Posted on 03/14/2007 1:04:50 PM PDT by freedom44
What if instead of invading Greece the Persians would have invaded and conquered Arabia? At the time Arabia was real weak so it would have been an easy victory. Freeper CarrotandStick poised this question in another thread.
Lets hear your predictions history buffs. No Islam? A Zoroastrian Middle East? How would it have played out?
The Persian Empire. Notice how accessible Arabia was.
Until the sixth century BC, they were a people shrouded in mystery. Living in the area east of the Mesopotamian region, the Persians were a disparate group of Indo-European tribes, some nomadic, some settled, that were developing their own culture and religion unique from that of the great cities to their west. Sometimes history is about ideas, and nothing more clearly emphasizes this aspect of history than the sudden eruption of Persians on to the world stage, or at least the world stage as it centered around Mesopotamia. For the sudden rise of Persian power not only over Mesopotamia, but over the entire known world, has its center of gravity in a new set of ideas constellating around a new religion. For the Persians would become the largest and most powerful empire ever known in human history up until that point. By 486 BC, the Persians would control all of Mesopotamia and, in fact, all of the world from Macedon northeast of Greece to Egypt, from Palestine and the Arabian peninsula across Mesopotamia and all the way to India. The Persians throughout their history, such as we know it, lived peacefully in the region just north of the Persian Gulf (modern day Iran). For the most part, they were left unbothered by the epic power struggles broiling to the west in Mesopotamia, Palestine, and Egypt. They were Indo-European peoples who spoke a language similar to Sanskrit and who worshipped gods very similar to the gods of the Vedic period in India. Life was hard in the region they controlled; the coastline afforded no harbors and the eastern region was mountainous. Only a few interior valleys supported the peoples; in part because of the geography, the Persians never really united into a single peoples but rather served as disparate vassal states to the Medes, who, from their capital at Ecbatana, controlled the area east of the Tigris river.
Persian Empire under Darius the Great.
In this state, somewhere around 650 BC, a new religion suddenly took hold. While we know little or nothing about the Persians in this period, we know the man who invented this new religion. Called Zarathustra (Zoroaster in Greek), his new religion and new gods captivated the spiritual and social imagination of the Persians. In its roughest outlines, Zoroastrianism is a dualistic religion; in Zarathustra's cosmos, the universe was under the control of two contrary gods, Ahura-Mazda, the creating god who is full of light and good, and Ahriman, the god of dark and evil. These two evenly matched gods are in an epic struggle over creation; at the end of time, Ahura-Mazda and his forces will emerge victorious. All of creation, all gods, all religions, and all of human history and experience can be understood as part of this struggle between light and dark, good and evil. Zoroastrianism, however, is a manifestly eschatological religion; meaning and value in this world is oriented towards the end of history and the final defeat of Ahriman and all those gods, humans, and other animate forces arrayed on the dark side of creation.
It is not possible to underestimate how Zoroastrianism changed the Persian world and its sense of its own community. If the world and human history could be understood as an epic struggle between good and evil, a struggle whose ultimate trajectory is the establishment of good throughout the universe and the defeat of evil, then one's own role, as an enlightened people, in the world becomes vastly different. This political role in the world was put together by Cyrus, called The Great.
Cyrus was a first in human history, for he was the first to conceive of an idea that would forever fire the political and social imaginations of the people touched by the Persians. That idea? Conquer the world.
Up until Cyrus, no culture or individual had ever really thought this one up. Territorial conquests, like monarchical power, were justified on religious grounds, but these religious grounds never gave rise to the notion that one's religious duty was to conquer the whole of the world as you knew it.
In 559 BC, Cyrus became the chief of an obscure Persian tribe in the south of Persia. A devoted Zoroastrianism, he believed that his religious duty was to bring about the eschatological promises of Zoroastrianism through active warfare. If the universe was an epic struggle between the forces of Ahura-Mazda and the forces of evil, Cyrus his job as personally bringing about the victory of his god. As an extension of this, Cyrus would bring Zoroastrianism to all the peoples he conquered; he would not force them to become Zoroastrian, though. For Zoroastrianism recognized that all the gods worshipped by other peoples were really gods; some were underlings of Ahura-Mazda and some were servants of Ahriman. Cyrus saw as his mission the tearing down of religions for evil gods and the shoring up of religions of gods allied with Ahura-Mazda.
By 554 BC, Cyrus had conquered all of Persia and defeated the Medes for control of the region. He soon conquered Lydia in Asia Minor, Babylon in 539 BC and, by the time he died in 529 BC, he had conquered a vast territory—in fact, he probably was the greatest conqueror in human history.
The Hebrews After the Exile
Post-Exilic Religion As one aspect of the religious eclecticism of Zoroastrianism and Cyrus's intentions, the conquest of Babylon led to the immediate freeing of the Hebrews who had been exiled in Babylon by Nebuchadnezzar. Cyrus claimed to have been visited in a dream by Yahweh, the god of the Hebrews. Aligned with Ahura-Mazda, Yahweh demanded to be worshipped in the land of Judah; Cyrus freed the Hebrews with the specific intent that they reintroduce the proper worship of Yahweh in the Temple at Jerusalem. The Hebrews, however, took several Zoroastrian ideas with them; alhtough these religious ideas simmered and brewed as unorthodox ideas among common people, they would eventually resurface with a vengeance in Christianity.
