"WHILE EUROPE LAPSED IN THE DARK AGE"

Jacob Bronowski, The Ascent of Man, foreword by Melvyn Bragg (London: The Folio Society, 2012) ("Every so often, the spread of ideas demands a new impulse. The coming of Islam six hundred years after Christ was the new, powerful impulse. It started as a local event, uncertain in its outcome; but once Mahomet conquered Mecca in AD 630, it took the southern world by storm. In a hundred years, Islam captured Alexandria, established a fabulous city of learning in Baghdad, and thrust its frontier to the east beyond Isfahan in Persia. By AD 730 the Moslem empire reached from Spain and southern France to the borders of China and India: an empire of spectacular strength and grace, while Europe lapsed in the Dark Ages." "In this proselytizing religion, the science of the conquered nations was gathered with a kleptomaniac zest. At the same time, there was a liberation of simple, local skills that had been despised. For instance, the first domed mosques were built with no more sophisticated apparatus than the ancient builder's set square--that is still used. The Masjid-i-Jomi (the Friday Mosque) in Isfahan is one of the statuesque monuments of early Islam. In centres like these, the knowledge of Greece and of the East was treasured, absorbed and diversified." Id. at 101-102.).