Originally Posted by
Gilroy
Throughout the Middle Ages, the Muslim world was more advanced and more civilized than Christian Western Europe, which learned a huge amount from its neighbor.
The Islamic world - a more advanced civilization
Islamic World stretched from India to Spain.
Muslim traders travelled to places as far apart as the Sahara, South Africa, China, Scandinavia and Russia.
Muslims traded high-quality goods such as silk, carpets, ivory and spices.
Knowledge of science and medicine in the Islamic world was far more sophisticated than in Western Europe.
Cordoba in Muslim Spain was a city of over half a million inhabitants with street lighting and running water. At the same time 10,000 Londoners lived in timber-framed houses and used the river as their sewer.
Muslims were going to beauty parlors, using deodorants and drinking from glasses, at a time when English books of behavior were still telling page-boys not to pick their nose over their food, spit on the table, or throw uneaten food onto the floor.
Fatima Al Fihri (A Woman) founded a madrasa and university, (which just so happens to be the oldest continually running university to date), later becoming a center of advances in thought in the Islamic world.
Islamic paper makers devised assembly-line methods of hand-copying manuscripts to turn out editions far larger than any available in Europe for centuries. It was from these countries that the rest of the world learned to make paper from linen.
As the Dark Ages ravaged Europe, Islam produced countess works of art, science, literature, poetry and architecture. But you know what they say about all good things. In 1258, the Mongols sacked Baghdad and destroyed the House of Wisdom. Legend holds that so many books were thrown into the Tigris River that it ran black with ink. The Caliphate was demolished.
