In the Footsteps of Rome: A History of Europe in Late Antiquity

[Jokolytic]

I've never read such revisionist, biased trash in all my life. It's ok to hate Christians and Europe, but don't play it off like a dang history lesson. I am absolutely disgusted and you should be ashamed in this propaganda. As if the modern media doesn't hate tradition and heritage enough.

 

[volksmarschall]

On the subject of book recommendations for Late Antiquity / medieval history, what are your thoughts on the works of John Julius Norwich, if any? His A Short History of Byzantium was one of the books that years ago first got me interested in that general era of history and in the history of Eastern Rome / the Byzantines in particular, and I've been wondering if any of his other works would be worth a read.

I forgot to add, James J. O'Donnell's The Ruin of the Empire in the previous post in which I commented on Norwich and possible other books on Late Antiquity. Unfortunately, it is ver y scattered (he suffers from a poor ability of organization), but it's still a very intriguing and worthwhile read -- giving a new look at Theodoric and Ostrogoth Italy between the deposing of Romulus Augustusulus and Justinian's gambit to reclaim the Western remnants of the empire.

If you can get away from his scattered thoughts and euphemistic analogies, and his offbeat Shakespeare analogies, like saying that Theodoric is like Othello that content that he tried to convey is quite good. "Act II" (his section on Justinian) doesn't suffer from his scattered construction like in "Act I" (the bit that's supposed to be on Theodoric and Italy) and "Act III" (which is supposed to be on Pope Gregory and Rome/Italy after the Byzantine conquest, but ended up as a history of Christianity up to Pope Gregory's time).

 

[volksmarschall]

Chapter 6: The Rise of the Arabs and the Abbasid (Islamic) Golden Age​

As I had mentioned that it was during the Umayyad period that the distinct formation of an Islamic identity began to appear, this is not only true with regards to how the believers, whom I shall now be referring to as Muslims, saw themselves in relationship to other “People of the Book,” but also how they saw themselves to one another. It is during the rise of the Umayyads that the schism of the Islamic community community begins: The Sunni, Shi’a, and the Khajarites – or “Those Who Left.”

Upon the death of Ali ibn Abi Talib, the last of the “Rightly Guided Caliphs,” a civil war for leadership had broken out between Mu’awiya and Ali. Mu’awiya was an Umayyad chief and general. In 657 C.E., Ali marched against Mu’awiya and his supporters with a large force and met at the fields of Siffin where both leaders refused the honor of single combat to decide who would be the leader of the Islamic community and caliphate. Instead, both sides sent champions in one vs. one duels for nearly a month, before this descended into minor skirmishes between the two sides eventually leading to a pitched battle.

Here, the Muslims recalled the teachings of the Prophet, as it is instructed in the Qur’an, that fellow believers (Muslims) should not kill one another. The battle was halted, but at a staggering price in men and prestige – at least prestige for Ali. Ali was winning the battle, and it was probable, that if the fighting had continued, Ali would have won. Some of Ali’s supporters believed this to be a direct violation of the will of God and abandoned him – condemning the sins of human affairs about God’s providence. This breakaway sect became known as the Khajarites, or, “those who left,” and their modern descendants are the Ibadi centrally located in Oman. The supporters of Mu’awiya became the forerunners of the Sunni and the supporters of Ali and his descendants became the forerunners of the Shi’a.

However, by 661, when the Caliphate was split in two, much like the Roman Empire was split after Diocletian, with the pro-Umayyad believers (Sunnis) centered in Damascus while the pro-Ali believers (Shiites) were centered primarily in Iraq. Ali was then assassinated by dissidents and Mu’awiya became the unchallenged leader. Thus, the Umayyad Empire was born in blood. 20 years later, the final split between the two sides would become clearly visible and unforgiveable. Yazid I, the Umayyad Caliph, was challenged by Ali’s son – Husayn. The Umayyad army rushed west to contend with Husayn and his rebels, which included the Hashemites and many members of the Prophet’s family (at least descendants of the Prophet’s family). The two forces met at Karbala, where the larger Umayyad force eventually overran Husayn’s defenses. Husayn, who was about to married, is reported to have said to his fiancée when asked how she will find him after the battle, “You will find me in Heaven, where we shall be united for all eternity.” Husayn and 72 members of the Prophet’s family were killed during the battle, and the rift between the two sides had opened wounds too deep to ever be healed.

