The Reconquista of Spain didn't succeed, leaving Spain in Muslim hands and eventually all of Europe, by say 1300 AD.
Then what happens?
Then what happens?
WI Islam won out in Europe?
- Thread starter AlbertaGamer
- Start date
How?
I mean, okay, so the Reconquestia fails miserably. But that still leaves a huge swath of Europe never within the sphere of Islam (based on the furthest extent of Islamic forces all totaled, ignoring that it was never all at one period).
You might be able to have Islam more successful than OTL (including more than just a fizzled Reconquestia), but it pressing on would run into the same reasons why France didn't conquer Germany.
I mean, okay, so the Reconquestia fails miserably. But that still leaves a huge swath of Europe never within the sphere of Islam (based on the furthest extent of Islamic forces all totaled, ignoring that it was never all at one period).
You might be able to have Islam more successful than OTL (including more than just a fizzled Reconquestia), but it pressing on would run into the same reasons why France didn't conquer Germany.
Cuāuhtemōc
Banned
If the Reconquista fails (a really general what if question right there which doesn't specify how or when it happens), there's a large part of Europe that remains Christian. It's extremely unlikely.
Right. You need the Reconquista to fail, and the invasion of Italy to hold, and... well, a lot of other stuff...
Kosta
Banned
All of Europe is a bit unrealistic. Any Muslim super-power won't even want to bother subduing the Godforsaken Frozen North I mean Scandinavia. England, likewise, is a testimony that we Continentals are no match for subduing an island. But, I doubt that Christianity would be snuffed out; the Balkan peoples are proof of that. Perhaps with a combination of Arab, East Roman, and other-European knowledge, Europe might be farther advanced than today.
Judaism might flourish under an Islamic yoke; or at least the Jewish people won't be killed and/or expelled from their homelands.
I'd be curious to see how the Protestant Reformation pans out; if the Muslims could even get past the Pyrenees and not only get to Germany, but effectively subjugate and bring it under the heel of said power. That might be nigh-impossible, if not impossible. But, there's always luck, and divide and conquer might work wonders against squabbling Europeans.
But you need to crawl to the Pyrenees before you can run to Germany.
The Saxons, the Romans, the Vikings (I'm not sure if they count as proper Continentals, though). the Normans, and anyone I'm missing would laugh at this.
Islamic yoke?
See above comment on "Islamic yoke?", though not as much so.
Making the point because the Islamic states were generally better than their Christian counterparts at tolerating nonbelievers. Especially better towards Jews than just about any Christian state in the era we're discussing, if not all of them.
Question to the original poster: Is it necessary for the Caliphate of All Islam (or as much of it as possible) to rule Europe, or would Muslim powers conquering Christian ones suffice? So that for instance, something equivalent to the Norman conquest takes England which is a separate Muslim-ruled territory from Spain-France (whatever that would be named).
That would be a bit easier in some ways.
Well, I could see Islam being much more prevalent in Europe, should the Reconquista fail. Perhaps Islamics would be viewed by Catholics as heretics rather than heathens.
Kosta
Banned
The Saxons, the Romans, the Vikings (I'm not sure if they count as proper Continentals, though). the Normans, and anyone I'm missing would laugh at this.
Islamic yoke?
See above comment on "Islamic yoke?", though not as much so.
Making the point because the Islamic states were generally better than their Christian counterparts at tolerating nonbelievers. Especially better towards Jews than just about any Christian state in the era we're discussing, if not all of them.
Question to the original poster: Is it necessary for the Caliphate of All Islam (or as much of it as possible) to rule Europe, or would Muslim powers conquering Christian ones suffice? So that for instance, something equivalent to the Norman conquest takes England which is a separate Muslim-ruled territory from Spain-France (whatever that would be named).
That would be a bit easier in some ways.
Hitler, Napoleon, and Hapsburg Spain would like to have a word with you.
Better than WESTERN Europe. You see, people seem to forget about this whole Empire in the East called Rome. Funny thing you know, Gibbon screwed us over more than any invader.
And yes, it would be a yoke for non-Muslims, mate.
The fact that not every wannabe invader succeeded is hardly the same as England the Unsubduable Island. England is quite conquerable from the continent in the right circumstances, which occurred often enough that a Muslim power taking it isn't asking for too much.
Is this in response to the issue of tolerance, or something else?
For Jews, it would be far better than what they have in Christian realms. Calling that a "yoke" by comparison is ridiculous. For Christians it mean...not very much. Taxes may change, that's the main thing I can think of.
Depending on the conquerors, but by and large, I'd rather be a Christian in Muslim lands than vice-versa by several orders of magnitude.
