After all, Europe's original Dark Ages, back in the 7th and 8th century CE, were caused by the first, glorious days of Islam, when the conquests of Mohammed and his successors closed the Mediterranean Sea off from Europe.
Interesting point. On that same topic, I've been reading up on what are commonly considered to be Arabic contributions to world knowledge, and have been struck by how many are actually from ancient civilizations, introduced or reintroduced to the West by Arabic scholars, and I can't help but wonder whether the flower of Arabic civilization was really just a takeover of existing cultures which were subsequently destroyed due to the inadequacies of Islam in promulgating independent thought.
On FADG, I was explaining that the Babylonians had treatises in algebra and used quadratic equations 4000 years ago, while the Indus River culture used pot stills for distillation 5000 years ago, but most educated people today will tell you that the Arabs invented algebra and distillation.
So, if Arab traders got astronomy, algebra and distillation and so on and so forth from cultures further east (and south, let's not forget Egypt)(and north, let's not forget Greece), is it possible that there never really was a flowering of "Arab" culture?
Arabic scholars could read Aristotle, but Arabic culture did not embrace Aristotelian logic, and was left behind. |
