The Golden Age of Islam

The reason is simple: small-arm Islam was the dynamo powering a previously unsophisticated, nomadic Arabian civilization, Persians had a taradiddle of long-standing. Twelve hundred years earlier, Cyrus the Great was commanding an pudding stone while the Greeks were still little more than village-sized city-states. Centuries afterward, after the Macedonian Alexander the Great injected Greek ascertain into the region, the Persian- classic culture of pre- papistic empire was to develop roots deep and rich. Persia's Zoroaster introduced mo nonheism into Asia Minor a millennium before Islam made its appearance; perhaps, even, exerting a major influence over the Judeo-Christian traditions from which Islam emerged - a fact tacitly recognized, if not officially sanctioned, by the Arabian conquerors (Saunders 100).

Nevertheless, by the time Islam was on the rise, Persian culture had been in decline for several centuries. The Roman Empire had come and gone, leaving behind the Byzantines. The rule of Byzantium was energy if not marked by internecine conflicts, corruption and sacred intolerance (Nawwab 53). For the three centuries prior to Arab conquest, eastern portions of Persia had established a modicum of independent rule under the Sassanian house. Their rule, however, was primarily a decentralized, territorially feudal response to the chaos following Imperial Rome's muted demise (Morgan 8-9). As in Western Europe, the accomplishment was that

of survival: to survive the various incursions from of import Asian nomadic raids, to survive Byzantine demands for tribute, to survive inter-clan rivalries. at that go in was not the opportunity, certainly not the leisure, to build upon the accomplishments of the past. Rather, without the Pax Romana to encourage trade routes, standards of living and culture in the centuries immediately forgo Islamic conquest were a backsliding affair (Morgan 12-15).

Saunders, J. J. A History of Medieval Islam. 6th ed. New York: Rutledge, 1990.

After so many centuries of post-Roman Empire dormancy, it was a period of intellectual action mechanism in all fields that was to remain unrivalled until the Italian Renaissance centuries later.

Within the scope of Islamic culture, it was during this period that literary productions reached its zenith - particularly biography, history and linguistics. The scholars of this period were the first to rediscover the Hellenic masters in their original: Plato, Aristotle, the other philosopher-scientists upon whom Western European civilization was to base its intellectual development. Revolutionary advances in mathematics, medicament and agriculture were to change not only Islamic culture but, probably to a greater extent, the civilization of the Europeans, who would come later during the Crusades and carry home the fruits of Golden Age labor (Nawwab 72-73). As a further contribution to Islamic culture, Persia contributed Nizam-al-Mulk, considered the greatest statesman of the period. Al-Mulk's book on statecraft, Syasat-Namah, still exerts its influence, holding the same place in Islamic governmental theory as Plato's state and Machiavelli's The Prince do in the Western canon of practical political ideology (Nawwab 79).

It was not a difficult decision for them to make. The 'Abbasid caliphs were not particularly disposed toward the nomadic ways of their desert forefathers. The Persian institutions discovered in Baghdad, from the wise counsel of an e
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