Western Islam

[Swede]

Ramadan is going to be really brutal when it falls in the summer.

That depends. The modern day sloution for Muslims that far north is to use the dawn & dusk of a standardized city a bit further south (iirc in Sweden they use Stockholm's). Still means you can't eat for 18 hours a day if it falls just right, but at least it's not "don't eat for two weeks".
Might be a bit hard to implement back then tho - remind me, how many had wristwatches?

 

[George Carty]

What would the architecture look like? After all, canonical Islamic architecture isn't suited to a cold, rainy climate...

 

[Nusantara]

What would the architecture look like? After all, canonical Islamic architecture isn't suited to a cold, rainy climate...

Most of the time, Islamic buildings such as mosques will eventually use the local architecture instead of traditional, Arabic-style. Examples in West Africa and South-East Asia, and even the Western World (like this one mosque I went to in central Paris) can be seen as proof.

 

[carlton_bach]

What Westerners tend to think of as 'traditional' mosque architecture is really Byzantino-Persian Ottoman melange. A big building with a prayer niche is fine - many mosques of older vintage look like fora or halls - and I suspect a western Islamic architecture would take its cues from Roman models. So, basilicas, basically, which are well suited to being used as mosques and work fine in cold climates.

By the by, Central Asia gets bitterly cold in winter, and the Muslims there do fine.

 

[Emperor Qianlong]

Hmm... gothic mosques, anyone?

 

[Paladin]

Just throwing this out there, but we actually have something of a test model for "European Islam"-the early years of Islamic Spain. You had Arab conquerors driving out or assimilating a Germanic elite (the Visigoths) with a Roman substrate, which in most respects resembles the situation in France and Italy. Yes, I know, it'd be a bit different across the Rhine, but it's a start.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

What would the architecture look like? After all, canonical Islamic architecture isn't suited to a cold, rainy climate...

What is "canonical Islamic architecture?"

 

[Sol Zagato]

Another facet of an Islamic Europe would probably be the survival of certain indigenous religions alongside Christianity (both orthodox and heterodox) and Judaism. The Middle East was really much more religiously pluralistic than Europe, throughout the premodern period and even in the present day.

For the most part, however, monotheists-only in Islamic areas. Wasn't the official line supposed to be toleration for Christian, Jews and Zoroastrians? Hindus were de facto tolerated, but they were quite numerous. I'd imagine a large part of the extra religious diversity would be in Christian heresies that wouldn't be tolerated otherwise.

IIRC a large part of removing pagan (literally- country dweller in Latin) religion from Europe was ending it among the educated classes and letting it rot without support among peasants. How far along was this process in various areas by the advent of Islam? Peasants for the most part weren't taught much about Christianity, contrasting from what I know of Islam, which took an attitude more like the early Protestants toward religious learning.

How did groups like the Yazidi win toleration? I just have trouble imagining the conquerors and the newly converted Muslims tolerating druids, Thor worshipers or other polytheists.

 

[Cuāuhtemōc]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yazidi#Origins

I suppose the Muslim leadership just took them as another Christian heresy?

 

[Teleology]

Maybe a special penance that is incorporated into regular devotional practices spreads in Europe as a way to get around the taboo on eating pork? That would be a nice distinction for European Islam from other regional variants.

Also, don't go too heavy with the Arabicizing, European Caliphates have been done before but I find the idea of a non-Arabicized Islamic Europe very interesting for the possibilities it poses in terms of coming up with a new culture.

Still, for what things would still probably be kept from Arabian caliphate custom I guess we can look at Turkey/the Ottoman Empire.


Anyways, as to the specific religious practice that is a substitute or punishment for the "necessary evil" of eating pork, any ideas?

 

[Whanztastic]

Viking Dhows?

 

[wolf_brother]

I think what the OP is looking for isn't so much a complete or even demi-Arabization of Medieval Europe, but more so what Europe would look like with Islam included. So no, no Vikings in dhows. But introduce the dhow to the Vikings and their longships, and perhaps we get an earlier ITTL carrack-equivalent.

Or perhaps not.

Or perhaps something totally different.

But it wouldn't just be norsemen in dhows

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

For the most part, however, monotheists-only in Islamic areas. Wasn't the official line supposed to be toleration for Christian, Jews and Zoroastrians? Hindus were de facto tolerated, but they were quite numerous. I'd imagine a large part of the extra religious diversity would be in Christian heresies that wouldn't be tolerated otherwise.

