WI: Arabs conquer the Eastern Roman Empire, but not the Persian Empire.

When I posted the almost diametrically opposite scenario elsewhere, @Falecius said it was basically impossible. I wonder if this applies to your surviving Sassanids scenario as well. Could the Arabs really afford to go on conquering forever along both sides of the Mediterranean when Syria, Asia Minor and their Arabian homeland is so potentially threatened by an empire in Persia and Mesopotamia?

The Sassanids were in the middle of a civil war at the time of the Arab conquests. So, they were too preoccupied to worry about the eastern Mediterranean at this time.
 
Every sentence in your second paragraph is factually wrong.

Is there any other reason why some reformist sect would become so popular that the Emperor himself adopted it? The problem also arises of why Zoroastrianism never spread into non-Iranic regions while Christianity directly overtook the political center of the Empire.
 
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Is there any other reason why some reformist sect would become so popular that the Emperor himself adopted it? The problem also arises of why Zoroastrianism never spread into non-Iranic regions while Christianity directly overtook the political center of the Empire.

Zoroastrianism was not a religion akin to Christendom. It is likely the case that the religion developed over time in strict relations to the Iranian empire and its sphere. The personification or centralization of the polytheistic and traditionalist religions that made up the Iranian plateau. It is a unique religion in that sense centered most profoundly upon the empire of Iran, but most especially, the Sassanid Empire. In this line of thought, it is not difficult to claim Zoroastrianism in its traditional sense, was a creation of the cleric Kartir.
 
When I posted the almost diametrically opposite scenario elsewhere, @Falecius said it was basically impossible. I wonder if this applies to your surviving Sassanids scenario as well. Could the Arabs really afford to go on conquering forever along both sides of the Mediterranean when Syria, Asia Minor and their Arabian homeland is so potentially threatened by an empire in Persia and Mesopotamia?

Well, in this scenario Constantinople might become the cultural, political, and economical center of the Arab and Islamic world. And so long as Syria and Egypt us under their control, they have easy access to the red sea coast of Arabia where Mecca and Medina are.

Though I imagine it's likely Mesopotamia falls eventually, unless the Persians become a formidable bulwark against Arab expansion. I'm not sure if a Christian or Manichean Persia would make a difference there.
 
It is not a very plausible scenario: as others have pointed out, there is little reason to assume that the Caliphate can conquer Constantinople and Greece and Africa and all that, but doesn't make any inroads into Sassanid Mesopotamia, which is right next door to Arabia and a source of wealth.

But if we assume it went that way, I still don't think an early caliphate would really call themselves the new Roman Empire. Yet, that doesn't mean they wouldn't absorb a lot of different influences from OTL.

As far as conversions are concerned, I see massive conversions in the European territories, too. There is no "European cultural resistance" to Islam, that's ontologising an interpretation of historical developments.

This would be a Mediterranean-centered Islamic world, even more so than IOTL, which means Italy is next at some point, and I don't see why the rest of Europe wouldn't ultimately also convert. (If Europe still ends up dominating the world for a couple of recent centuries, we'd be sitting here and debating if that had soemthing to do with its Islamic nature...) For the time we call the Middle Ages, though, that means massive changes everywhere. India has already been mentioned - other important areas are Central Asia and Africa, where Euro-Islamic powers would contend with Iranian, Indian etc. contenders. IOTL, the Indian Ocean became a Muslim lake, over time. ITTL, this Muslim lake is the Mediterranean.
 
Mesopotamia will fall like otl, but like Umar want he'd stop at the Zagros mountains using it a defensive border.
 
I think the Balkans and Greece not turning majorly Muslim was due to the Ottoman's policies, but with the Arab Caliphates everywhere they touched ended up thoroughly islamized

I think the bigger difference was time. Many regions of the Middle East took centuries to become Muslim majority. They simply were under Muslim rule for much longer than the parts of Europe were under Ottoman rule.
 
I think the bigger difference was time. Many regions of the Middle East took centuries to become Muslim majority. They simply were under Muslim rule for much longer than the parts of Europe were under Ottoman rule.
Also, the Ottoman Balkans in the 1830s have been estimated to have been around 40% Muslim anyways. Most Muslims were forcibly evicted to Anatolia when Christians rebelled.
 
The last Persian-Roman war still ends in a stalemate, but one less favorable to Rome. The Arabs rise, and while unable to penetrate into Mesopotamia and Persia... they manage to overrun the E. Roman Empire, taking Constantinople and reaching as far as Greece. They also take North Africa and Iberia as IOTL.

How does Islam develop? IOTL, Islam borrowed a lot from Persia, might it borrow a lot from Greece ITTL? Is Constantinople made into the Caliphate's seat of power? Do the Frankish/German tribes and kingdoms become Muslim too, and what about Italy?

The early Arab expansion was not meant to go further than Mesopotamia and Zagros mountains. Have the Persians giving up Mesopotamia and not attack it.
 
The state of Christianity in the West shouldn't be underestimated either, the Franks are on the rise and the formation of the Carolingian Empire is right around the corner. France and northern Italy would become the new center of Christianity; and whoever controls both would be viewed as the Defender of the Faith. Christendom may just have a stronger common identity, moreso than OTL.

As others have said, it's not unlikely that the Arabs would eventually wrestle Iraq from the Sassanians, or whatever is left of them. The Ottoman Empire seems like a good vision of what their borders would look like, as it was geopolitically, more or less, the successor to the Byzantine Empire.
 
Maybe have the Sassanids decide to embrace this newfangled religion in exchange for political independence and a chance to take a bite out of the Romans? Iran, never technically conquered by the Arabs, becomes the benefactor of Islam in Central Asia and India, whilst the Rashidun become Romanised.

I believe that Muhammed did send letters to the Iranian Shah asking him to convert. The OTL Shah took exception to these requests but maybe with a different Shah in power, looking to undercut the power of the clergy, they agree to let them send missionaries and offer them patronage, giving them a base of support in the Empire. Then, once the Rashidun start conquering everything, a Shah or Sassanid Prince invites them in to help him hold/take the throne and put down the near constant rebellions Iran was going through at the time in exchange for converting.
 
Maybe have the Sassanids decide to embrace this newfangled religion in exchange for political independence and a chance to take a bite out of the Romans? Iran, never technically conquered by the Arabs, becomes the benefactor of Islam in Central Asia and India, whilst the Rashidun become Romanised.

I believe that Muhammed did send letters to the Iranian Shah asking him to convert. The OTL Shah took exception to these requests but maybe with a different Shah in power, looking to undercut the power of the clergy, they agree to let them send missionaries and offer them patronage, giving them a base of support in the Empire. Then, once the Rashidun start conquering everything, a Shah or Sassanid Prince invites them in to help him hold/take the throne and put down the near constant rebellions Iran was going through at the time in exchange for converting.
The last time a kingdom involved in a civil war invited the Arabs, it didn't end very well for them. Look at the Visigoths.
 
@John7755 يوحنا

Interestingly, the Sassanids themselves may be the earliest form of nationalism in an ethno-cultural sense. Along with it's reformation of Zoroastrianism into a more "Persian"-oriented religion, we also see the development of an Aryan (Airya) identity followed by it's antithesis, Anairya or non-Aryans. The Sassanids also had an early form of the eternal history, a concept seen in the nation state. The Sassanids believed themselves to be descendants of the Achaemenids similar to how early Italian nationalists believed that they were the descendants of the Romans despite how erroneous this may be.
 
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