Which is less implausible for Muslim armies to reach by 850 AD?

?Which of these two is least implausible for Muslim armies to reach by 850 AD ?

  • The Rhine

    Votes: 67 45.9%
  • The Danube

    Votes: 82 56.2%

  • Total voters
    146
None of the possibilities are likely, you asked which was more plausible which the Rhine is the best choice. Keeping the Umayyads in power increases the chance of a conquest of France the longer they are around and France hasn't developed to a United front.

I would still say that the Danube is easier though. Because the Byzantines are just already in their path, it's something they almost achieved several times.
 
Both are fairly implausible. With trying to reach the Rhine you have massive logistical issues and with the Danube you have the Roman Empire in the way. I'm going to go with the Rhine. Maybe you have a victory for the Caliphate at the Battle of Toulouse and the Umayyad's conquer Aquitaine. From Aquitaine they invade Northern Italy to try and get to Rome and also remove the Romans from what little territory they retain in Italy. Maybe some Muslim general or emir pushes further into the Alps after being harassed by Christian raiders based out Chur and conquers or at least vassalizes the area and there you have Muslim armies on the Rhine before 850. The logistics are iffy and and you'd probably be cutting it really close with the 850 date, but it's more plausible than the Umayyads defeating the Eastern Romans.
 
Moors' supply line was already very, very stretched by the time they got to Tours.

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Marching from there to the Rhine would let the Franks very easily cut their supply lines, probably ambush them somewhere en route, and so on. Not as easy as it seems in theory.

They always could have resupplied at Euro Disney. By your map, anyway.:p
 

raharris1973

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Could we get an Emirate of Bari http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emirate_of_Bari
lasting for a longer period of time, or ruling Naples or beyond for some centuries?

Who had a better shot of conquering a big chunk of Italy, Arabs/Berbers from North Africa in the first millennium, or Turks with a big Balkan base in the second millennium?
 

raharris1973

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If the Muslims did take Constantinople either in the 600s or 700s AD, how much further in the Balkans would they have gone?

HG Wells speculated that had the Muslims concentrated on Constantinople and won, nothing after Constantinople would have stopped them, and the pagan Slavs, Avars, Bulgars and maybe even Saxons would have converted to Islam.

But that touches on a problem with conversions of these tribal peoples and empires to Islam, that in Omayyad and Abbasid times non-Muslim rulers could not just "convert" their domains. Conversions were only considered genuine if they subjected themselves to Caliphal political rule, at least that's how this poster described it:

John7755 يوحنا John7755 يوحنا is offline
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I doubt that the Khazars would convert to Islam within the timeframe, mainly do to the facts of Abbasid influence and would be more likely to convert to Orthodox Christianity. At this time the Arab caliphates (Abbasid and Umayyad) would claim sovereignty over all believers and would fight to force the said believer to join the caliphate, it was only till the Turks cane on the scene plus enormous social upheaval (Shia and Khawarij revolts) did the Caliph stop this policy. At the same time Byzantium did not claim such power and attempt to gain it, this is shown through the example of Russia, which would be an example of how Khazaria would look.

So in short, the Khazara wished to keep themselves independent from both polities (hince conversion to Judaism) but if he has to choose they would either stay Tengri or would have a Russian style conversion to Christianity.

So this would seem to indicate that, at least until the Abbasid decline (late 800s, or 900s or 1000s) even an Islamic empire that had taken Constantinople limited its prospects for converting large territories to the north of the Mediterranean, because self-respecting Avar, Bulgar, Magyar and Rus khagans, would be opposed to converting as it meant giving up their temporal authority.

So then the Muslims after Constantinople would only convert populations that they literally conquered themselves. So effectively this might mean southern Thrace and and the Aegean littoral, with people's to the north clinging to paganism, or still becoming Christian (or perhaps going for the Khazar Judaism approach) for a lengthy interval before local rulers would feel comfortable converting to Islam.

Excluding conversions of the states set up by the steppe or norse nomads, how much of the Balkans would the Arab Caliphate be able to conquer and how much would it even be able to conquer. Are the Danube, Morava and Drina rivers actually a stretch?
 
Oh crap, I didn't catch the double negative in the question until too late. Voted Rhine, meant to say Danube. That's a tricky way to phrase the question :mad:

The axis of Muslim advance to reach the Danube by 850 could be from either the North or through the Balkans. They don't have to win a siege of Constantinople situation to be at the Danube, but it would certainly help their situation if approaches is via the Medditerranean and then Balkans. However, if you get a situation where the Bulgarians follow the road of their Volga cousins and adopt Islam, then you've got Muslim armies on the Danube already. For a Muslim army to reach the Rhine, they'd need the motivation to do so, which means crossing through either all of France or Italy, neither of them appetizing prospects giving their extreme distance from Muslim centres of power. The Danube, however, empties into the Black Sea, and with a more successful Muslim expansion into the Caucasus, it could result in their presence on the Western Steppe being solidified well ahead of OTL. From there, there's not much to stop a Muslim army from reaching the Danube estuary aside from nomads, who may not even mind if the Muslims are only passing through as a way of attacking Byzantium from the rear.
 
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