The Legacy from the Arab World

Abstract

In the declining years of the third century AD, the Roman empire was split into two. Of these, the eastern part flourished well and emerged as the Byzantine empire in the course of time; but the western part drifted down till it fell to the barbarian conquests by the end of the fifth century. With that began many years of instability and anarchy in western Europe. The stage was set for the world to lose forever the earlier scientific contributions of the Greeks, which would have been a disaster. And indeed, that is what would have happened—but for the phenomenal rise of the Arab civilization, which preserved the earlier knowledge of humanity.