
Originally Posted by
Andalusian girls
though a prevalent view it is not a particularly accurate one. Baghdad (and the Abbasid Caliphate it was the ostensible capital of but in truth the Caliph's secular authority did not extend beyond a small Mesopotamian enclave) was a shell of itself by the time Genghis's grandson showed up and the epicenters of Islamic learning had emigrated to Egypt and Andalusia. even then the perihelion of Islamic's golden age had long passed it by, its greatest scientists and mathematicians centuries dead, and with the aforementioned exceptions the polities extant in the Muslim world in the 13th century had ossified and mystified, and their great pursuit and refinement of Classical knowledge had been subverted by an ever more slavish devotion to Quranic Scripture, and by the political and military demands of fractious and decaying empire.
it's fairly analogous to Rome 'falling' in 476 despite the Empire's cultural/political/economic loci transitioning to other locations (primarily Constantinople) centuries prior, and the irregular rhythm of imperial disintegration that defined the 4th and 5th centuries. it's a nice neat figure to remember to wow the cocktail cliteratti, but it doesn't tell an accurate story.