WI: Abu Bakr Loses the Ridda War

I'm not sure how he would lose, maybe he dies early on or something so he cannot bring other tribes back into the Caliphate. Regardless what would be the effect of such an intensely fractured Islamic world so soon after the death of the Prophet Muhammad? Short term and long term of course.
 
Short term: That Rashidun Caliphate is done, Islam is probably done, and the Arabs won't be conquering the Middle East.

The authority of Islam and the Caliphs during this period was heavily contingent on the continued military success of the early caliphate. While the tribes that were defeated in the Ridda War were initially prevented from raiding into the ERE and Persia as punishment, this was eventually reversed and they provided important manpower which if lost could very well have turned the tied. That's assuming the remnant of the caliphate even survives long enough for that, which I am very skeptical about. The tribes left because they had pledged themselves to Muhammad not to Islam and if Abu Bakr is defeated and they leave then that is going to influence others to leave as well. On top of the risk of other tribes leaving, this will be a blow to Abu Bakr that could see Ali and his supporters move to overthrow him. In addition, the Medinans are still fuming over the fact that they have been arbitrarily banned from ever becoming Caliph and with Abu Bakr defeated one or more clans could very well argue that this is proof that the Meccans can't lead the community and that it is the Medinans who took in Muhammad that should. The Umayyads, who had stood against Muhammad almost until the very end could use this as propaganda to try push for a return to the not so old ways.

Long Term: You could devote several TLs to the topic and each could be radically different and still just as likely given the magnitude of the change. Maybe the Tang expand all the way to the Caspian without the Abbasids to get in their way? Without the Abbasid's use of Turkish slaves, its possible that the very specific circumstances that led to the Turkish conquest of much of the Middle East would never happen and the Oghuz Yabgu State pushes west into Ukraine.
 
Short term: That Rashidun Caliphate is done, Islam is probably done, and the Arabs won't be conquering the Middle East.

The Arabs are still gonna migrate, and they'll be influenced by Islam in some form or another. They'll settle in North Africa and the Near East and Persia, and unlike OTL, assimilate into the locals in those regions. How will they influence Christianity and Zoroastrianism in the time to come? And not to mention, all these foreigners migrating will spark tension in those lands, and you might have individual warlords seeking to carve out territories. Seems like a constant source of instability for the next few centuries, between heretics and various generals in the contested borderland between the Persians and the Byzantines.

Likewise, I'm convinced that if not the Oghuz Turks, some other steppe group will be doing some conquering in the future in Asia. Likewise, the Tang won't be able to expand too far out, even with protectorate states in Central Asia.
 
The Arabs are still gonna migrate, and they'll be influenced by Islam in some form or another.

I never said they wouldn't merely that they wouldn't conquer the Middle East. The population boom in Arabia almost guarantees that we would see migration out of the Arabian Peninsula. I could see them conquering Persian Mesopotamia given the state of the Persian Empire was unlikely to get better any time soon. You could also see significant movement into Arabia Felix and from their develop a sea fairing tradition like the Hadhrami only with a greater emphasis on raiding and settlement like the Vikings rather than trading.

How will they influence Christianity and Zoroastrianism in the time to come?

Those that become Christian will probably Monophysites as that's the sect that was already prominent among the Arabs of the region. Zoroastrianism has taken a major hit with the decline, and almost inevitable fall of Sassanian Persia but it could rebound if which ever dynasty that replaces the the Sassanians supports it to a similar extent. Manichaeism could also spread among the Arabs but given that the are they would be settling in in the Middle East had a majority in many places or at least plurality of Monophysites it's safe to assume that that's the religion the lion's share of Arabs would convert to.

Likewise, I'm convinced that if not the Oghuz Turks, some other steppe group will be doing some conquering in the future in Asia.

The Turkic conquests were in no small part contingent on the long history of Turkic slaves taken by the Abbasids and Samanids and their rise to power in the state. If you have a strong and centralized Persian Empire rising out of the ashes of the Sassanian Empire then you won't see the conditions that allowed for the rise of the Turkish Mamluks and later the Turkish conquests. The Sassanians did well against Huns in the Caucasian Mountains and the various Central Asian peoples like the Hephthalites.

That's not to say some Genghis Khan type figure couldn't arise and conquer this Third Persian Empire, but it's far from a given.
 
Given how tenuous the control of Egypt was, I can see Arab / Islamic remnants taking hold there and spreading along the North African coast.

Weaker than OTL but still a major movement. Think they would still make it into Spain too.
 
Weaker than OTL but still a major movement. Think they would still make it into Spain too.
So in this case, we would see Al-Andalus just like in OTL but the Arabs and Berbers in this scenario were now assimilated to Romance-speaking population after a couple of generations instead of the other way.

