Most people are unaware of how backwards Europe was until coming into contact with the world of Islam during the crusades.
For example Charlemagne, the first Holy Roman emperor, was able to speak an early version of German, Latin, and some Arabic, but was unable to read or write in any language.
He could barely sign his own name.
I've heard this so many times, I guess it's a standard tune anyone can play. Let's throw in a few facts...
Most of Europe was illiterate and backwards, but so was most of Islam. A few educated people were keeping the lamp lit on either side.
In 1000 AD, the Fatimid caliphate was dominant. Look it up on wiki. They were not representative of Islamic empires. One relatively benevolent government in 1300 years and it didn't last long.
As for Charlemagne, nobody knows for sure if he could read or not, it was writing he had the difficulty with; in any case he promoted education and scholarship.
The Fatimid rulers generally promoted scholarship also, and had more time to do it than a single lifetime; but in both cases, it was a matter of leadership and the direction they wanted their people to take. In both cases, nearly everyone muddled through life without literacy. Yet the seeds planted by the Europeans took root. The gains made by the Fatimids were lost.
Finally, the crusades did not magically transform Europeans by introducing them to the enlightened beings called muslims. The south of France was highly civilized, and the nobility of the region prized learning. The Fatimids were losing their juice by then.
Most people on either side were primitive, but among the muslims, their leaders were inclined to keep them that way; not so in Europe.
> In 1000 ad. The Muslim world was far far ahead of
> Europe ... yada yada yada
As has been pointed out continually, the “Moslem World” was a place that fell to Mohammedan conquest. These advances, most of which originated in Persia, India, and China, were already in place when the Mohammedan savages decapitated the ruling classes.
As Mohammedanism took hold over the populace and culture, all scientific advancement ground to a halt and began even to recede into the filthy, backwards, stupidity that dominates and overwhelms the entire Mohammedan world today.
Oh, please. The “Muslim world” was only ahead because it conquered advanced cultures - and then sucked the lifeblood out of them and lapsed back into its usual ignorance. Mohammed couldn’t read and in fact few of his people could; the later Koran wasn’t even supposed to be translated out of Arabic, so few people could read it.
When the Muslims swept over Spain, Sevilla was probably the most advanced city in Europe because Spain had been Rome’s most important colony and many of Rome’s thinkers, writers and even emperors were born in Spain. Several important early Church councils were held there, and in the 7th century, around the time that the illiterate Mohammed was attacking developed civilizations in the Middle East and only decades before the Islamic invasions had spread to Europe, St Isidore of Sevilla wrote a compendium of “all human knowledge,” which involved the sciences, Classical sources (those that had not been lost to Europe during the barbarian invasions), medicine, etc.
And Spain’s large Jewish population continued with its own tradition of learning, which led to the great doctors and medical practices that the Muslims then tried to claim as their own when they invaded. The only reason this learning survived as long as it did was that the invaders were fairly recently forcibly-converted Baghdadis and, later, Persians, who came from cultures that had been very advanced until they were overrun by the Arab followers of Mohammed. It seems to take about two generations for Islam to put out the lights in a culture, but in the meantime Muslims always take credit for the goods of that same culture that they are busy killing.
Why are you spreading leftist relativism on Islam?