Zarqawi: "Had the Safavid state not existed, we in Europe would today be reading the Qur'an."

From Zarqawi's letter to Osama bin Laden:
The Shi`i Safavid state was an insurmountable obstacle in the path of Islam. Indeed it was a dagger that stabbed Islam and its people in the back. One of the Orientalists spoke truth when he said that had the Safavid state not existed we in Europe would today be reading the Qur'an just as the Algerian Berber does. Yes, the hosts of the Ottoman state stopped at the gates of Vienna [in 1529, contextually], and those fortifications almost collapsed before them [to permit] Islam to spread under the auspices of the sword of glory and jihad all across Europe. But these armies were forced to return and withdraw to the rear because the army of the Safavid state had occupied Baghdad, demolished its mosques, killed its people, and captured its women and wealth. The armies returned to defend the sanctuaries and people of Islam. Fierce fighting raged for about two centuries and did not end until the strength and reach of the Islamic state had waned and the [Islamic] nation had been put to sleep, then to wake up to the drums of the invading Westerner.​

While the history here is rather... dubious, it's certainly true that until the seventeenth century, the main enemy of the Ottomans was the Safavid empire, not any Europeans. So if the Safavids never form and Iran remains fractured between petty tribal princes, how likely is that the Ottomans could make further headway into Europe?
 
I think Persia (of most of it) was prone to uniting under a dynasty sooner or later, be it under the OTL Safavids, the Shaybanid Uzbeks, the Aq Qoyunlu, etc.
i also express my doubt on an Islamic central and/or eastern Europe resulting from a successful sack of Vienna in 1529. At most, we'd see a large contingent of Protestant states friendly to the Turks, but they were already a bit too independent-minded, and the Ottomans would be heavily overstretched if they decided to make headways into Germany.
 
I wonder, would the Ottomans even have the resources to control an empire between Vienna and Baghdad? Even if the Safavids aren't around. IIRC they struggled to hold their maximum extent. Sooner or later someone's gonna attack them through a backdoor in Egypt or Anatolia or wherever.
 
From Zarqawi's letter to Osama bin Laden:
The Shi`i Safavid state was an insurmountable obstacle in the path of Islam. Indeed it was a dagger that stabbed Islam and its people in the back. One of the Orientalists spoke truth when he said that had the Safavid state not existed we in Europe would today be reading the Qur'an just as the Algerian Berber does. Yes, the hosts of the Ottoman state stopped at the gates of Vienna [in 1529, contextually], and those fortifications almost collapsed before them [to permit] Islam to spread under the auspices of the sword of glory and jihad all across Europe. But these armies were forced to return and withdraw to the rear because the army of the Safavid state had occupied Baghdad, demolished its mosques, killed its people, and captured its women and wealth. The armies returned to defend the sanctuaries and people of Islam. Fierce fighting raged for about two centuries and did not end until the strength and reach of the Islamic state had waned and the [Islamic] nation had been put to sleep, then to wake up to the drums of the invading Westerner.​

While the history here is rather... dubious, it's certainly true that until the seventeenth century, the main enemy of the Ottomans was the Safavid empire, not any Europeans. So if the Safavids never form and Iran remains fractured between petty tribal princes, how likely is that the Ottomans could make further headway into Europe?

No. Just no. It would make a lot of things easier in in Hungary but at the end there stilm would be logistic problems. These kind of 'Islamic Europe' is nothing more than a utopia. Even the Umayyads had a better chance than the Ottomans.
 
I wonder, would the Ottomans even have the resources to control an empire between Vienna and Baghdad? Even if the Safavids aren't around. IIRC they struggled to hold their maximum extent. Sooner or later someone's gonna attack them through a backdoor in Egypt or Anatolia or wherever.

It would be easier for the Ottomans to eliminate existing rivals. But further than Vienna is not possible.
 
I wonder, would the Ottomans even have the resources to control an empire between Vienna and Baghdad? Even if the Safavids aren't around. IIRC they struggled to hold their maximum extent. Sooner or later someone's gonna attack them through a backdoor in Egypt or Anatolia or wherever.

