Why couldn't India conquer Persia?

PeterEzgo

ZhugeLiang said:
I've seen many timelines where Persia conquered India. Why can't India conquer Persia? Can it?
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I'm no expert but I think either one conquering the other is rather unlikely. Both are large regions separated by hard country. Both have completely different religions and cultures, making assimilation difficult.

In the case of India specifically conquering Persia, I would say that for most of history what we would call "India" was more a region of countries rather than anything united. Why bother conquering a far away land when you have neighbors right next to you?
 

ZhugeLiang

PeterEzgo said:
I'm no expert but I think either one conquering the other is rather unlikely. Both are large regions separated by hard country. Both have completely different religions and cultures, making assimilation difficult.

In the case of India specifically conquering Persia, I would say that for most of history what we would call "India" was more a region of countries rather than anything united. Why bother conquering a far away land when you have neighbors right next to you?
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In the case of India conquering Persia - was that the only factor blocking this?

Note: When I say 'Persia' conquers India, I mean countries that occupy Persia that slip through the Hindu Kush.

Like the Mughals. The Delhi Sultanate. The White Huns.
 

Lalli

India was most of its history divided to multiple warring kingdoms. It was pretty rare that there would has been totally unified India. And even in this case India hadn't any reason to conquer Persia and probably it would have failed anyway.
 

MorningDew

The mountains to the north of the Indus river allow for people on the "Persian" side to cross them, but going the other way for an invading army is SUPER HARD. even once you get past them you have the entire rest of the Persian plateau to get through, also extremity difficult.

For a Persian army, once you get past those mountains north of the Indus then the rest of India is mostly a flat plain.

Go figure.
 

XanXar

Lalli said:
India was most of its history divided to multiple warring kingdoms. It was pretty rare that there would has been totally unified India. And even in this case India hadn't any reason to conquer Persia and probably it would have failed anyway.
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Basically this, Persia, except in the immediate aftermath of an invasion such as the Mongols or Timur, was usually either a monolithic state or majority of it was controlled by a state governed in the Levant (Abassids, Seljuks etc).

India on the other hand, even when there was a monolithic state in modern day Pakistan and NW India, never had the opportunity to conquer Iran. During the Mauryan era, an empire governed from Paliputra was already at its maximum extent controlling 90% of the subcontinent plus Afghanistan, the Delhi Sultanate dynasties originated from Persianised areas so in terms of plundering/ weren't considering what they might have believed to be "home territory", and when the Mughals were around the equally powerful Safavids were too, and the two powers were deadlocked over the Afghan city of Kandahar.

So in terms of OTL history, it was just never convenient for an Indian power to ever launch a successful invasion of Persia.
 

Tocomocho

ZhugeLiang said:
Note: When I say 'Persia' conquers India, I mean countries that occupy Persia that slip through the Hindu Kush.
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From what I recall, Hindu Kush's literal meaning is "Indian Killer". The reason behind the name is that armies raised in India in the past tended to get altitude sick and die from logistical failure very quickly. I imagine, it can't be easy for lowland cultures to invade mountain cultures because of the inherent geographical advantage of the natives. And Persia was highly populated and technologically advanced from a very early age, so Indians never had an edge over Persians.
 

RodentRevolution

Banned
Tocomocho said:
From what I recall, Hindu Kush's literal meaning is "Indian Killer". The reason behind the name is that armies raised in India in the past tended to get altitude sick and die from logistical failure very quickly. I imagine, it can't be easy for lowland cultures to invade mountain cultures because of the inherent geographical advantage of the natives. And Persia was highly populated and technologically advanced from a very early age, so Indians never had an edge over Persians.
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British India practically ran large parts of Persia and would deploy Indian soldiers there to support law enforcement efforts etc does that count?
 

ZhugeLiang

Oh, I was just curious. Since, you know, a bunch of Persian dynasties came from the flat-land steppes, including the Mongols.
 

Badshah

There was a plan to conquer Persia from the Mughal Empire to be led by Shah Jahan, but it got cancelled when Shah Jahan rebelled against his father. And this is all you really need to show you why any invasion of Persia didn't really happen, though it isn't impossible.

If you count Afghanistan, however, then you do have Indian states hold on to that area, and Kabul is easily defensible from strikes from the north and west, whereas Kandahar was a trickier pickle.
 

Falecius

Historically, few Indian polities I know of rarely bothered even considering the notion, and none ever bothered actually trying, not even the Raj, if you count it as "Indian".
Sounds like running a sizeable enough portion of India is in itself a full-time job.
However, there have been several polities that straddled the Hindu Kush, some of which at least partly centered in India, prominently the Kushanas; this arguably gave even more headaches to them, so that none of those seriously engaged with but the easternmost parts of the Iranian plateau; those parts, however, were core areas for them. The only exception are the Ghaznavids, who hardly count as "Indian" in any meaningful sense, being centered in Afghanistan and regarding India as the go-to place for conquest and plunder, at least in the period when they had meaningful presence in Iran too (they became "Indian" later, but they had lost any power in the plateau by that point).
 

Kishan

In ancient period India was known as a land of riches and attracted adventurers from outside, especially from the northwest. On the otherhand Persia was known as a place of hard terrain which had few attractions. Even when powerful empires like Mauryas or Mughals ruled over India they had no interest to send armies to Persia, as they viewed it as an adventure with few benefits. This lack of motive was the primary reason for the absence of any aggression from the side of Indian kingdoms towards Persia. The conquest of the subcontinent itself was the ultimate goal of any Indian ruler and practically none was totally successful.
 

profxyz

It's largely a question of priorities. Empires generally like to expand in the direction of wealthy regions; India itself is fabulously wealthy while the terrain leading to Persia (Hindu Kush/Baluchistan) is less so. Much better for an Indian empire to spend its limited resources in conquering the cities and ports of Bengal/Gujarat than to fight nomadic/semi-pastoral tribes in Afghanistan.

Logistics also does not favor India. The main route in and out of the subcontinent is through the Khyber Pass in Afghanistan; beyond that passage through mountain passes becomes increasingly difficult, both in terms of climate and also in terms of hostile nomads. This makes maintaining a supply line from India increasingly difficult - a crucial weakness for armies originating from a settled civilization, and also one that makes taking enemy forts very difficult (since sieges have to be rounded off in a few months before supplies run out).

Conversely, states that have historically invaded India from Central Asia generally have less need for supply lines, largely because of their nomadic origin.

Furthermore, Indian horses were regarded as comparatively less ideal than their Central Asian counterparts, as evidenced by the horse trade that saw India import large herds from Arabia and Central Asia. So any Indian army would have a very difficult time overcoming the sort of massed-cavalry archer formations that were the norm beyond the Hindu Kush.
 

PhilippeO

Banned
horses.

it way easier for people who have lots of horses to invade people who didn't.

Thus :
- Steppe (Mongols/Manchus/Uighurs) invade North China,
- North China invade South China (except Ming, most dynasty start at North),
- Steppe invaded Iranian Plateau (Turks, Kushans, Samaritans, etc)
- Iranians/Afghans invade Punjabs (Mughals/Kushans/Durrani/etc)
- Steppe invade Hungary
- Hungary invade central europe
- Steppe invade Balkans
 
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