WI: Khosrau II captures/executes/assassinates Mohammed

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khosrau_II#Muhammad.27s_letter_to_Khosrau_II

Had Khosrau sent a sizable force, and Mohammed ended up dead, or somewhere far away (modern day Kazakhstan? China?), not only would the Persians, and subsequently Zoroastrianism, unknowingly avoid their destruction (almost completely in the latter case, for pedantics), but would have many more resources with which to fight the Byzantines. My question is, specifically, what would the failure of the Arab tribes to unite mean for medieval Europe and Middle East?

I imagine Charlemagne isn't crowned Emperor of the Romans as the Byzantines are much more prominent, retaining most of Justinian's recon quests, so there also wouldn't be a HRE. Somewhat of interest, the Tang Dynasty wouldn't be blocked by the Arabs at the Talas River, so a westward-expanding China as far west as the eastern shores of the Caspian might be possible.
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khosrau_II#Muhammad.27s_letter_to_Khosrau_II

Had Khosrau sent a sizable force, and Mohammed ended up dead, or somewhere far away (modern day Kazakhstan? China?), not only would the Persians, and subsequently Zoroastrianism, unknowingly avoid their destruction (almost completely in the latter case, for pedantics), but would have many more resources with which to fight the Byzantines. My question is, specifically, what would the failure of the Arab tribes to unite mean for medieval Europe and Middle East?

I imagine Charlemagne isn't crowned Emperor of the Romans as the Byzantines are much more prominent, retaining most of Justinian's recon quests, so there also wouldn't be a HRE. Somewhat of interest, the Tang Dynasty wouldn't be blocked by the Arabs at the Talas River, so a westward-expanding China as far west as the eastern shores of the Caspian might be possible.

While it's a minefield of a WI since it deals with something undiscussable in Islam, the world would be very different from today.

You may get another Islam analogue (unlikely but possible) and the most likely the Byzantine-Persian stalemate continues for another century.
 
There are many WIs that could have stopped Islam in its tracks, and this seems like one of them. The answer is, the world would be unrecognizable.

No Arab Conquests, Persia and Rome get time to recover (time they desperately needed), and so many butterflies we might as well be in a garden. I know of a few TLs that have tried to tackle it, but none have really gotten beyond 20-30 years because it's such a massive PoD.
 
While it's a minefield of a WI since it deals with something undiscussable in Islam, the world would be very different from today.

You may get another Islam analogue (unlikely but possible) and the most likely the Byzantine-Persian stalemate continues for another century.
There are many WIs that could have stopped Islam in its tracks, and this seems like one of them. The answer is, the world would be unrecognizable.

No Arab Conquests, Persia and Rome get time to recover (time they desperately needed), and so many butterflies we might as well be in a garden. I know of a few TLs that have tried to tackle it, but none have really gotten beyond 20-30 years because it's such a massive PoD.

My question is what the Middle Eastern and European worlds look like in the next 400 years or so, with Tang expansion as a side note. Also, can you please share the names of these TLs, if you can remember them?
 
By 628, the year posited for Muhammad's assassination, it is too late to butterfly away Islam. Likely, a substantially altered version of the OTL faith would have gained supremacy in Arabia. I could see Musaylimah seizing the opportunity to declare himself Mohammed's successor, thereby eliminating the idea that Mohammed is the last prophet of Allah from this crypto-Muslim faith. Whether Musaylimah's faction would be as expansionist is difficult to say. There is evidence that Arabia at this time had a larger population then it could hold (ex: collapse of the Marib Dam), making some sort of migration inevitable. An assault on Persia in revenge for the killing of Mohammed might be in the cards.
 
There are many WIs that could have stopped Islam in its tracks, and this seems like one of them. The answer is, the world would be unrecognizable.

No Arab Conquests, Persia and Rome get time to recover (time they desperately needed), and so many butterflies we might as well be in a garden. I know of a few TLs that have tried to tackle it, but none have really gotten beyond 20-30 years because it's such a massive PoD.

The world would be unimaginably different, I'd say.
 
My question is what the Middle Eastern and European worlds look like in the next 400 years or so, with Tang expansion as a side note. Also, can you please share the names of these TLs, if you can remember them?

Impossible to tell. Too far into the future.

There'd be no Islam, I'm sure.:p
 

birdboy2000

Banned
People seem to be jumping the gun a lot on the "No Islam" thing. Martyrdom of a founder often just strengthens a religion.
 

Dirk

Banned
People seem to be jumping the gun a lot on the "No Islam" thing. Martyrdom of a founder often just strengthens a religion.

Often? So far as I know it's only happened once...but damn did it work wonders for the faith when it did! :D
 
People seem to be jumping the gun a lot on the "No Islam" thing. Martyrdom of a founder often just strengthens a religion.

You may be right, yet Muhammad is key to Islamic philosophy. It won't look too good if Allah takes his Prophet back as soon as he starts spreading his word, will it?
 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khosrau_II#Muhammad.27s_letter_to_Khosrau_II

Had Khosrau sent a sizable force, and Mohammed ended up dead, or somewhere far away (modern day Kazakhstan? China?)
If Mohammed ends up exiled to Central Asia, I doubt he would just stop preaching Islam. Now, he's unlikely to find much of an audience out there due to the huge cultural and religious differences, but what if he gains a small group of followers, and they grow over the next hundred or so years to eventually take over the region?
 