Kosta
Banned
Seriously? Really? The Hapsburgs, you're calling the Spanish Hapsburgs wannabes?
The former.
Lord, stop confusing Western Europe with all of Europe. And even Europe wasn't always eternally bad.
Fuck, I'm done, now I know why Abdul left.
In this extremely specific context of "invasion of England", yes. They tried, they failed miserably.
So yes, I'd say "wannabe invaders" when it comes to the issue of England's ability to avoid conquest.
Pagan Rome was tolerant of Jews except when it wasn't (the aftermath and precursors to the revolts in Judea come to mind), Christian Rome has a mixed record. Christian Rome also has a mixed record on tolerance of Muslims.
And the rest of Europe isn't all full tolerance and acceptance either in this period (up to 1300 or so).
Was it always Eternally Bad? No. No one is saying that. But looking at say, England of this period OTL...I'd feel safe betting I'd be better off (if I was Jewish) in a Muslim state. Yes its an example of a western European country, but when you have an example of the nonwestern European (Orthodox? East-of-Germany? What's the "nonWestern European" for purposes of your statement?) policies up to 1300 being consistently equal to or better than the standard in the Islamic countries, I'll take back my statement with apologies for factual inaccuracy.
And why are you acting like I just said that Christians thirsted to spill Jewish blood on every occasion or something?
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Kosta
Banned
Come on, no Muslim state was ever perfect in that respect; with the exception of Heraclius going insane and having that hallucination about the circumcised man, Christian Rome was on-par with any Muslim power of the Mediaeval Era. It was under the Mamluks that the Christian population of Egypt went from 60% to 20%.
Not perfect and better are two different things. I feel safer from violent crime where I live than in say Vallejo, but that's not to say there's no violent crime here.
Same sort of principle. The "full tolerance and acceptance" is just pointing out that all of Christian Europe has various degrees of antisemitism not very well checked by the law as of this point, some places moving towards checking it better than others (Poland, for instance).
And I'm not sure if the laws (and rulers) were that good. As best as I can tell, Christian Rome was consistently "some level of tolerance" but not "Jewish ministers, Christian ministers, Islamic ministers...hell we've got a few pagans just for diversity." by any stretch either.
And I say this as someone proud (because it makes me feel better about being pro-Byzantine Empire Survives timelines and such speculation) of the ERE's general lack of persecutions over religion - heretics or heathens, if you were a loyal subject the state usually had better things to do and the Church rarely had the chance to set any kind of policy actively opposed to the Emperor.
As for the Christian population of Egypt, I've seen people say that (60%) is too high, but I don't know the subject well enough to know what figures to trust.
I do know that Christians converting is not the same thing as Christians being persecuted, however. Not to say they weren't, but again, I don't know enough about the Mameluke period. I do know that up to 1300 or so the Islamic world has a fairly good record in Egypt (and elsewhere).
Medieval Europe was an assbackwards region but it was not undefended. People often act like the Muslims or Mongols could have just conquered the whole thing if they wanted to.
Judging by how well Mongol and Muslim armies often did versus European Christian armies, I wouldn't say its impossible for them to have made Christian Europe less than the whole continent.
Especially Muslim armies (not dependent like Mongol ones on vast steppe).
Would be pretty hard to have Islam control the whole place, but Islamic powers as more dominant...not necessarily impossible.
That depends from both period and distance from center of power. When a independent or autonomous islamic lord or general want to show that it not depends from his liege, he generally take some mesures (often symbolics) against jews, or christians. That's only on heavily islamized region, though. Generally it doesn't end well for him, as his liege takes pretext of his mission of benevolence, good-willing guidance etc to behead him.
Well, i'm not agree with generally, as each muslim state or lordship was appying his own policy towards jews and christians. At first times, they generally much tolerated these religions as arabs/berbers/Persians, etc. were a tiny minority in these territories (by exemple in Al-Andalus, around 50 000 on a total population of 3 750 000).
Then, as the muslim importance growth, their learders could use christian or jews advisors, because if the muslims ones were linked to other clienteles than their own, the jews and christians were depending of the leader's good willing to keep their position.
This situation was very fluctuent and to speak about Al-Andalus once more (sorry it's the one that i really studied in western Europe, maybe Sicily was different), just look at someone as Almanzor who attacked in a common hate (for political reasons) falsafists, jews, christians to please extremist imams.
You'll tell me that the andalusian society reacted during the taifas by giving more liberties to jews and christians and you're right. But the conquest by Almoads, and their policy towards jews (forcing many of them to refugee themselves north, you know, the christian kingdoms) shows that if Sharia could be indeed a good start for, not-harmonious nor tolerant, but communautarist rule; all depended of the society and the leaders of the muslim state.
