You are quite right. A lot of people underestimate the international connections a specific local place had at some time in history, this is the case with Europe as well. After the Roman Empire fell, its knowledge, writings, and customs were somewhat preserved in Western Europe, but their real preservation and translation occurred in the Byzantine Empire and Islamic world. Then in the 15th century the lifestyle, innovations, and preserved writings from these places and others as far as China gained traction in Europe again. This helped kick-start the Renaissance.

I'm being a little pedantic, but this is a little misleading:

> After the Roman Empire fell, its knowledge, writings, and customs were somewhat preserved in Western Europe, but their real preservation and translation occurred in the Byzantine Empire

This is, of course, because the 'Byzantine' Empire was the Roman Empire, and continued to operate as such for almost a millennia after its loss of territories in the West, some of which it regained and lost again during that time.

> and Islamic world.

Many, many texts were lost and destroyed during the very violent Muslim conquests. It wasn't until much later that mostly ex-Roman and ex-Persian subjects began reviving learning from what had survived.

> hen in the 15th century the lifestyle, innovations, and preserved writings from these places and others as far as China gained traction in Europe again.

An important factor in this was the threatened, and then eventual, destruction of the Roman capital, Constantinople. Learned scholars fled as refugees to the west, bringing their books with them. Without the Turks destroying what was left of the Roman Empire, there might have been no Renaissance.

Indeed, it's almost a meme at this point how many people on r/AskHistorians ask the same questions about the Roman Empire repeatedly yet it gets a fraction of the questions (or interest) in the Islamic empires. The entire Middle Ages and Renaissance were sharply defined by the Western response to the Islamic empires of the region, from the Reconquista to the Crusades.

Don't forget the rise of the Carolingian dynasty is driven in part by their wars against the Muslims.

Not only is Charles Martel (and to a lesser extent, his father who seemed to be a nobody before taking over Francia) one of histories absolute badasses, but the Carolingian Renaissance basically created the Catholic Church as we know it (and as we think about it in history) and brought writing back to the mainstream in Europe which eventually allowed what we know as the Renaissance to even take off.

It’s a shame that outside of historical circles and the well read nobody knows who Charlemagne is, or they know he was a person but have no idea what he did. To me the “Dark Ages” are just as, if not more, fascinating that the Imperial era of Rome. I also do think that (Dark Ages) is a good term if applied a little earlier to right after the fall of Rome until the rise of Charlemagne.

> It’s a shame that outside of historical circles and the well read nobody knows who Charlemagne is

Except for all the French, and neighbouring French-speaking countries... (and probably other European countries, but I wasn't exposed to their education system).

I'm on the other side of Germany (Czechia) and everybody knows who Charlemagne is, it's basic education here, you learn it in 6th grade. It's not that positive figure here though, Czech people didn't submit willingly to his empire.

Maybe it’s just an American thing, then.

>and to a lesser extent, his father who seemed to be a nobody before taking over Francia

Pepin of Heristal was the most powerful man of Austrasia, from one of the most powerful families in the Frankish world (descended from Rhenan Frankish royalty). His ancestry includes extremely prestigious bishops and lords.

There's nothing about him that screams "nobody".

Charlemagne (or Karel de Grote as we call him in Dutch) is a pretty big deal in our history. We've learned about him in primary school and again, somewhat more in depth, in secondary school.

Of course not everyone knows what he did. Most people aren't all that interested in history. You could say the same thing about most historical figures. As a quick guess Julius Caesar, Napoleon and Hitler are the most obvious of a pretty short list of counterexamples that are so well-known that almost everybody has at least some idea of what they did. Even that is going to be pretty limited: I suppose a lot of people here in Belgium are aware of Caesar because he came here to conquer, and provides the oldest written sources of our regions. But not a lot of people are aware of his role in the end of the Roman Republic.

I’d also argue that, in America at least, most people don’t know much about Napoleon either other than he was some guy who existed and was French.

All children in France know Charlemagne for his beard and mustache, and the fact that this asshole invented the schools they have to sit in to learn about him.

Yup! The Muslims left a huge mark on everything in that time period.

They were the torchbearers of knowledge during that period of time. After the Siege of Baghdad and the Reconquista, that torch was passed to us.

You mean the influence where they sacked Constantinople in 1453 after centuries of attempts, destroying the Christian Byzantine empire and sending huge numbers of Byzantine writers and intellectuals fleeing to settle in Europe?

I mean if we look at the time period... everybody did this to everyone. European states had bloody dynastic and religious wars. The intrigues of city-states on the Italian peninsula created one of the most treacherous political environments of all time, inspiring Machiavelli to write his renowned book on power. In the half-century prior, England invaded France and ravaged for a hundred years, and Europeans regularly attacked Islamic empires in the Middle East.