A depiction of the Battle of Karbala, where the Umayyads and the forerunner Sunnis defeated the forces of Husayn and the forerunner Shiites.
​

Furthermore, the Dome of the Rock would be built on the Old Temple Mount in Jerusalem, upon the site where it is believed that Muhammad was taken up to heaven on a winged horse to converse with the prophets of the past, like Moses and Jesus. Inscriptions on the Dome of the Rock, distinctly Umayyad in origin, also begin to condemn the Trinitarian beliefs of the Christians, as well as the apostasy of the Jews. It re-affirms a sense of Islamic triumphalism. While Christians, Jews, and Zoroastrians would remain, for the next 1,000 years, as members of an intra-religious administration where members of minority faiths would hold political officer or important political positions, the egalitarianism of the early community in which Christians and Jews were seen as essentially being equal with the Muslims was now evaporating, just as the wounds between the Sunni and Shi’a were now beyond all repair. Laws were also passed to restrict Christian and Jewish rights during the latter days of the Umayyads. Churches and synagogues were not allowed to be rebuilt if fallen into disrepair, and due to distrust, Christians and other religious minorities were forbid from owning horses (since horses were seen as a potential dangerous weapon of war to be used against the Muslims). Yet, this rift between "The People of the Book" seems to only have effected the Umayyad Middle East, rather than Umayyad Spain, and slowly receded under the later caliphates (although the Abbasids would never amend these laws).

Having crushed opposition to their rule, the Umayyads began their unopposed conquests of Africa, Spain, and the Indus Valley, spreading Islam far and wide. Their conquests of North Africa and Spain are very important in the aftermath of the fall of the Roman Empire. The Vandal and Visigothic kingdoms that emerged in the collapse of the Roman Empire in the west had predominately come to inherit these regions, and the Roman logistical infrastructure. However, disunity and a lack of trade between the successor kingdoms in the west, coupled by a series of terrible wars levied onto them by Justinian which destroyed more than it could ever rebuild, meant that the western basin of the Mediterranean, once the hub of trade for Carthage and Rome, had fallen into disrepair. Trade was now almost non-existent.

The Umayyad conquest of North Africa and Spain, which was only halted, as I have mentioned, at the Battle of Tours in 732 C.E., was actually one of the best things that could happen to these two regions. With the extent of the Umayyad Empire, stretching from India to the Iberian Peninsula, Spain and North Africa would benefit from the re-opening of trade lanes from the east. The material depression that the peoples of Spain and North Africa had felt in the collapse of the Roman Empire were now, to some extent, being relieved as a new universal empire had come to control these lands. The Umayyads, using Greek engineering and science passed on to them through their conquests of the Byzantine Levant, began a lavish reconstruction of roads, shipping routes, and running waters. As some would believe, the Umayyads restored civilization to North Africa and Western Europe in their conquests.

It is here, however, that I should pause to counter this claim. This may have been true of the Dark Age paradigm, but hardly reflective of the modern views of Late Antiquity. The “Barbarians,” as we shall find out in my next section covering the post-Roman West, were already Romanized, Latinized, and largely civilized in the same tradition of the Late Romans. Philosophy had flourished, to some extent, under these successor kingdoms, with notable works of Boethius and his Consolation of Philosophy. It is fair, however, to claim that the Umayyads would rebuild upon the old Roman infrastructure that had fallen into disrepair under the Vandals and Visigoths, and laid to ruin in the Byzantine conquests under Justinian.

Furthermore, during the height of the Umayyad Empire, the Umayyads would claim to be the inheritors of the Roman tradition. They presented themselves as Roman (Byzantine), adopted Byzantine court customs, laws, and architectural practices. However, by 750, the Umayyads in the east had all but disappeared. A small remnant of the Umayyad Family, remaining in Spain, would rule over Iberia and Northern Africa, whereby the Europeans would refer to them as the Moors. Strictly speaking, there was no “Moorish Empire.” The Moors were just a term used to designate Muslims from Spain, North Africa, and Italy (mostly in Sicily). The “Moors” were nothing more than various dynastic families that ruled over the lands of the west that had remained in Umayyad hands after the ascent of the Abbasids in Egypt and the Middle East.

