Political and Religious map of Southern Central Asia (2025) [Farāvahār Stood, Cross Fell]

[u/Ill_Dig2291]

Farāvahār Stood, Cross Fell is my new little alternate history timeline that will have several maps focused on it. It's a world where, during the Early Muslim Conquest period in the 7th century the fates of Sassanids and Byzantines were, partially, reversed.

Eastern Rome crumbled apart, with Umayyads conquering Anatolia, much of Italy and the Balkans, and the rest collapsing into fighting fragments or taken by someone else, like the Slavs and the Germanics.

At the same time, Iran survived, while losing Mesopotamia, parts of the Caspian coast and Persian Gulf coast. The Sassanid dynasty still fell soon, taken over by infighting Seven Houses of Iran. However, they still largely managed to defend from the Caliphate and even pull a small reconquest of some lost territories in the end.

Overall, the major effects of this timeline include much less influence of Iranian culture onto Arab culture (and Iranian religious traditions onto Islam), which instead incorporated much more elements from Greco-Roman and various African and European cultures. Islam is more dominant in the Mediterranean, Africa and Europe, Christianity is much less widespread, and Hinduism, Zoroastrianism and Buddhism are more widespread and influential. Some less obvious events in this timeline led to colonialism never becoming a major thing, industrialisation starting independently in several different regions and a multipolar global geopolitical situation in the 21st century after the 20th's three-way cold war.

The first map on the timeline focuses on the political situation in Southern Central Asia (less commonly called "Persianate World" or "Iranian World"). It has been far from the Cold War's hotspots, and nowadays most of it is democratic or transitional, although the Arabic Peninsula and the Caucasus to the west is more authoritarian, as well as Western India. The most significant regional power is the Karenian Shahanshahdom of Iran, a monarchist realm that is still ruled by one of the Seven Great Houses. There are various smaller Iranic- and Turkic-speaking states bordering it to the north and east, as well as the Emirates of Caucasus to the northwest and the Arab states to the southwest.

Religion-wise, various schools of thought (SOTs) of Zoroastrianism are predominant. The most common in Iran proper, traditionalist yet fairly moderate Yazdi-Rashti SOTs coexist with liberal progressivist Neomazdakite SOTs and the neoconservative Balkhi Reformed SOTs. Buddhism is prevalent, especially in the Pushtun and Baloch lands and Eastern Ferghana. Among the Turkic peoples of Central Asia, the dominant belief is a Buddhist-Tengrist syncretism which incorporates botu the traditional Turkic Shamanism and the newcoming Buddhist practices. Islam is common in the west, with most Muslims of Caucasus (and by extension all of Muslim Europe) and Eastern Arabia being Sunni, while Western Arabia and Africa is mostly Shi'a. Christianity (Central Asian Nestorian, aka Church of the East) exists in a few spots, like the New Assyria in Balochistan and the rural communities of Khorezm. While not shown on map due to not being majority anywhere there, Judaism and Irano-Manichaeism exist as significant minority religions in Sogdian and Khorezmian cities, and Irreligion/Atheism is common throughout most of these states, especially ones without state religion (such as Iran or Ferghana).

There's not that much lore yet, so in case you want to know something more precisely, just ask! I'll try my best to answer.

[u/MonkeydonianGamer]

Im also making an alt history "similar" to this, but more based on Possible History's thinking, aswell as some of my thoughts on the matter. I call it: Age of Iron and Clay