This, and the PoD in general, is indeed very interesting.
 
So in this case, we would see Al-Andalus just like in OTL but the Arabs and Berbers in this scenario were now assimilated to Romance-speaking population after a couple of generations instead of the other way.

This, and the PoD in general, is indeed very interesting.


Why would they be assimilated to Romance languages? These were arguably not very strong at this point, (few hard evidence of African Romance). The Arab tribes were not some Stone Age people lacking culture outside of the Quran. If groups like the Avars or the Magyr never changed their language, then the Arans certainly won't. In this scenario, we simply see a plurality of languages, especially a greater variety of Semitic, and likely sprachbunds between Arabic and others, particularly with varieties of Aramaic and Amazigh.
 
Given how tenuous the control of Egypt was, I can see Arab / Islamic remnants taking hold there and spreading along the North African coast.

Weaker than OTL but still a major movement. Think they would still make it into Spain too.
Depends on how long it takes the Arabs to sort out their problems. Part of the problem the Romans in Egypt had was that they were just reestablishing control after the Persians had withdrawn; given another decade or so, and they will be in much better shape to protect Egypt. And if no conquest of Egypt, then North Africa is obviously safe.
 
Depends on how long it takes the Arabs to sort out their problems. Part of the problem the Romans in Egypt had was that they were just reestablishing control after the Persians had withdrawn; given another decade or so, and they will be in much better shape to protect Egypt. And if no conquest of Egypt, then North Africa is obviously safe.

Agreed.

The Arabs have a window of opportunity to take Egypt even without any extra impetus provided by jihad.

A fractured Arab community would have no chance at Yarmuk or any alt-equivalent IMHO.
 
Why would they be assimilated to Romance languages? These were arguably not very strong at this point, (few hard evidence of African Romance).
I'm actually referring to the Iberian Romance dialects, not the North African ones. (...and I hope you're not mad)

In this scenario, we simply see a plurality of languages, especially a greater variety of Semitic, and likely sprachbunds between Arabic and others, particularly with varieties of Aramaic and Amazigh.
....and Egyptian,even Nubian.
 
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Given how tenuous the control of Egypt was, I can see Arab / Islamic remnants taking hold there and spreading along the North African coast.

You're both underestimating the hold the Romans had on Egypt and underestimating the havoc that losing the Ridda War would cause on the early caliphate. The unification under Muhammad was not the first time that most of Arabia had been unified as a super tribe. defeat in the Ridda war will doom the caliphate to the same fate as the earlier iterations of a mostly unified Arabia. A migration will take place, and there is the definite possibility that the Ghassanids could be displaced and that their could be significant Arab migration into the Levant, but nothing like what happened in OTL.
 
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fi11222

Banned
I'm not sure how he would lose, maybe he dies early on or something so he cannot bring other tribes back into the Caliphate. Regardless what would be the effect of such an intensely fractured Islamic world so soon after the death of the Prophet Muhammad? Short term and long term of course.
Do you know that Abu Bakr is almost certainly not an historical character and that the Ridda wars probably never took place ?
 
Do you know that Abu Bakr is almost certainly not an historical character and that the Ridda wars probably never took place ?

What? Almost certainly? According to whom? It's hardly a topic with a universal consensus.

If the actual narrative differs from that of the oral histories (which doesn't seem entirely implausible) that still doesn't give us license to uncritically accept the more extreme revisionists.
 
The Arabs are still gonna migrate, and they'll be influenced by Islam in some form or another.

If they migrate, it won't be as one combined group under one war leader. There will be infighting in Arabia between the various clans, and some will stay and others will die while in Arabia. Some of them will migrate peacefully and join the Lakhmids or Ghassanids. Some may settle elsewhere in Rome or Persia. Some may attempt an actual invasion as conquerors or bandits with varying results.

But there likely won't be any kind of Arab state imposed on the Middle East. Just a higher distribution of Arabs elsewhere which may eventually become assimilated to the local culture.

There will be a core group of Muslims who likely follow the Prophet's teachings, but most of the Arabs will likely forget it very quickly. They'll instead follow their own prophets using Mohammed's leadership as a political guide, but who knows what kind of pseudo-religion each will come up with. Others will revert to their original beliefs whether pagan, Jewish, Christian, or other.

Unless, that is, the rump Caliphate comes back under a new war leader that is successful, but I'm assuming the POD is based on a general failure of the Caliphate to keep Arabia united.

Most likely Islam won't be noticed by the literate civilizations at all other than as documentation that some heresy briefly flourished in Arabia before collapsing.
 

fi11222

Banned
Evidence please?
Precisely, there is absolutely none.