A painting of the Umayyad Court in Cordoba. The Umayyads in Spain were generally tolerant, and far away from the homogenization of Sunni Islam back in the Middle East, Sunni Islam in Spain remained inclusive in its relationship with Christians and Jews who mostly co-existed peacefully together. Jews and Christians would even serve in the Umayyad armies in Spain against their Christian brothers. After centuries of warfare on the Iberian Plateau, ending with the eventual Christian triumph of the late fifteenth century, many of these Jews, including the descendants of Christian heretics like the Donatists, who were given safe quarter in Islamic Spain for over seven centuries, would find refuge back in the historic homeland of the Abrahamic religions in Palestine, welcomed back with open arms.
​

Thus, the new Abbasid Caliphate had been founded. Although it claimed de jure control over all the Islamic lands, including those territories still held by the Umayyads in Spain and North Africa, the real base of power for the Abbasids was in the east. The capital was still in Damascus, and the a new wave of learning, science, culture, and architecture was already brewing. The emphasis on the arts and culture during the Abbasid Caliphate is a natural trend in the evolution of states, as, following conquest, they generally revert to more peaceful and domestic pursuits, at least in the theories of Muslim historian and philosopher Ibn Khaldun.

The Abbasids, unlike the Rightly Guided Caliphs and the Umayyads, were less prone to conquest as they were to philosophy, science, mathematics, and the art of building and rebuilding. This penchant for philosophy and science, with the inclusion of the great wealth of the Abbasids through the inheritance of conquest and the vast trading network built by the Umayyads, and only reinforced to a greater degree by themselves, would spark the Islamic Golden Age during the Abbasid Caliphate. For nearly 100 years, the Abbasid Caliphate cultivated the fine art of philosophy, bridging and synthesizing Greek philosophy with Islamic theology. Greek mathematics were taught and elaborated upon, and the Muslim mathematicians would create modern calculus in the process. The classics, like Homer’s epics The Iliad and Odyssey, Virgil’s Aeneid, and the classic treatises of Aristotle, Plato, Pliny, and Tacitus were all translated and widely read in Arabic and Persian in the late Umayyad Empire and well-throughout the entirety of Abbasid history. Unlike Justinian's Byzantine Empire, as we already mentioned he destroyed the old Platonic Academy in Athens, philosophy would flourish in the Abbasid realms - who could very easily have claimed to be the most well-read and educated society in the world, only to be rivaled by the clergy and monks of the Christian West who had preserved the tradition of learning and education, although it was only largely accessible to the elite and the clergy who couldn't reach the rural populace regularly. In the Abbasid Caliphate, poetry and writing and reading was not only widely disseminated among the upper classes (as well as the Islamic clergy), but also trickled down to include a major portion of the common subjects.

Even so, by 874 C.E., right on the eve of the Abbasid Golden Age and the transferring of the Abbasid Court to Baghdad, civil war between the Sunni and Shi’a and a political threat to overthrow the Abbasids from within was about to begin.[1] Thus, like with the Roman Pax Romana, the Islamic Golden Age would be born out of chaos and war.[2] Yet, perhaps it is fitting that, a religion that had torn itself apart so soon, before its glorious renaissance, would contend with old scars once more.

>>> Continue​

[1]This reflects my decision to move the capital to Baghdad when I was playing with the Abbasids. The city of Baghdad was the permanent residence of the Court by 892, so I’m a little bit early in the move.

[2]This too, is not necessarily true, but reflects what transpired in the game during my playthru.

 

[ekorovin]

It always buggers me to no end, that vanilla CK2 starts with Abbasids totally stable empire on the verge of some golden age, while in reality in 867 it was death throws of empire, "Anarchy in Samarra". I've bought TOG specifically to play as Turk or Daylamite warlord, carving an empire for himself out of dying body of Caliphate, and well, I can't do that with any degree of plausibility. Since I can't care less about Vikings, I feel cheated.