Although the internal structure of the Persian imperial government was somewhat shaky, the conquests and fire for conquest continued after Cyrus's death. His son, Cambyses, conquered Egypt in 525 BC, but the Chaldeans revolted in Mesopotamia and the Medes revolted east of the Tigris. Cambyses's son, Darius I (reigned 522-486 BC; pronounced like "dry as, " only with an unvoiced s), or Darius the Great, quelled the Chaldeans and Medes and worked on firming up the state. His great innovation was to divide the huge empire into more or less independent provinces called satrapies.
Darius extended the Persian empire to its farthest reaches, extending through his conquests all the way into Macedon just northeast of Greece. When the Greek cities of Asia Minor revolted against the high tributes demanded of them by the Persian empire, the Athenians joined in and conquered and burned Sardis, the capital of Lydia, in 498 BC. The Athenians, however, lost interest in the Greek struggle against Persia and, by 495 BC, Darius had reconquered Asia Minor. Eager to prevent any future threats to the empire by Athens or any other Greek city, Darius set out to conquer the whole of Greece. And he almost made it.
Ping. To other history buffs if you can as well.
Thanks! bookmarking
There was a reason no one wanted Arabia--it was worthless and not worth the trouble. It's been theorized Alexander wanted to conquer it before he died, but I can't imagine why.
It made sense for the Arabs to expand outward, to get ahold of some valuable land and great cities. It wouldn't make sense for anyone to go into Arabia proper, at least until the discovery of its natural resources.
For all practical purposes they lived in a truck stop a little off the main routes of Persian conquest.
After the Dark Ages got rolling, and enough people had died of plagues and famine, this group became relatively powerful ~ on the other hand, it wasn't until they began hiring unemployed Byzantine legions that they got a real hang of conquering stuff.
They then threw the Persians out of everywhere West of the Euprhates much to the applause and relief of everybody else.
Now, about the Persians ~ the dominant language is part of the Indo-European family. On the other hand, those early Indo-Europeans were so few in number they left behind little, if any, genetic heritage. For all practical purposes almost all the peoples in today's Iran and Iraq are part of the same ethnic group. Part speaks modern Arabic. Part speaks modern Farsi. Otherwise, all same thing.
I can't think of a good reason why they would have wanted to.
That is not true. As a Persian who has visited Iran and seen tens of thousands of both Iranians and Iraqis there no similarity. Iranians have fair skin with more square faces and higher cheek bones the Iraqis are generally much darker with more oval faces and lower cheek bones. I can spot a Persian from an Iraqi about 95% of the time.
Heck Oliver Stone practically had him prepared to conquer Britain and Japan at the end of his movie.
I haven't seen Stone's film. The idea that Alexander wanted to take on Arabia has been discussed in far more credible portraits, among them Robin Lane Fox's excellent biography. If he did want to conquer it, it was probably so he could complete his "merging of the races" plan he had begun with the Persians and Greeks. One world, one people--but through conquest and not hippy talk.
If you look at the posted map and the breadth and depth of the Persian Empire, the aforementioned resources which, when controlled, were a power base, then you begin to understand the economic basis for most historical human activities. Or so says one of my History Profs whose lifetime goal was to write the Economic History of the United States in 10 year increments.
To borrow a line from George Mallory, "Because it is there."
Persia would have had no interest in Arabia NO ONE did. The desert had no wealth or anything but misery to offer so it was left alone to produce tribes of wild barbarians. Mohammed harnessed their ferocity and cupidity to unify them and make them capable of raiding throughout the world. Their GREED and poverty propelled Islam's spread. Religion had little to do with it as Mo was making it up as he went along leading his bands of criminals and paying them off by stealing from their neighbors: Jews, Christians and animists.
When attacked by would be conquerers the Arabs of old merely withdrew further into the deserts from which they could not be attacked and to which they were acclimated. After the invader grew tired of chasing them he would withdraw until the next tribal raid and the same futile procedure would start anew.
Like others have said, there was NOTHING of worth in Arabia at the time for any of the great empires to give a damn : Assyria/Babylonia and Persia. It was garbage then, it's garbage now.
And as to those pictures you posted. I personally know Persians and Assyrians (Chaldeans and Babylonians too, all family members but no one likes the Babylonians :) ) that are so fair skinned you would easily mistake them for certain European races. If it wasn't for the moslem invasion (God roast muhammed in HELL) and the interbreeding/rapine that followed you wouldn't be able to tell an Italian apart from a Persian.
I believe the Tuareg and Berbers were in Arabia - is this correct?
They were in North Africa I believe. But being nomadic they could have wandered into Arabia I suppose. Tuaregs do not appear to be semitic either.
The Shah of Iran has cousins (first cousins) who are black as coal. Just happens that way. Check the Vahdat family who ruled Iran for a long time before the Pavlevi family.
They were much more typical of Iranians than Reza Shah's family ~ but NONE of these guys are blue-eyed blonds with cleft chins (except I notice that one of the great-great grand-daughters seems to be fairly blond, but I bet they picked that up here!).
Besides, I spoke of ETHNICITY, not just language, nor of light or dark features.
The Iranians and the Iraqis are and have been of the same ethnicity ever since they moved in over the Sumerians and swamped them in a sea of semi-brown.
Bull**** as I said I believe I have seen far many more Persians and Iraqis. There is no resemblance. I can spot the difference 95% this is not about prejudice just reality.
We have over 40,000 Persians in the DC suburbs, and about 25,000 Afghans. There are innumerable Pakistanis (all kinds of people there), etc.
We have an exceedingly large and diverse collection of people from the Indian Ocean litoral.
You were aware weren't you that most families in that part of the world are fully conscious of their "roots", and when you marry first cousins over the centuries, those "roots" are pretty much on the button with wherever the family began.
But, whatever the case, the Vahdats do not look like the Pahlevis.
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