Appart from the official Islamic histories, written 200 years later, there is absolutely no contemporary evidence for the first 4 so called "righteous" Caliphs. No coin, no inscription, no mention in a non-muslim manuscript, or even in a contemporary muslim source (of which there are none anyway).

Can you imagine the ruler of a major Empire leaving absolutely no tangible trace in the VIIth century AD? There is absolutely no example of this. All major rulers of the period have left plenty of traces in the archeological record, be they in China, in India, in the Middle-East or in Europe. Can you imagine a Charlemagne or a Harsha leaving absolutely no trace? Of course not.

So where were Abu Bakr, Omar, Othman and even Ali when the sands of the Middle East were gathering so many coins, inscriptions and even scraps of papyrus bearing the names of others?
 
The biggest hole I can find in your argument is that very clearly somebody conquered the region. We have plenty of evidence and descriptions from non-Muslim sources.

As early as two years after the death of Muhammad, there's descriptions of "Saracen" invaders in Palestine. If there's a lack of clarity regarding their religious beliefs, that seems logical given that in a premodern era standardization of religious belief would be difficult - hence why early Caliphs put so much work according into ensuring religious orthodoxy. Another Greek writing dating from 634 discusses a "deceiving prophet" and in the late 7th century there are texts referring to Abd al-Malik, and references to battles in which the first four Caliphs fought. Most of the confusion on the part of western Christians at least seems to come from the fact that they tried to fit the Byzantine-Arab wars into their own worldview and make them out to be a punishment for their sins or a narrative mirroring the fall of the Western Roman Empire, rather than understanding them.

I'm not saying that the narrative we get from Islamic history is totally true - religious origin stories tend to get mythologized after all. However, the general basis - with a Prophet, some successors, and a conquest, seems to fit with what happened. The biggest problem with the revisionist histories I've seen is that its easy to poke holes in the narrative, but difficult to supply your own that doesn't have similar or even greater holes of its own.
 
The biggest hole I can find in your argument is that very clearly somebody conquered the region. We have plenty of evidence and descriptions from non-Muslim sources.

As early as two years after the death of Muhammad, there's descriptions of "Saracen" invaders in Palestine. If there's a lack of clarity regarding their religious beliefs, that seems logical given that in a premodern era standardization of religious belief would be difficult - hence why early Caliphs put so much work according into ensuring religious orthodoxy. Another Greek writing dating from 634 discusses a "deceiving prophet" and in the late 7th century there are texts referring to Abd al-Malik, and references to battles in which the first four Caliphs fought. Most of the confusion on the part of western Christians at least seems to come from the fact that they tried to fit the Byzantine-Arab wars into their own worldview and make them out to be a punishment for their sins or a narrative mirroring the fall of the Western Roman Empire, rather than understanding them.

I'm not saying that the narrative we get from Islamic history is totally true - religious origin stories tend to get mythologized after all. However, the general basis - with a Prophet, some successors, and a conquest, seems to fit with what happened. The biggest problem with the revisionist histories I've seen is that its easy to poke holes in the narrative, but difficult to supply your own that doesn't have similar or even greater holes of its own.

Agreed. Further, if one truly studied Byzantium they would know the immense weight of evidence in regards to a polity corresponding to the Rashidun state and the subsequent battles of Siffin and further into the Umayyad period and onward. In terms of inscriptions, the Huns of Europe, left no coinage, yet still existed, and Attila was a great warlord.

I understand taking a view that the subsequent Abbasid scholars and historians were romantic in their history, but I do not understand the view in light of evidence that there was not a Rashidun caliphate nor at least a succession of rulers which was originally elected in the Arab fashion, then transitioning into the Umayyad dynastic cycle.
 
Islam would split into multiple competing sects, to the point where the term "Islam" would be more of an umbrella term for a variety of similar religions. The Quran would probably never be fully codified, leading to even more theological splits. Pre-Islamic Paganism and Christianity would remain important religions, and Zoroastrianism would be one of the major world religions.
 

fi11222

Banned
The biggest hole I can find in your argument is that very clearly somebody conquered the region. We have plenty of evidence and descriptions from non-Muslim sources.
It is undeniable that an ARAB conquest occured in the early VIIth century, just after the end of the last Byzantine-Sassanid war.

What is far from clear is that this was a MUSLIM conquest.

I'm not saying that the narrative we get from Islamic history is totally true - religious origin stories tend to get mythologized after all. However, the general basis - with a Prophet, some successors, and a conquest, seems to fit with what happened. The biggest problem with the revisionist histories I've seen is that its easy to poke holes in the narrative, but difficult to supply your own that doesn't have similar or even greater holes of its own.
I disagree.