The Egyptian backdoor leads on the inside to a long, fairly featureless and narrow hallway with few things worth stealing and out into the rough and poor hodge-podge of petty kingdoms that is the Sudan, while the Anatolian backdoor leads into a similar hodge-podge of petty powers (A number of whom are friendly to the Ottomans), is made of hard to pass through broken glass, and STILL leads into an area of little value. Who's to stage this invasion and why, and can they put enough sustained pressure on the frontier that it actually permenantly damages the Turkish hold in the region?

Not that I'm saying they can expand much further than Vienna; indeed, the trade-city at the edge of the Tyrolian Alps, Danubian Basin, and mountains of the northern Hungarian Plain and Bohemia is realistically the last thing they can hit before coming across the deadly combination of "Far from home" and "Large geographic obsticles" that make large military campaigns prohibatively expensive in terms of logistics and attrition to be worth the bother even if they do succeed in the end. But they can hold Vienna with a strong garrison and have it be their new Belgrade-"Staple Port" for holding back counter offensives from and conduct commerce with Europe via the Danubian river basin, which would allow them to largely bypass Venice and undermine what power they have left as well as better integrate them into the broader European economy and political sphere earlier than IOTL.
 
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"Had the Protestants not existed we in Anatolia would be reading the Bible"

That's about the same thing inversed, I imagine the Ottomans would have easier time in Europe but at the same time they could lose France as an ally if they begin to be more threatening and if France becomes their enemy and possibly even control of the German states the Ottomans have little chance to expand more against an alliance of all the remaining Christian states in the long run, even if they secure Hungary.

From my perspective the Ottomans profited form the internal Christian fighting more than they ever were damaged from the Safavids rivalry.
 
Now here's a question that's flipped on its head. Suppose that the Safavids hadn't emerged and Iran remained fractured. What's to say that doesn't fuel Ottoman expansion in that direction? Probably not "conquer Iran" as that's rather much to hold, but take advantage of lack of consolidation to eat at small petty states or either expand past or consolidate OTL territories more easily.
 
Now here's a question that's flipped on its head. Suppose that the Safavids hadn't emerged and Iran remained fractured. What's to say that doesn't fuel Ottoman expansion in that direction? Probably not "conquer Iran" as that's rather much to hold, but take advantage of lack of consolidation to eat at small petty states or either expand past or consolidate OTL territories more easily.
Also, Persia only became shi'i because of the Safavids, so i can, too, see a more eastern-oriented Ottoman Empire grabbing the Plateau.
 
Also, Persia only became shi'i because of the Safavids, so i can, too, see a more eastern-oriented Ottoman Empire grabbing the Plateau.

Perhaps even moving into Central Asia as the Uzbeks decay. I wonder if that Volga-Don canal gets built in that TL? The danger of being "flanked" from the south and east probably makes Russia even more hostile than OTL to the Ottomans.
 
Perhaps even moving into Central Asia as the Uzbeks decay. I wonder if that Volga-Don canal gets built in that TL? The danger of being "flanked" from the south and east probably makes Russia even more hostile than OTL to the Ottomans.
A canal would be very useful for linking Istanbul and Anatolia to Hyrcania, but i express my doubts as to the Ottomans taking Samarkand. They'd end up too overstretched if they try, i'm afraid. Plus, the safety of the canal depends on how well the Ottomans and Crimean Tatars fare against the expanding Russians.
On the other hand, an Ottoman Persia can also lead to a proper Ottoman boot of Arabia, if Egypt is still captured. Which gives an even better position in the Indian Ocean to the Ottoman sultan and nightmares to the Portuguese.
 
I think they'd have trouble maintaining consistent control of the Plateau given what they'd have to do to keep their ties to Persia open. On the other hand, a temporary occupation of parts of the plateau that allows for things like keeping an occupation in there why they consolidate control of areas like N. Iraq, Iraq or a satellite NE Persia.
 
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