IIRC a large part of removing pagan (literally- country dweller in Latin) religion from Europe was ending it among the educated classes and letting it rot without support among peasants. How far along was this process in various areas by the advent of Islam? Peasants for the most part weren't taught much about Christianity, contrasting from what I know of Islam, which took an attitude more like the early Protestants toward religious learning.

How did groups like the Yazidi win toleration? I just have trouble imagining the conquerors and the newly converted Muslims tolerating druids, Thor worshipers or other polytheists.

Actually, that's not how Islam generally worked. Usually initial Islamization was fairly shallow and spread by Sufi mendicants, and Islam was just as flexible (actually probably more so due to lack of hierarchy) of local pagan practices. Early on, when Islam was essentially a revolutionary movement, it would likely have been fairly intolerant of paganism.

Anyway, Christian heretics are probably in deep doo-doo, as Muslim governmental policy was to leave that to the Christian clergy, who they back up with the power of the state.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

Maybe a special penance that is incorporated into regular devotional practices spreads in Europe as a way to get around the taboo on eating pork? That would be a nice distinction for European Islam from other regional variants.

Also, don't go too heavy with the Arabicizing, European Caliphates have been done before but I find the idea of a non-Arabicized Islamic Europe very interesting for the possibilities it poses in terms of coming up with a new culture.

Still, for what things would still probably be kept from Arabian caliphate custom I guess we can look at Turkey/the Ottoman Empire.


Anyways, as to the specific religious practice that is a substitute or punishment for the "necessary evil" of eating pork, any ideas?

Why do all these discussions always revolve around pork? Pork is gone. No pork in Islam. Everyone in the Balkans ate pork before the Ottomans, and the Muslims all gave it up. Same in the rest of Islamic Europe. It's not THAT big a deal.

 

[Paladin]

AHP, I think the issue isn't so much the absence of pork as much as what would replace it as the main food staple. The farther north you get, the fewer varieties of livestock are viable, particularly for the poor. That's why pork products have become so integral to much of Northern Europe's cuisine. If Islam were to succeed even in the far reaches, you'd need something to replace it.

 

[Abdul Hadi Pasha]

AHP, I think the issue isn't so much the absence of pork as much as what would replace it as the main food staple. The farther north you get, the fewer varieties of livestock are viable, particularly for the poor. That's why pork products have become so integral to much of Northern Europe's cuisine. If Islam were to succeed even in the far reaches, you'd need something to replace it.

Lamb and seafood.

 

[carlton_bach]

Lamb and seafood.

Initially, at lerast, I rather suspect goats, cattle and poultry. Northern Europe's sheep population depends on land clearances that hadn't happened by 800 or even 1000.

But the importance of pork to the Northern European diet is even bigger than in most of the Balkans. The synod of Auix defined pork fat as effectively 'not meat' for purposes of the lenten fast because there was nothing there to replace it. In the long run, it would probably disappear, initially, I doubt it. Of course that doesn't reqally matter - Islam seems to have been able to live very well with people drinking alcohol throughout Arabia, Persia and Turkey, it'll cope with funny people eating pigs.

 

[Monty Burns]

Lamb and seafood.

The problem with pork is that in Northern Europe, pork is the main source for fat. It's not that long ago that in Germany a pig had a higher value than cattle because of this. Lamb cannot replace pork as a source of fat for the population that, seafood most likely can't either. Olives do not grow that far north, but olive oil is a major source of fat in the Balkan kitchen, AFAIK.

Question though is whether widespread plantation of nuts and maybe aquaculture of eel may do the trick.

 

[Saepe Fidelis]

I think when it comes to alcohol, the issue is its strength and how it's drunk, i.e. socially or to excess. Given that at the time, beer was popular because it was safer than water and 'small beer' was not very alcoholic, and wine was usualyl served watered down by the Romans (although I don't know if that survived the empire) I think the laws on alcohol wouldn't have to be abandoned, but certainly made a little more lenient.

 

[eschaton]

The problem with pork is that in Northern Europe, pork is the main source for fat. It's not that long ago that in Germany a pig had a higher value than cattle because of this. Lamb cannot replace pork as a source of fat for the population that, seafood most likely can't either. Olives do not grow that far north, but olive oil is a major source of fat in the Balkan kitchen, AFAIK.

Question though is whether widespread plantation of nuts and maybe aquaculture of eel may do the trick.

As I raised in a more recent one of these threads, the Ashkenazim used "Schmaltz" for cooking, which was either rendered duck or chicken fat. Given Chicken are about as easy to raise as pigs, I don't see why this wouldn't be a valid replacement for lard in cooking for Northern European Muslims.