs settled in military settlements in which they were the minority elite. Without islam I think, even with rather sweeping and broad conquests, one will probably see a lot of assimilation, especially as Christianity was already practiced by many Arabs, conveniently Miaphysite or Nestorian Christianity especially which were commonly practiced in the ME.

We could get, in a no-islam scenario, an assimilation of the Arabs into preexisting middle eastern identities, speaking Greek or Syriac. That could be interesting.

I will acknowledge, also, that I've heard that there were multiple religious prophets and movements in Arabia around the time of the Mohammed, but he was obviously the only one to catch on significantly, I'll acknowledge that other unique faiths could have arisen during this time in Arabia too, of course.

 

[Alkmaion]

What did the Arabs conquer in the 1400 years before Islam from when they entered the scene in the Assyrian period? Nabatea? A couple of small kingdoms in the Jazeera desert or Charakene? I don't think the Arabs were destined by climate or history to conquer more than this, especially considering that arguably most of their expansion run in the opposite direction before Islam(toward Yemen)

I think those ancient states are the basis for what a weaker/decentralized Arab expansion would look like, maybe the Lakhmids expanding into Mesopotamia or Ghassanids holding more of the Levant but I doubt this would even lead to Arabization of the Aramaic speaking Levant-Mesopotamian region without a religious and political turnover.

Ugh...Sargon I of Akkade, Hammurabi of Babylon, Nebukadnezar II.?

These were all 'Arabs' that created large empires. the Arabs of the seventh century were just another wave that came from the South.

Akkades, Armorites, Aramaeans were older waves

 

[Gloss]

Ugh...Sargon I of Akkade, Hammurabi of Babylon, Nebukadnezar II.?

These were all 'Arabs' that created large empires. the Arabs of the seventh century were just another wave that came from the South.

Akkades, Armorites, Aramaeans were older waves

Akkadians came north in respect to the Sumerian and were still in Mesopotamia, same goes for Babylonians. Calling those Arabs doesn't make sense either by analogy nor by language, given all those groups were either East or NW Semitic and not Central Semitic.

 

[Gloss]

Those are good points, but I disagree, by the 7th century Christianity, Judaism, and indigenous Arabian paganism(s) were all competing and well-entrenched faiths in Arabia and they did not disappear with the coming of Muhammad or the Muslim Conquests. Arab Christians participated in the conquests, even before local levies/mercenaries began to join Arab armies more regularly from conquered territories. There are some people who claim that Muhammad or early Islam was ecumenical and trying to be compatible with Christianity or Judaism, which is wrong, they specifically call them false derivations from "true monotheism," but the fact that historians can come to those conclusions is based off some interesting facts about the confessional diversity of the conquerers which was surprising for me to learn, and also the concessions given to Christians/Jews by early conquerors who were not, immediately, interested in the conversion of non-Arabs or other monotheists. They certainly accepted converts as far as I know, but it was not a big deal for them for a while yet. I think, because of that, it's reasonable to suggest the economic and political factors which made the conquests possible and successful do not need a unifying monotheistic faith unique from Christianity or Judaism. Likewise, Islam was as unifying a force as we may think, the Arabs suffered several significant civil wars in the 7th century, and the conquests were not reversed, while expansion stopped during the civil wars after they were concluded they went right back to conquering. The Lakhmids and Ghassanids were both (non-Orthodox) Christians and wielded significant influence, and I think Jewish or non-Chalcedonian Christian Arabs conquering swathes of Mesopotamia or the Levant reasonably possible in a no-Islam scenario, I don't think religion needs to be a unifying factor, it can help certainly I'm not denying that, but even if a religion could/would emerge to spur conquests, I don't think it has to be a new religion, a more active sect of Judaism perhaps? Nomadic peoples had conquered parts of Mesopotamia before (the Arameans) without an exclusionary unifying faith as far as I'm aware.

Frankly there is little substance to the arguments made by him, it's essentially unjustified fatalism sprinkled with some descriptions of small portions of Arabian society that he generalized to everyone, from mercenaries working for the 2 empires, to the sea traders in the Persian Gulf, to the agriculturalists in Yemen.
The idea that somehow the material conditions of some merchants in Hejaz single-handedly decides whether or not a conquest of all Arabia and beyond was likely is hogwash as it relies on a chain of supposition each weaker than the last.

Also if material conditions decided ideology, the original Islam should have been completely different from the Islam that developed in the centuries under the settled more urbanized societies of the Caliphates, so what is this original islam we are looking at?