Muslim Victory at Sieges of Constantinople (674-678 or 717-718) or Tours

[Noncommunist]

In other parts of the Org, Islam in Europe has been seen as a big deal. Often people will whine and rave about how Europe is being dragged into barbarism and savagery and point out their more courageous ancestors who weren't afraid to fight the forces of Islam. Every once in a while, they point out how Charles Martel saved Europe and some might even note the efforts of the East Roman Empire in its continual fight against Islam.

But, what if those battles had gone the other way? Was there a credible chance that Islam could have swept Europe and extinguished Christianity? Or would the frontiers of Islam have simply moved a little further north? Are there events within the Islamic world that may have accelerated or decelerated the pace of conquest?

And even if Europe had largely been conquered, would it have been utterly subsumed into an Islamic culture? Or would it have been like Iran where Zoroastranism was largely extirpated but Persian culture would go on to influence the Islamic World? And how would it have influenced Islam? Or would it be like India which was almost entirely controlled by an Islamic Empire but remained largely Hindu? And would the Islamic World have experienced its golden age in a similar way and could the enlightenment have occurred in an Islamic context?

[Hax]

Tours/Poitiers was pretty inconsequential anyway, there's no real evidence to support the notion that the Muslim armies would have settled in Gallia for an extended period of time; from what we understand, it was more like a series of raids and it didn't seem to be aimed at expanding the Caliphate at all.

Was there a credible chance that Islam could have swept Europe and extinguished Christianity?

Well, Christianity was not extinguished in the Middle-East either. You yourself brought up the point of India, where the majority of the population (excluding Pakistan) remained Hindu. I think it's fairly unlikely that any Islamic ruler would be able to hold onto any European conquests, purely for reasons of overextension. Andalusia was already stretching the limits, and the Islamic states there were done in 1492.

Are there events within the Islamic world that may have accelerated or decelerated the pace of conquest?

Meh. I was thinking of the Seljuk invasion, but that was more-or-less a given already, considering the fact that the elite forces were made up for Turkish soldiers anyway.

And even if Europe had largely been conquered, would it have been utterly subsumed into an Islamic culture? Or would it have been like Iran where Zoroastranism was largely extirpated but Persian culture would go on to influence the Islamic World?

Zoroastrianism was not the common people's religion anyway, it was held in the regard by the elites, and when they were displaced or alternatively integrated in the new Muslim elite, there was no real reason for that religion to stick around. The more popular religions (Manichæism, Nestorian Christianity, etc.) were already absorbed into Islam (particularly Shi'a Islam).

I believe that if Islam would have become the majority religion in European countries, then it would be heavily mixed with Roman Catholic feasts and celebrations (Jesus' birth, communion, etc.). Islam is/was more flexible than people often assume.


What you have to keep in mind with a discussion like this, is that there is so little known about what Islam looked like in the first two hundred years of its existence. Non-oral sources of this period are scarce, and it appears that there was no real "unified" Islam (even less so than nowadays) at all. Interestingly, the first ones to come up with some form of organisation were Shi'ite theologians, and the appearance and codifications of the Hadiths in the 10th century can be interpreted as a response to theological arguments by different Shi'ite groups.