Interestingly, when the situation of judaism and christianism gone worse in muslims lands; they had a better treatment in christian kingdoms (for christians, it wasn't that easy, because of the differences of rites, celebrations). Jews formed a new couche of society in Spain, you have many jewish communauties in Aragon, jews formed communauties in southern France (Les Juifs du Pape), the jews of the Raimondins, etc.
Of course, when christian rule became undisputed, the jews were expelled (or forced to exile) but it was not applied totally everywhere and even in Spain, crypto-jews communauties still existed with the tacit agreement of institutions (sort of "we don't see you if you don't show yourselfs"), in France, Italy, etc, many provinces kept their jewish communauties.
Regarding the economical pressure, the jewish were first more racketted by Islamic institutions (the jewish communauties in Europe being more or less protected by ecclesiastical power, as the emplacment of juiveries/carrieras/juderias, etc. in episcopal lands), with the development of trade of course, the jewish communauties being quite develloped in trade suffered from the exploitation of it and of the meprise towards merchants (that didn't last after the XII though).
Then, when the muslims emirs began to slow the economical pressure under jews, the christian lords and kings invented new taxes of "protection".
Relation Jews/Islam and Jews/Christianity isn't just a matter of better/bad, but the reaction of a society before multi-culturalism, economical role of communauties, and of course, cultural influence (Sharia, Falsafa for the Muslims; Church, Aristotelicism for the Christians)
Certainly. But is this an exceptional period of fanaticism, or is this standard procedure?
It is fairly consistently true that Muslim rulers tolerated nonMuslims better than Christian rulers tolerated nonChristians.
Not sure what you mean here (underlined).
Also, minor note: Your post is riddled with typos. It is kind of hard to read.
The key would be having Islam's advance sped up while simultaneously preventing the Pagans of Germania and Scandinavia from adopting Christianity. This means you need a POD that involves a quick capture of Constantinople by the Arabs and then a rapid sweep westwards along the shores of the mediteranian *Italy, Illyria, North Africa, Spain, then southern Gaul* and capturing that quickly. If you can take out the areas in which Christianity OTL spread from into Pagan Germania and then Russia and Scandinavia, then you can have those areas convert from their Pagans ways not to Christianity like OTL, but to Islam.
Is is a very short window, but the key is basically getting the Muslims in control of the Mediterranean before Christianity becomes entrenched in Germany.
Is is a very short window, but the key is basically getting the Muslims in control of the Mediterranean before Christianity becomes entrenched in Germany.
It was not exceptionnal, it wasn't the norm but there was enough pogroms, local decision against jews to not make it exceptionnal. The only exceptionnal thing was that is was decided at all the caliphate scale.
Furthermore, it showes that is was the socio-cultural base to an islamic oppression of the jews, equal to the one who "protected" them. At the end, it was the social-cultural needs and cadres or the hispano-islamic society that defined the policy towards the jews, not the Islamic law (as the later invaders of Al-Andalus showed, by proceeding to an anti-judaïc policy)
I totally disagree the use of "tolerance" here, there was a communautarist policy, basically forcing jews and christian to live on distinct quarters (with Imams regularly preaching against them and their socio-cultural role, trade for jews, tavern for christian by exemple), as in Europe.
Basically, the realtions between Muslims and minorities in muslim territory are dependent and fluctuant. In period of economical and political growth, they're allowed to live in the territory and even ponctually to participe to common policies and not only their own.
But in decline periods, and critically crisis, the minorities are the first to suffer (Oriental christian expelled off syrian cities, even when we know there was not alliance between them and Franj; Pogroms against jewish during all history of Al-Andalus;...).
It's not that muslims societies weren't badder than christian ones, but at the apogee of the muslim rule, the christian one was in crisis. And the situation slowly reversed itself, making these world changing their policy towards minorities.
That's the real basis of acceptence of minorities in muslims territories in the first half of Middle Ages for me.
For the typos, i'm sorry but as i'm not natural english-speaker, i'm doing my best.
If it isn't the norm, doesn't that make it by definition exceptional?
Yeah, can't count Jewish and Christian officials. Not sure how common those are in Al-Andalus, which I sadly don't know much about.
And we still see fairly consistent intolerance in the Christian world in its days of success and areas of tolerance in the Muslim world up to - how long in the Ottoman Empire?
And no worries on the lack of being a native English speaker. Just wanted to let you know in case I sound frustrated or misunderstand something.