Aside from a miniscule number of specific contributions, I don't see the evidence for the Arabs bringing advances to mathematics, art and literature (see here).
You state that Mohammad brought everything to a screeching halt, which is generally correct, though there are exceptions. Before Muhammad, there was NO such advances brought by the Arabs. There is very little literature that comes before the Koran, to say nothing of science and the arts. The Arab wave, you must remember, came with Muhammad. It encountered a very high Assyrian/Christian civilization in what is now north Iraq, east Syria, south Turkey and west Iran. This is the civilization that the Arabs first absorbed and then annihilated.
As I show in the link above, the overwhelming bulk of the advances in science, philosphy, art and literature was made by Assyrians (who are Christians and ethnically Assyrian, having lived in their homelands since 5000 B.C.).
History records the Arabs as the first to develop algebraic functions...also, a lot of the stories that eventually found their way into 1000 Arabian Knights and tales from Aladin were ancient lore told around Bedoin campsites.