"Islamic" Golden Age

Well. you can agree with whatever you like, but I don't think you've established any of the things you now appear to believe you've established, for starters.

The so-called "golden age" of Islamic science was about 5 or 6 centuries, not 10. And it was, still is, considered to be a major development, right there in the ME; the accepted wisdom is it had a major influence on Western scientific thinking. Although gunpowder, for instance, was used by the Chinese who developed its science, it took centuries to reach the West; Islam was a bit closer maybe.
 
disease,

"Islamic" Golden Age would refer to the development of the philosophy of the religion Islam.

As for the Arab Gold Age or the Middle East Gold Age, like I said, sure, there was some progress. Very slow progress compared to pre-Islam, but some nonetheless. Actually, there was progress during the European "Dark Ages" as well. Never mind, Venetian gold often kept the arteries of the middle east to India well greased.

Anyway.....

Do you think there is or is not "Islamic" math?
 
Oh, it should be noted this "Islamic" Golden Age is often refered to as the period form the 8th century to the 16th - if you take it from the 7th (which for some Muslims is the most perfect time) then that's 1000 years.

If you think about a philosophy where there are a chosen people, with a perfect language, and a perfect book, and the only last Prophet, what you're really talking about could be summarized as the First Islamic Reich. The rest of the world was moving past such idioticy, but, meh .... lets see if history repeats itself.
 
If Mr. Campbell were alive I wonder what he'd think now... maybe he'd yeah, you know, Islamic Science is oxymoronic, unless we define calculus as Christian Math, anyway, its about what Muslims and really all of us think. I hope we eventually introduce a course on how to think logically into the K-12 system. At least that way we can weed out some of these thorny inconsistencies.
 
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Comparing the Nomadic Mongolians, their conquest of China and the ensuing "Chinese" Golden Age seems to match up more and more with the Nomadic Arabs, their conquest of Persia and the ensuing "Middle Eastern" Golden Age



In 1377, the Arab sociologist, Ibn Khaldun, narrates in his Muqaddimah:

It is a remarkable fact that, with few exceptions, most Muslim scholars…in the intellectual sciences have been non-Arabs, thus the founders of grammar were Sibawaih and after him, al-Farsi and Az-Zajjaj. All of them were of Persian descent they invented rules of (Arabic) grammar. Great jurists were Persians. Only the Persians engaged in the task of preserving knowledge and writing systematic scholarly works. Thus the truth of the statement of the prophet (Muhammad) becomes apparent, 'If learning were suspended in the highest parts of heaven the Persians would attain it"…The intellectual sciences were also the preserve of the Persians, left alone by the Arabs, who did not cultivate them…as was the case with all crafts…This situation continued in the cities as long as the Persians and Persian countries, Iraq, Khorasan and Transoxiana (modern Central Asia), retained their sedentary culture.

One Abbasid Caliph is even quoted as saying:

"The Persians ruled for a thousand years and did not need us Arabs even for a day. We have been ruling them for one or two centuries and cannot do without them for an hour."
 
It's much more consistent with world history to have two "golden" ages instead of this ridiculous 800-1000 year long "Islamic" golden age. One in Spain from 900-1000 and one in what was the traditional Persian territories from 1050-1200CE.

Again, this both fits with History as well as the traditional definition of "Golden" Age. Rather than this millennial long "Islamic" Golden age that produced very little relative to a 1000 years. It also fits with the fact that most of the Golden aspects were in Span or Persia.
 
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