 

[Enewald]

I'm curious about the spread of Arabic as a 'lingua france' around the Southern Mediterranean. Before 630 it was just spoken by the nomads and the few kingdoms that existed in Arabia. By 730, the amount of people speaking Arabian might have grown at exponential speed.
How fast were the Syrians, Arameans, Copts, North Africans, Berbers, Spaniards, Sicilians, Iraqis assimilated into 'Arabo-sphere'?

I know Persians resisted the Arab influences and were able to get a Koran in their own language, maintaining their own identity as a special part of the caliphate.

 

[volksmarschall]

It always buggers me to no end, that vanilla CK2 starts with Abbasids totally stable empire on the verge of some golden age, while in reality in 867 it was death throws of empire, "Anarchy in Samarra". I've bought TOG specifically to play as Turk or Daylamite warlord, carving an empire for himself out of dying body of Caliphate, and well, I can't do that with any degree of plausibility. Since I can't care less about Vikings, I feel cheated.

I have a lot of gripes too, especially with how the Islamic world is portrayed in CK2. Let alone that the crescent moon and star icon had not yet been introduced into Islamic iconography, at least not until after the fall of Constantinople so all the banners and shields with those symbols are terribly inaccurate. Yeah, it would be fun since right now the Abbasids should, historically, be dealing with some of the fallout of their decentralization campaigns as it became apparent that the large polity and body politic couldn't control the vast lands they had inherited from the Umayyads.

However, in this sense of the historic breakaway of Samarra as well, this civil war I had to fight was actually in the 870s, and I'm marching on Samarra too! While the Abbasid Golden Age, at least in its infant stage had already started with the construction of the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, it'll only be after I fight this war and restore Abbasid hegemony that I will use (to reflect the game) that to lead into the Golden Age. (So I at least have a historically backdrop to explain why I'm fighting a civil war, rather than with the Byzantines, whereby I just sort of moved to play as them as they were already in a civil war with Nicaea as I described in Chapter 4).

I'm curious about the spread of Arabic as a 'lingua france' around the Southern Mediterranean. Before 630 it was just spoken by the nomads and the few kingdoms that existed in Arabia. By 730, the amount of people speaking Arabian might have grown at exponential speed.
How fast were the Syrians, Arameans, Copts, North Africans, Berbers, Spaniards, Sicilians, Iraqis assimilated into 'Arabo-sphere'?

I know Persians resisted the Arab influences and were able to get a Koran in their own language, maintaining their own identity as a special part of the caliphate.

Arabization may not have happened as quickly as one presumes. Ibn Khaldun, in his other masterpiece the Mediterranean World in the 14th Century: The Rise and Fall of Empires states that the Arabization of the "Berbers" of North Africa was still ongoing (he's writing in the mid to late 14th century). However, this shouldn't remove us from the fact that, with the Arab conquests, the illiterates that were conquered were pushed to adopt Arabic as their language and form of writing. It took centuries, basing my assessment from Ibn Khaldun, who is arguably greater than any philosopher (both in metaphysics, historiography, and political philosophy) than anyone in the Western tradition, before the people who had already established languages, like the Copts, to begin to adopt and adapt to the use of Arabic. The problem is, the Copts kept their language in their writings via the Church and church documents, even though today, they speak Arabic. We just don't know when exactly they stopped speaking Coptic. Abd al-Malik ibn Marwan passed laws that promoted Arabic (late 7th century) but most linguists and historians I've read have said the language survived even into the Mamluk age. The same holds true for the Syriac language as well. Seems to have been a slow and gradual process within those groups that already had a language, while the illiterates were quicker to adopt Arabic.

It seems to be a much slower process than with Hellenization, but the Courts all spoke and transcribed in Arabic (naturally).

 

[GreatUberGeek]

Finally caught back up with this, volksmarschall, much impressed. As usual.
So, an Abbasid Golden Age is imminent? Can't wait! But more war as well.
A very good explanation of how Islam came into prominence, and setting the stage for their new Golden Age. Looking forward to more!

