What if Byzantium had fallen to Islam in the 8th C

[barca]

The Sassanid empire fell quickly but the Eastern Roman Empire survived. As far as I know, we have very little surviving literature from the Sassanids. Did the Islamic empire destroy them? Would they have also destroyed much of the Greco-Roman literature if they had conquered Constantinople?

[Pompieus]

Probably not more than the Venetians and crusaders did in 1204.

 

However, you can speculate on the nature (or survival) of a "Western" rather than an "Islamicized" Europe if Constantinople had fallen to the Arabs in the 8th century. As it was Islamic Turks, Mongols and Arabs/Berbers conquered a third of Europe in the 7th-17th centuries. Could the Franks have stopped Islam on TWO fronts in the 8th century? Would a distinctive "Western" culture have survived Islamic conquest in the early middle ages? Spain and Armenia did, but the distinctive cultures of Syria, North Africa and Egypt, Babylonia and Iran didn't, and they developed Islamic cultures. The Balkans got 500 years to develop and their slavic culture survived 400 years of Turkish domination. And the Greek portions of Anatolia remained Greek until the 1920's.

 

 

Is that comment culturally chauvinistic? if so, sorry.

[Axel Wers]

Hard to tell how Europe would look today if Eastern Roman Empire would fell 12 centuries ago. We know Eastern Roman Empire was strong shield against islamic expansion in eastern Europe and this is one of the reasons why muslims took rather north Africa than Anatolia and Balkan.

 

Visigoths in Hispania slowed muslim expansion but only Franks were able to stop them. Without Byzantium it would be probably harder for Franks.