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What if the Battle of Qadisiyyah Had a Different Result

524 bytes added, 13:15, 19 April 2017
Implications of the Battle
Second, the defeat of the Persians paved the way for major Arab migrations to Iraq and more fertile regions of the Middle East. Although Arabs were present before in many towns and cities in the Middle East, this now meant the Arabic language started becoming more prominent as migrants came to different regions. With the use of Arabic in Islam, it cemented the spread of this new common language to be widespread across not only the Middle East but it soon spread to Iran and west to North Africa.<ref>For more on the migrations that followed the conquest of Iraq, see: Sharqāwī, Muḥammad. 2010. <i>The Ecology of Arabic: A Study of Arabicization.</i> Leiden; Boston: Brill, pg. 166.</ref>
Third, the battle gave the Islamic armies a lot of confidence and experience. This led to much more rapid gains in the Middle East and North Africa against the Byzantines, although they were never ultimately defeated by the Arabs. The success even carried on in Europe, where they were only finally defeated in France by Charles Martel in 732. Between 646 and 732, the Arab armies had almost been unstoppable in open battlefields, although sieges of great cities, such as Constantinople, gave them more difficulty (Figure 2).<ref>For more on Arab and Islamic conquests and defeats after Qadisiyyah, see: Hoyland, Robert G. 2015. <i>In God’s Path: The Arab Conquests and the Creation of an Islamic Empire.</i> Ancient Warfare and Civilization. Oxford ; New York: Oxford University Press.</ref>
One of the great results of the battle was the Arab armies were now in a position to benefit from the technical and infrastructure built by the Sasanians in the region of Iraq. This allowed them to build using new technical capabilities they acquired and developed using Persian and Classical science. Furthermore, scholars who were based in Persia, who had come from many parts of the ancient World, including Greece and India, now were employed by the Arabs. This allowed not only the great Gold Age of Arab science and philosophy to be possible, and thus develop indigenous new discoveries, but it also allowed much of the lost knowledge in Europe, after the collapse of Rome, to be copied by the Arabs. This knowledge was then transferred back to Europe in the Medieval period, eventually leading up to the Enlightenment that allowed a new period of discovery to emerge in Europe.<ref>For more on how Arabs incorporated Persian and Classical science and knowledge, see: Al-Khalili, Jim. 2010. <i>Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science.</i> London: Allen Lane.</ref>
[[File:Zoroastrian temple of Yazd.jpg|thumbnail|Figure 1. Image of a Zoroastrian temple. The Zoroastrian religion began to decline after the battle's results.]]

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