It's no good coming up with Muslim inventions, because it misses the point, and encourages people to say: "if the carpet is on the top-20 list of Muslim inventions, it's not a particularly important culture."
The *real* importance of Muslim history (ignoring its religious importance) is that the Muslims kept alive the culture of the Greek and Roman philosophers while Europe dived into the Dark Ages.
If Muslim culture hadn't existed, there would have been nothing for the European renaissance to rediscover. It would have taken several hundred years for Europeans to rebuild the Greek foundations of Mathematics, Science and Philosophy, and the Enlightenment would have happened much later.
It's no good coming up with Muslim inventions, because it misses the point, and encourages people to say: "if the carpet is on the top-20 list of Muslim inventions, it's not a particularly important culture."
The *real* importance of Muslim history (ignoring its religious importance) is that the Muslims kept alive the culture of the Greek and Roman philosophers while Europe dived into the Dark Ages.
If Muslim culture hadn't existed, there would have been nothing for the European renaissance to rediscover. It would have taken several hundred years for Europeans to rebuild the Greek foundations of Mathematics, Science and Philosophy, and the Enlightenment would have happened much later.
-nigel