By 628, the year posited for Muhammad's assassination, it is too late to butterfly away Islam. Likely, a substantially altered version of the OTL faith would have gained supremacy in Arabia. I could see Musaylimah seizing the opportunity to declare himself Mohammed's successor, thereby eliminating the idea that Mohammed is the last prophet of Allah from this crypto-Muslim faith. Whether Musaylimah's faction would be as expansionist is difficult to say. There is evidence that Arabia at this time had a larger population then it could hold (ex: collapse of the Marib Dam), making some sort of migration inevitable. An assault on Persia in revenge for the killing of Mohammed might be in the cards.
But with Mohammed dead this early, his followers aren't strong enough to unify the Arabs, and we might see an invasion more like the German invasions of Rome, numerous different tribes attacking on their own rather than a unified front.

People seem to be jumping the gun a lot on the "No Islam" thing. Martyrdom of a founder often just strengthens a religion.
Jesus died and his religion became huge. But plenty of other religious leaders were killed, such as Manichaeus, and their religions faded away. Considering that Islam was trapped in a war zone between different tribes and religions in a very dis unified Arabia, I could easily see it collapse.
 
But with Mohammed dead this early, his followers aren't strong enough to unify the Arabs, and we might see an invasion more like the German invasions of Rome, numerous different tribes attacking on their own rather than a unified front.

This is true. My point is more that his teachings had circulated widely by 628. Though there was no unified Caliph and there were still plenty of Arab pagans, the records I've read indicate that there were an equal number of "false prophets" like Musaylimah active at this time, who were all inspired by Muhammad (or by the same forces as Mohammed, we can only reconstruct this period through Islamic sources). Thus, the invaders, be they a united army or a mass migration of various tribes, will bring with them a relatively homogeneous culture which bears Mohammed's stamp.
 

birdboy2000

Banned
Apart from Jesus, Joseph Smith and the Bab had religions grow after their martyrdom off the top of my head. :)

The Muslims were not where they would be militarily when Muhammed died OTL, but they had already created a sizable movement, set up a state in Medina, and you're only shortening his life by four years - and it's not as though Mohammed's personal talents as a military commander were decisive in Medina's later victories.

Him holding the community together and being magnanimous enough in victory to make Meccans into committed Muslims was, but many of the tribes who rebelled in the Riddah Wars weren't Muslim yet at this point, and revenge can be a powerful motivator to set aside internal squabbles. A lot depends on who succeeds him and how good they are at forging a unified Arabian polity, but I think this is a bit late for a total collapse of Islam.

I'm not qualified to speak on the theological issues, and those would be massive, but with a 628 date he had been preaching for 20 years and set in motion much of what led to the Islamic Empire, and removing him personally a bit early doesn't change much.
 
I'm not qualified to speak on the theological issues, and those would be massive, but with a 628 date he had been preaching for 20 years and set in motion much of what led to the Islamic Empire, and removing him personally a bit early doesn't change much.

While you're right that the POD does not necessitate changing much from OTL, it does allow the author a freedom to take history in different directions. For example, the inter-Arab wars after Mohammed's death might last longer, delaying the eventually migration out of the peninsula by years, maybe even a decade. The size of the migration might be smaller and less organized than in our time line. And the religion (and therefore culture) of the migrants might be altered in significant ways [1]. But then again maybe not.

All of that is to say that the timeline could move in a number of directions. The OP seems interested in a time line where the Arab migrations have no serious effect on the political structures of the Roman or Persian empires, which in my opinion is still tough, but perhaps doable. With the lesson of the German migration two centuries previously, I wonder whether the Byzantines might approach to the Muslim invaders differently, or if the option of legally settling the Arabs in eastern provinces, Syria for instance, and using them as auxiliary troops might be seriously considered.

Let's say for the sake of argument that Mohammed's assassination has the following effects.

1) Allows for the survival of numerous belief systems based on or inspired by Mohammed's teachings, which may be called the "Mohammedan" or "Muslim" religion by outsiders, but retain serious differences. This of course may change in some later phase of religious consolidation.

2) Prolong the tribal fighting in Arabia and weaken the strength of the religious motive to spread Islam to world, thereby transforming the movement of Arab peoples from a series of coordinated invasions of Rome and Persia to success waves of mass migration, starting around 640.

Where does the world go from here? To our early medieval specialists, which of the Persian and Roman empires is better equipped to handle the migration (which I should make clear is almost certainly a violent event, just not coordinated in the same way as the Muslim campaigns)? How much do the two states benefit from a few extra years of recovery from the latest Persian-Byzantine War?

[1] I wish he had an Islamic historian around to delve into likely specific changes to Islamic theology (and thus history).
 

Lunarwolf

Banned
Apart from Jesus and the Bab had religions grow after their martyrdom off the top of my head.

I'm going to ask you politely to revise your statement to remove the second name of those three, from your post, such as i've done above, as it is deeply and vilely offensive to Christianity (in it's entirety no matter what schism) that you would have such a person equivocated there.

I would list the many many reasons for why it is offensive, but i cannot due to site rules.

The Bàb at least was actually martyred.
 

Dirk

Banned
I'm going to ask you politely to revise your statement to remove the second name of those three, from your post, such as i've done above, as it is deeply and vilely offensive to Christianity (in it's entirety no matter what schism) that you would have such a person equivocated there.

Wat

filler filler chicken dinner
 
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