It was bloody all around, because there wasn't a whole lot of stability. But this didn't stop these different cultures from exchanging knowledge and goods as well, as Islamic empires, Italian merchants, and other players all had high levels of development and innovations that were quickly copied. I'm sure the sacking of Constantinople did lead to an influx of knowledge into Western Europe, but it was all these different factors that led to the appearance of the Renaissance.

Of course, I'd never suggest a single-cause explanation. And as someone else pointed out, there were lots of advances happening before 1453 as well. I think the sack of Constantiople really threw gas on the coals though.

It was an exceptional event. Most wars in that era were nobles fighting over thrones; the Islamic invasions were a bit more intense than that in that they were from a totally separate religio-cultural tradition and would overturn the entire power structure and ultimately even push peasants to convert.

In a war between kings of the same religion, the priests/imams and lower nobles (i.e. intellectual and writer classes) could potentially stay in their posts even as the front line moved over them. Not so true when it's an entirely different religion.

I think “Islamic Invasions” is a bit too broad of a term. You are referencing the Ottoman Turks specifically.

The funny thing is that Ottomans saw this whole event through a very different lens. They didn’t call themselves the Ottomans or Turks. They, along with their predecessors The Sultanate of Rum (Rome), and the Seljuks, considered themselves the continuation of the Roman Empire.

After the conquest of Constantinople, Mehmed II crowned himself the Caesar of the Roman Empire.

Turks waged a war of expansion to reclaim the Roman Empire for themselves. The religion was just a side effect.

This isn't really true.

They claimed these titles because they intended to or did conquer Roman territory, and it was a prestigious title.

See https://history.stackexchange.com/questions/59352/did-the-se... for a reasonable discussion.

That's a great discussion, thanks for the link.

Yeah I guess the calling it a cultural continuation of Rome is wrong.

It's kind of hard to describe this in words because "culture" implies so many things like language, customs, and religion. The "Turkish Rome" didn't really inherit any of those traits.

However, while this probably originated just as a manufactured claim, a casus belli for the Roman lands, over time it seems to have still evolved into something a bit more. Owning Constantinople didn't make people Roman in terms of culture, but it did make them an empire. Sulatane of Rum existed next to Rome for many years and seems to have considered itself a "better Rome than existing Rome".

Makes me think of a parallel with the Holy Roman Empire, which similarly clung on to the title, but not the culture of Rome.

"After the conquest of Constantinople, Mehmed II crowned himself the Caesar of the Roman Empire."

Well yes, that's how feudal systems work. If you take over a country, you get to have its titles. This is how e.g. an English king could conquer Scotland and crown himself king of Scotland. It doesn't mean he always identified as Scottish.

The language "reclaim the Roman empire" is really a stretch since it implies that the Ottomans had some sort of self-image as the natural heirs to Rome before they took Constantinople. Is there any evidence for this?

Why would they need to conquer Constantinople to do this, given that the Byzantines weren't trying to conquer, y'know, actual Rome?

I'm not saying you're wrong. People come up with lots of rationales for wars. And claiming historical right is a popular one, but that goes alongside other motivations as well.

My outside-view assumption would be that this is modern-day politically-motivated interpretation. These days, progressives rules the universities and the history departments. Therefore, they want to advance progressive goals. The see Muslims as a victim class, which means they don't want Islam to be seen in a negative light. Therefore, they would want to avoid historical interpretations wherein Muslims are conquering for self-understood religious reasons like ISIS did so recently. So I think they'd come up with something like, "Oh no, the Ottomans just wanted to reclaim their Rome."

Any time you read history you need to take into account the incentives faced by the people writing it.

In any case, when I refer to Islamic invasions I'm referring to the whole string of them going back to the Abbasid Caliphate - the conquest of Egypt, Arabia, Persia, all of north Africa, Spain, India, etc etc motivated by a self-declared doctrine of holy war (itself used for political ends by individual rulers, of course). I see Constantinople 1453 as just one small episode in this 1400-year story.

The Byzantines (I prefer to call them the ERE, but I'll call them the Byzantines as it's more recognized in lay discourse) had been under threat for a long time, and if the Turks hadn't sacked Istanbul/Constantinople, some other polity would have. Western Europeans sacked Istanbul/Constantinople in 1204 and ruled it as part of the Latin Empire until 1261, when it was retaken. The Byzantines ran into trouble with the Bulgarian kingdoms and the Kievan Rus constantly, along with their Islamic neighbors. If it wasn't the Turks it would have probably been the Bulgars or the Rus.

Did you forget that the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople in 1204, which did more damage to the Byzantine Empire than the Ottoman conquest in 1453?