This an alternate narrative that I find way more convincing:
  1. After the Byzantine-Sassanid wars of the 610s-620s both old empires are exhausted.
  2. Arab Foederati (Lakhmids et al.) take advantage of this situation to gain autonomy first and then outright independence. This does not take place in an organized or coordinated fashion. Simply, local Arab dynasts in Syria and Irak just stop taking orders from their nominal overlord while not necessarily overtly challenging said overlords.
  3. A few decades of anarchy follow, during which Iran, whose central power structure has collapsed, is conquered piecemeal by various Arab groups.
  4. The same then happens to Egypt, which has been left completely unguarded (except by a few Arab foederati ...) after the end of the Byzantine-Sassanian war.
  5. In the 660s, one of the new regional Arab strong men, Muawiyah, embarks on a consolidation adventure and manages to subdue his most powerful rivals.
  6. In order to further cement his hold on power, Muawiyah lauches a raid on Constantinople in order to focus the military energies of the newly federated Arab tribes on an external goal instead on internecine struggles.
  7. Even if the siege of Constaninople does not succeed, Muawiyah's goal of uniting the Arabs is met and the Umayyad dynasty's legitimacy is consolidated. Further Arab military adventures are now directed to the West (Tunisia) and the East (Central Asia, India).
  8. Religiously, there is no "Islam" yet by this point; just a tolerant religious policy pursued by the early Umayyads in order to win the allegiance of their subjects who are mostly Monophysite and therefore resentful against Constantinople's earlier persecutions.
  9. In order to appear acceptable to as many people as possible, the Umayyads officially embrace a form of "minimal Monothism" enshrined in a series of texts in Arabic, some of which may predate the Arab conquest and come from various sources (Christian missionary tracts, heretic sectarian texts, etc.) These texts will later be collected in "the Quran" (i.e. "The lectionary") but they are still circulating independently at this point.
  10. Towards the end of the VIIth century, this "neutral monotheism" is enshrined in the building of the "Dome of the Rock" in Jerusalem which is then still considered the central location of all forms of Monotheism as there is no Mecca yet.
  11. In the 750s, after a century of Umayyad rule, a dissident religious movement originating in lower Mesopotamia and Khurasan finally overthrows the last Umayyad Caliph and installs the Abassids in their stead.
  12. Contrary to the vaguely Monotheist Umayyads, the Abbasids are a militant messianic movement. They are strongly ideological, with quasi-totalitarian tendencies. In order to legitimize their rule for good, they embark on a wholesale history-rewriting program, weaving various stories of local conquest into a coherent whole supposedly centered around a prophet who had preached a new religion a century and a half ago which is in fact the very creed the Abbassid sectarian backers have just invented.
This history-rewriting endeavor is made quite easy by the fact that the whole Mesopotamian-Iranian sphere has no tradition of history-writing comparable to what the Greeks and Romans, or even the Jews, have. It seems that the Sassanids, for example, had the haziest of notions about whom the Achaemenids were and when they encountered Achaemenid tombs or ruins, they generally attributed them to the legendary Kayanids. It is true that a strong historical tradition does exist in Syria and Egypt but these regions had just lost the latest power struggle as they were the power base of the defeated Umayyads. No one there was in any position to contradict the version of the victors. In any case, as modern examples show (Stalin, Mao, the Kims) history rewriting can even occur in modern, highly litterate, societies with rich historical traditions. Is it so difficult then to imagine it occuring in societies where the litterate represent a tiny fraction of the population?

One thing that the Abbassids are forced to keep is the Quran (by then cannonized) because it is already too well known and widespread to be rewritten. The end result is what we can still witness today: a religion based on a set of official "historical" texts which are highly inconsistent with the sacred text around which they are supposedly built. It is very difficult to reconcile the Aadith and the Sira (Muhammad's biographies) with the Quran. Even today, devout muslims are strongly discouraged from comparing the two and equally strongly encouraged to rely on the former rather than the latter for their spiritual and moral guidance. The Quran is suposedly the only revealed text of Islam. But few muslims understand or even read it. By contrast, every Muslim knows the rudiment of the Sira and looks up to the Aadith for everyday guidance. None of these texts predate the late VIIIth century. They are the direct product of the Abbassid era.

I am not certain that this version is 100% correct. Indeed, we will probably never now for sure. But it looks way more credible than the official version and it fits the known data. In particular, it is consistent with the fact that there is absolutely no trace of any Caliph before Muawiyah, while there are indeed traces (coins in particular) of various local Arab leaders, who are definitly not Caliphs, in Iran, Syria and Egypt in the 640s and 650s.
 
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