WI: Persia Never Conquered

WI At the Battle of Nihawand, the forces of Yezdigerd III prevailed, and the Muslims never conquered Persia.

The Caliph at the time was content with Mesopotamia, and was recorded to have said he wanted a "wall of fire" between the Muslims and Persia, so neither could get at one another.
 
The trouble is that the Sassanid Persian state's main powerbase was in Mesopotamia- the main cities like Ctesiphon and Susa are there. So the Sassanids are likely to collapse anyway, and the Arabs are likely to move in for the kill.
 
Sassanids are pretty weak at this point... even if the initial arab invasions ignore them, they still have some issues... sooner or later, as the conquests run out of steam, a caliph will come along a decide that the sassanids are ripe for the picking... might hold out as a rump state, but survival and revival seems... unlikely.
 

Philip

Donor
I'm going to partially disagree. The Sassanids are done, but that does not mean that the Persians are. Another dynasty might rise up. After all, conquering Mesopotamia does not equate to conquering Persia. Just ask Trajan.

If there is a complete reversal at Nahavand, the Arabs may be not recover that quickly. OTL, the Caliphate fell into some trouble two years later, and that eventually led to the First Fitna. If the Persians can keep it together until then, there is a decent chance that they can maintain the Zagros as a border.
 
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