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The region had Abū Rayhān Bīrūnī, and Avicenna as contemporaries, and then Omar Khayyam soon after. Persia in that era was like Florence in the fifteenth centur

• silentbicycle 18y ago
  I was going to make the same comparison. Both had a culture that encouraged scientific inquiry (within certain constraints), some fantastic libraries, rich local patrons that were willing to support research, and social and geographic circumstances that meant new ideas could spread relatively quickly. Both environments seem like great examples of a general formula for encouraging a renaissance: create an environment that is attractive to geniuses and take care of anything that could distract them from bouncing ideas off each other. That sounds like good example of the sort of thing you can learn by studying history.