Legacy of Empires

After the Renaissance in the 1400's, European nations began to insert themselves into the affairs of faraway continents, and eventually they came to colonize North America, conquer Africa and dominate Asia. This timeline explores a different idea - what if, instead of growing to control global affairs, European nations were forced to compete with expansive Asian and African empires of similar technological capabilities?

The points of divergence (There are two) are the premature death of IRL Sultan of Delhi Allaudin in 1288, years before his coronation, and the death of Timur the lame in 1363 from injuries that in the real world would have merely crippled him. In the place of these two emperors would rise the Ashfarid, or Gurkaniyan, empire that would subjugate the entire Middle East, and the Reddy Kingdom of India which would consolidate the subcontinent under the flag of what was once a small, regional kingdom. In the centuries that followed, the Islamic World, India, China, Japan and various African nations would unite under respective empires that would eventually pose a very real threat to European expansion into the rest of the World.