Just calling them "Byzantine" itself is a fun piece of revisionism that the West has adopted. The Byzantines saw themselves as Roman, called themselves Roman, and viewed themselves as a continuation of the Roman Empire. It was Western ambitions in Jerusalem and through the Western Catholic Church that caused this distinction to be so heavily emphasized by the West.

And basically immediately after this event, traders from Europe were interacting heavily with traders from the Islamic World. The focus on these military campaigns (Constantinople + Vienna being the big ones) is based on modern narratives around "the clash of civilizations", not actual history.

1453? Who is talking about 1453 here?

I am talking about the 12th century.

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The bibliography used to kickstart the Reinassance: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_translations_of_the_12th...

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Paper, and by extension, scalable libraries: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_paper#Paper_in_Euro...

> The oldest known paper document in Europe is the Mozarab Missal of Silos from the 11th century, probably using paper made in the Islamic part of the Iberian Peninsula.

No paper = Books made out of parchements = Prohibitively expensive books = No libraries = No scholars

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"Our" modern higher education system: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ijazah

> George Makdisi, professor of oriental studies, theorized that the ijazah was the origin of the university academic degree as well as the doctorate.

No universities = No doctorates = No advisors = No science

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"Our" modern astronomy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alfonsine_tables

> The Alfonsine tables were the most popular astronomical tables in Europe and updated versions were regularly produced for three hundred years. Nicolaus Copernicus, known as the father of modern astronomy, bought a copy while at the University of Cracow.

No astronomic data = No modern astronomy = No laws of gravity and motion = No physics

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"Our" philosophy that is tolerant to science: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholasticism#Early_Scholastic...

> This period saw the beginning of the 'rediscovery' of many Greek works which had been lost to the Latin West. As early as the 10th century, scholars in Spain had begun to gather translated texts and, in the latter half of that century, began transmitting them to the rest of Europe.

No tolerance to science = Scientists harassed by the church = Science becomes impossible to conduct.

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"Our" understanding of optics: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Snell%27s_law

> The law eventually named after Snell was first accurately described by the Persian scientist Ibn Sahl at the Baghdad court in 984. In the manuscript On Burning Mirrors and Lenses, Sahl used the law to derive lens shapes that focus light with no geometric aberrations. The law was rediscovered by Thomas Harriot in 1602.

No optics = No astronomy = No age of exploration

No optics = No microscopes = No biology = No modern medicine

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... And the list goes on, and on, and on. The Reinassance is the legacy of the Islamic civilization. It is overwhelmingly clear. Your school teachers lied to you, and their teachers lied to them.

Don't believe me? Take a look here: https://genealogy.math.ndsu.nodak.edu/extrema.php

The first doctoral advisors were Islamic. Every known scientist is somehow a student of them. Follow the chain of doctoral advisors and learn the unavoidable truth.

Enjoy your new, more historically accurate perspective on the world. Downvote all you want, eventually your descendants will learn the truth in school one day anyways, when we are done undoing the revisionism.

Yeah, I don't believe you.

In general, if you want people believing you, try not to use throwaway accounts and pre-typed copy-pasted answers, but instead engage in dialogue.

It is your choice to trust whatever you want to trust. But if you have intellectual curiosity, you'll eventually arrive to a similar conclusion.

Have you ever asked yourself "how was paper adopted in europe?", "where do universities come from?", "what was needed in order to be a scientist in the middle ages?", if you haven't, try to find an answer to those questions.

There's a eurocentric answer to those questions, and a non-eurocentric answer. The eurocentric answer either ignores or downplays the importance of all the influence coming from the Islamic civilization through the Iberian peninsula and Italic peninsula.

The Renaissance undoubtedly owes a lot to medieval Islamic scholars. But to say that it's the "legacy of the Islamic world" implies a degree of continuity that just isn't true. The thinkers of the Renaissance didn't view themselves as inheritors of the Islamic scholarly tradition, and many saw the Muslim world as what we might call "scary foreigners" today; it does nobody any good to whitewash that.

The very fact that thinkers of the Renaissance thought that is itself a form of whitewashing. The very books that sparked the Renaissance were kept alive by the Islamic empires. The Renaissance thinkers, in order to advance their Christianity, wanted to ignore the Islamic contributions to their culture. In certain cases, like the Mozarabs and the Moors, Islamic architecture and customs deeply influenced what later became Catholic states. While the OP may be overly forceful, the repudiation of Islamic empires from the Middle Ages onward is a massive disservice to history. Let's not forget that the Ottomans were on the German side of WWI, the same state that traced its lineage through the Byzantines back to the ancient Islamic caliphates themselves.

We owe a lot of our modern lifestyle to lots of repugnant things that happened in the past that enabled progress for sure.

Are you sure that people are denying what you think? I've never encountered a view contrary to what you're describing; the Islamic roots of algebra in particular are pretty well-known in my experience.