 

[Nathan Madien]

Too bad my work on Paradox which earns me nothing materially gets praise while my actual work is completely unnoticed as of today! :rofl:

You do have a point there, volksmarschall. Our love for your work can only go so far.

...and the Muslim mathematicians would create modern calculus in the process.

Yay! Calculus! *sarcasm*

I hated taking calculus in school. :glare:

 

[Dr.Livingstone]

I hated taking calculus in school. :glare:

Well look on the bright side! If it wasn't for the rather boring subject of calculus, we wouldn't be reading you message right now. I must agree though, I detest calculus.

 

[GreatUberGeek]

Yay! I don't have to take calculus! But the class schedulers are making me basically redo the class I had last year, despite getting into advanced geometry. ::angry:

 

[Enewald]

Calculus is nothing. Statistics on the other hand...

 

[volksmarschall]

Finally caught back up with this, volksmarschall, much impressed. As usual.
So, an Abbasid Golden Age is imminent? Can't wait! But more war as well.
A very good explanation of how Islam came into prominence, and setting the stage for their new Golden Age. Looking forward to more!

Great to see you again here GuG! Yeah, the study of early Islam is fascinating, too bad I don't know Arabic and therefore, am dependent upon German, French, and English Orientalists for my own knowledge! We'll see a pun, or perhaps an irony, in the fact that the Abbasid Golden Age is born out of chaos, and when I do the update on the Golden Age proper, looking at art in particular, you will have a better understanding of the irony I'm alluding to.

You do have a point there, volksmarschall. Our love for your work can only go so far.

Yay! Calculus! *sarcasm*

I hated taking calculus in school. :glare:

Yeah, even publishing in journals isn't that cost-effective, since I'm only paid per research and not actually on what gets published! :glare:

Calculus ruined my love of mathematics, Honors and Advance Placement mathematics student until Calculus!

Well look on the bright side! If it wasn't for the rather boring subject of calculus, we wouldn't be reading you message right now. I must agree though, I detest calculus.

In the words of one of my Economics Profs, since everyone here but Enewald seems to despise calculus, even I do as a trained economist, "Calculus is nothing." :ninja:

Yay! I don't have to take calculus! But the class schedulers are making me basically redo the class I had last year, despite getting into advanced geometry. :angry:

Tough luck dear boy, tough luck!

Calculus is nothing. Statistics on the other hand...

I have the exact opposite view. I hate calculus, but I love statistics -- at least, I've always enjoyed my econometrics more than standard calculus...

 

[Idhrendur]

I had missed the mention of calculus before.

First of all, calculus is awesome. It's the point where you realize all the math you've been studying for years is connected and not just a random collection of formula. Of course, it's also often the point where many people switch from having math teachers who just force-feed formula to teachers who require analysis. It's a hard transition. And besides, discrete math or linear algebra are way more confusing (or any of the crazy things that actual math majors learned. Those people intimidate me).

Second, there was an independent muslim invention/discovery of calculus ahead of Newton/Leibniz's work? Or is that just part of you story? I'm not terribly knowledgeable about the history of mathematics, but I seem to recall there were a lot of critical advancements that took place in the 12th-17th centuries as groundwork first.

 

[volksmarschall]

I had missed the mention of calculus before.

First of all, calculus is awesome. It's the point where you realize all the math you've been studying for years is connected and not just a random collection of formula. Of course, it's also often the point where many people switch from having math teachers who just force-feed formula to teachers who require analysis. It's a hard transition. And besides, discrete math or linear algebra are way more confusing (or any of the crazy things that actual math majors learned. Those people intimidate me).

Second, there was an independent muslim invention/discovery of calculus ahead of Newton/Leibniz's work? Or is that just part of you story? I'm not terribly knowledgeable about the history of mathematics, but I seem to recall there were a lot of critical advancements that took place in the 12th-17th centuries as groundwork first.

