Episode 20 – When Did Islamic Golden Age End

Islamic Golden Age (2017)

By Eamon Gearon

Film Review

The “official” date the Islamic Gold Age ended was 1258, when Mongol warriors sacked Baghdad (the largest city on Earth), causing 300,000 to 1 million deaths. However by the 12th century, Islamic fundamentalism had already shut down scientific inquiry.

The Mongol conquest followed ten years of of continual warfare, which had so reduced trade the Abassid caliphate could no longer defend itself. In addition to slaughtering large numbers of civilians, the Mongols destroyed canals and large swaths of agricultural land.

In Andalusia (Iberian peninsula), intellectual inquiry shut down in the 11th century. Beginning in 718-722 AD, Spanish Christians conquered and ruled Northern Iberia, and in the late 11th century  Berber Muslims, invited by Andalusian Muslims to help fight the Christians, established the Almoravid kingdom. The latter were displaced by Almohad Berbers in 1147 AD, who effectively ended Andalusia’s golden age of cross fertilization by expelling all the kingdom’s Jews and Christians.

Ironically, due to the First Crusade (1096-1099 AD),* as the Islamic renaissance declined in the Middle East, Muslim influence increased in Europe. With the establishment of Crusader states (the Kingdom of Jerusalem, the County of Edessa, the Principality of Antioch and the County of Tripoli), Italian merchants from Geneva, Pisa and Venice remained in the Middle East and served as a pipeline of Islamic scientific and philosophical discoveries to the Italian Renaissance.

Also conquered by Mongols, the Song Dynasty in China (responsible for the invention of gunpowder and paper money) collapsed in 1271.

By 1340, Cairo, population 500,000 had established itself as the largest city west of China and the center of global trade.

*One of the earliest examples of European colonization.

https://www.kanopy.com/en/pukeariki/watch/video/5756987/5757033