[Cronos]

Mooselimbs will always blame someone else -- they forget that the Islamik 'culture' was really just an amalgamation of Greek, Persian, Egyptian and Indian cultures -- the conquered peoples. Around the time of the Mongol invasions, these were being completely forced to convert. After that happened, the civilisations decayed.

[muawiyah]

You are overlooking the impact of the event that brought about the Dark Ages ~ 500 years in Western Europe and 300 years in China.

The Arabs in Arabia recovered first. They became the great engine of the economic transformation that lifted the Middle East out of the Dark Ages.