One of the reasons why I hate, generally speaking, popular histories especially on the West vs. East dichotomy (*cough* Tom Holland, even if I own some of his works as a good historian should/would) is that it often reiterates bad history from 100 years ago and presents an "us" vs. "them" narrative. Yeah, until the rise of new studies in Islamic History, starting in the 1970s, the old caricature was that of an Orientalist flavor -- The Muslims were a dead civilization, brutal and oppressive, mischievous, but clever. That last 40 years of scholarship has completely overturned this mode of scholarship, hell, it wasn't until the 1970s when historians finally realized the Muslims were a very enlightened, tolerant, and not overly oppressive civilization that very rarely conquered through the old "Convert or Die" motto.

The rediscovery of Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham, a great Muslim mathematician during the Abbasid "Golden Age", really was the first to create the systems and foundations for modern calculus. Here is a brief college/university oriented paper on him (not academic, but it gets the point across of who he was and his contributions). If you have access to JSTOR you can access a very good academic article by Dr. Victor J. Katz, "Ideas of Calculus in Islam and India," Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 68, No. 3 (Jun., 1995), pp. 163-174.

Since I will naturally cover the Golden Age after I discuss having fought a civil war (in-game, I know, a rare in-game post) I was setting the stage for a more modest overview of Islamic accomplishments in art, science, and mathematics. As a historian, I generally like to give credit where credit is due. Islamic mathematicians created 'modern' calculus before Leibniz or Newton.

 

[GreatUberGeek]

The recognition of Islam as a positive force has filtered into history classes in the US now; last year we focused on how Islam developed a lot of things before the West did.

 

[Idhrendur]

One of the reasons why I hate, generally speaking, popular histories especially on the West vs. East dichotomy (*cough* Tom Holland, even if I own some of his works as a good historian should/would) is that it often reiterates bad history from 100 years ago and presents an "us" vs. "them" narrative. Yeah, until the rise of new studies in Islamic History, starting in the 1970s, the old caricature was that of an Orientalist flavor -- The Muslims were a dead civilization, brutal and oppressive, mischievous, but clever. That last 40 years of scholarship has completely overturned this mode of scholarship, hell, it wasn't until the 1970s when historians finally realized the Muslims were a very enlightened, tolerant, and not overly oppressive civilization that very rarely conquered through the old "Convert or Die" motto.

The rediscovery of Abu Ali al-Hasan ibn al-Haytham, a great Muslim mathematician during the Abbasid "Golden Age", really was the first to create the systems and foundations for modern calculus. Here is a brief college/university oriented paper on him (not academic, but it gets the point across of who he was and his contributions). If you have access to JSTOR you can access a very good academic article by Dr. Victor J. Katz, "Ideas of Calculus in Islam and India," Mathematics Magazine, Vol. 68, No. 3 (Jun., 1995), pp. 163-174.

Since I will naturally cover the Golden Age after I discuss having fought a civil war (in-game, I know, a rare in-game post) I was setting the stage for a more modest overview of Islamic accomplishments in art, science, and mathematics. As a historian, I generally like to give credit where credit is due. Islamic mathematicians created 'modern' calculus before Leibniz or Newton.

I'd be inclined to quibble over definitions (calling a body of work calculus when it lacks the fundamental theorem of calculus seems silly to me), but I'm almost certainly wrong. Still, that's even more than I had known had been accomplished in mathematics by the East. And I had already known they had accomplished quite a lot. I just was confounded by the suggested timing.

What's still surprising to me is some of the problems they were solving. I'd have assumed you'd need Descartes' work on algebraic geometry for that, but then that's just how I'm used to approaching such problems. Ancient methods of geometry are mind-blowing to me, too.

 

[ekorovin]

Calculus is OK, discreet mathematics is way worse, statistics is just horribly boring for me.
What has to be said: it's not like Islam really brought scientifically advancement to the Moddle East, it's more the fact that the most scientifically advanced regions of the world were under Muslim control.

 

[volksmarschall]

The recognition of Islam as a positive force has filtered into history classes in the US now; last year we focused on how Islam developed a lot of things before the West did.

That depends on what we're talking about. A lot of things that might be credited to Islam was actually just inherited via the Western tradition, (after all, Islamic Civilization emerges more than 1,000 years later than "Classical" civ.), but were much more effectively elaborated upon than in Greece or Rome.

