Islamic Golden Age: Encyclopedia II - Islamic Golden Age - Foundations

Islamic Golden Age - Foundations

Islamic governments inherited "the knowledge and skills of the ancient Middle East, of Greece, of Persia and of India. They added new and important innovations from outside, such as the manufacture of paper from China and decimal positional numbering from India", as Bernard Lewis writes in What Went Wrong?.

Much of this learning and development can be linked to geography. Even prior to Islam's presence, the city of Mecca served as a center of trade in Arabia and Muhammad was a merchant. The tradition of the pilgrimage to Mecca became a center for exchanging ideas and goods. The influence held by Muslim merchants over African-Arabian and Arabian-Asian trade routes was tremendous. As a result, Islamic civilization grew and expanded on the basis of its merchant economy, in contrast to their Christian, Indian and Chinese peers who built societies from an agricultural landholding nobility. Merchants brought goods and their faith to China (resulting in a significant population of Chinese Muslims with an estimated 37 million followers, mainly ethnic Turkic Uyghur whose territory was annexed to China), India, southeast Asia, and the kingdoms of western Africa and returned with new inventions. Merchants used their wealth to invest in textiles and plantations.

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Foundations", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki