> Once the Abbasid Empire fell (the Islamic Golden Age period), none of the successor civilizations pursued such studies further - and none of them were Arabian

> Once the Abbasid Empire fell (the Islamic Golden Age period), none of the successor civilizations pursued such studies further - and none of them were Arabian empires, so that left the Arab world to stagnate. This might give the misleading impression that Arabs were a large part of the intellectual ferment of the Islamic Golden Age. They got it started by forming an enormous new empire but it was the work of their subjects, not themselves. Same with the Mongols. > It is notable that most of the intellectuals who were patronized and shone under the Abbassids in the decades after 800 A.D. were not Muslim Arabs. There were even some oddball characters, such as Tabit ibn Qurra, a pagan Syrian from Haran. One reason al-Kindi was the “Philosopher of the Arabs” is that he was a tribal Arab. But more typical were Iranians such as Avicenna and al-Razi. If you accept S. Frederick Starr’s argument in Lost Enlightenment and Christopher Beckwith’s in Warriors of the Cloisters Iranians disproportionately from Turan, modern Central Asia, were particularly influential in shaping the high culture and intellectual tone of the world of Islam after 800 A.D. https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2020/07/05/how-the-arabs-created-the-iranian-golden-age/ https://www.gnxp.com/WordPress/2020/07/05/how-the-arabs-crea...