I'd be inclined to quibble over definitions (calling a body of work calculus when it lacks the fundamental theorem of calculus seems silly to me), but I'm almost certainly wrong. Still, that's even more than I had known had been accomplished in mathematics by the East. And I had already known they had accomplished quite a lot. I just was confounded by the suggested timing.

What's still surprising to me is some of the problems they were solving. I'd have assumed you'd need Descartes' work on algebraic geometry for that, but then that's just how I'm used to approaching such problems. Ancient methods of geometry are mind-blowing to me, too.

Euclidean geometry FTW! Don't underestimate ancient mathematics. They knew the world was round too, and frankly, that old garbage of Columbus going to sail off the world into oblivion is tiring... The Greeks got that down first too!

The article by Katz is better in explaining the foundations of calculus in the Islamic world, if you can access it somehow. (I have access through JSTOR, although I know, most of the common public does not)

Calculus is OK, discreet mathematics is way worse, statistics is just horribly boring for me.
What has to be said: it's not like Islam really brought scientifically advancement to the Moddle East, it's more the fact that the most scientifically advanced regions of the world were under Muslim control.

Precisely.

For nearly 100 years, the Abbasid Caliphate cultivated the fine art of philosophy, bridging and synthesizing Greek philosophy with Islamic theology. Greek mathematics were taught and elaborated upon...
-Chapter 6: The Rise of the Arabs and the Abbasid (Islamic) Golden Age

I must admit, this is a bit vague and that's probably my fault. The Islamic world benefited from, as you said, inherited an Eastern Hellenic and Persian world that had already cultivated science, mathematics, and philosophy to a very high degree. While, from ca. 500-700 these traditions had become weaker, when the Muslims seized these territories and architectural patterns, that's what really sparked the renaissance in the Islamic World. Much like how the 'rediscovery' of the classics in Italy (via the Byzantine migrations after the fall of Constantinople) helped spark the Renaissance in Italy (although, I protest, as a writer in Late Antiquity), the implicit assertion of the Renaissance that the 1,000 years prior to it saw no cultural, philosophical, or institutional innovation.

 

[Nathan Madien]

Euclidean geometry FTW! Don't underestimate ancient mathematics. They knew the world was round too, and frankly, that old garbage of Columbus going to sail off the world into oblivion is tiring... The Greeks got that down first too!

According to a show I saw, the whole "the world is flat" thing was something an early biographer of Columbus invented in order to inject drama into his story. He wanted to present Columbus as the little guy determined to prove to the big guys that they were wrong in thinking that the world is flat when in fact no one thought such thing. People knew the world was round, they just thought the world was smaller than it actually was because they weren't aware that a continent called North America existed between Europe and Asia. That's why he called Native Americans "Indians": because he thought he had landed in India instead of in the Caribbean.

 

[volksmarschall]

According to a show I saw, the whole "the world is flat" thing was something an early biographer of Columbus invented in order to inject drama into his story. He wanted to present Columbus as the little guy determined to prove to the big guys that they were wrong in thinking that the world is flat when in fact no one thought such thing. People knew the world was round, they just thought the world was smaller than it actually was because they weren't aware that a continent called North America existed between Europe and Asia. That's why he called Native Americans "Indians": because he thought he had landed in India instead of in the Caribbean.

Yes, later biographers fabricated the myth, also, again, because pathetic Enlightenment scholars who saw everything in Europe prior to Columbus and the High Renaissance as backwards, said that the world was flat until Columbus, in bravery, proved them all wrong. That's just not true, the Greeks knew the world was round nearly 2,000 years prior to Columbus's voyage and just about everyone in the "Dark Ages" and Middle Ages knew this too.

However, Columbus DID NOT believe he was in India. This is another myth. He had actually thought he had found the Indies (mind you, Europeans had travelled to India and China before, so they knew what to expect and when landing, knew immediately they weren't in India). They thought that they had 'discovered' the rumored Indies somewhere south of India, that's how the etymology of the term Indian entered the English language for Native Americans. However, it was also very soon after that they realized they weren't in the Indies either.