A chance to prevent the scourge of Islam was lost.
4 thoughts on “On This Day In History”
I don’t think so, at best a short delay. The Muslim armies would have overrun the Sassanian Persian Empire anyway, and then come back to Syria. Part of the problem was that Roman Oriens and Persian Mesopotamia were Monophysite, at odds with the rest of Christendom. The last primary Monophysite sect is the Tewahedo Church of Ethiopia, which only survived because the Portuguese showed up and resucued them just as they were about to be overrun. So Oriens was lost anyway. Could the Romans have saved Carthage? Maybe if the Visigoths had realized what was coming and helped. But I doubt it. Still, Charles Martel and the Frankish infantry were waiting in the wings.
The older, more populated and richer part of the Roman Empire was conquered.
What is it like today? Poor. This is what Islam does – turns rich lands into poor ones.
As to whether a Roman victory would have turned the tide, or only delayed the inevitable? I suppose that depends on whether there were more armies than the 24000 that the Islamics had there.
The Western Empire collapsed centuries earlier and was in the hands of the Germans. The Arabs never conquered the Greek part of the Empire (Turks did that 800 years later). Syria remained prosperous under the Omayyads until wrecked by an Earthquake. Mesopotamia remained prosperous and the center of the swindling Abbassid Caliphate until the Mongols showed up in the 13th century.
Another way of looking at this is to see where Arabic displaced local languages successfully. As it turns out, it’s only in places where very similiar languages had been spoken. Mesopotamia and Syria spoke Aramaic (which has displaced Akkadian/Babylonian and Canaanite a few centuries earlier). Everywhere else, the local languages stayed (Iran, Indonesia, Albania, etc.). Roman Carthage is a special case. The Arabs razed the city, which was inhabited by Latin-speaking Catholics. The Monophysites of Oriens and Mespotamia were easy converts. Islam has never pushed out Trinitarian Christianity where it has taken root (Albania? Good question). With the exception of Monophysitism (from whence Muhammad may have gotten his ideas), Islam mainly displaced pagan religion. Even there, Hinduism has held on in Bali.
I don’t think so, at best a short delay. The Muslim armies would have overrun the Sassanian Persian Empire anyway, and then come back to Syria. Part of the problem was that Roman Oriens and Persian Mesopotamia were Monophysite, at odds with the rest of Christendom. The last primary Monophysite sect is the Tewahedo Church of Ethiopia, which only survived because the Portuguese showed up and resucued them just as they were about to be overrun. So Oriens was lost anyway. Could the Romans have saved Carthage? Maybe if the Visigoths had realized what was coming and helped. But I doubt it. Still, Charles Martel and the Frankish infantry were waiting in the wings.
The older, more populated and richer part of the Roman Empire was conquered.
What is it like today? Poor. This is what Islam does – turns rich lands into poor ones.
As to whether a Roman victory would have turned the tide, or only delayed the inevitable? I suppose that depends on whether there were more armies than the 24000 that the Islamics had there.
The Western Empire collapsed centuries earlier and was in the hands of the Germans. The Arabs never conquered the Greek part of the Empire (Turks did that 800 years later). Syria remained prosperous under the Omayyads until wrecked by an Earthquake. Mesopotamia remained prosperous and the center of the swindling Abbassid Caliphate until the Mongols showed up in the 13th century.
Another way of looking at this is to see where Arabic displaced local languages successfully. As it turns out, it’s only in places where very similiar languages had been spoken. Mesopotamia and Syria spoke Aramaic (which has displaced Akkadian/Babylonian and Canaanite a few centuries earlier). Everywhere else, the local languages stayed (Iran, Indonesia, Albania, etc.). Roman Carthage is a special case. The Arabs razed the city, which was inhabited by Latin-speaking Catholics. The Monophysites of Oriens and Mespotamia were easy converts. Islam has never pushed out Trinitarian Christianity where it has taken root (Albania? Good question). With the exception of Monophysitism (from whence Muhammad may have gotten his ideas), Islam mainly displaced pagan religion. Even there, Hinduism has held on in Bali.