I rephrased it to: "The European Reinassance was essentially the assimilation of the cultural wealth amassed by the Islamic empire."
This is more accurate. But I think their influence was much more far reaching than just passing on Greek literature:
- Before paper, parchments were used. A bible took 3000 sheep or goat to print.
- They adopted Indian numerals and adapted them to the form we use today. Imagine Copernicus calculating trajectories of planets with Roman numbers.
- Nicolaus Copernicus started his studies using almanacs and tables such as the Alfonsine tables, the tables were originally in Arabic and were collected/translated by Alfonso X of Castile in Toledo. They included observations ranging from the days of Ptolomy onwards.
- Many Western discoveries came from innovations in optics (e.g: telescope, microscope). The Islamic empire did great contributions to the field of optics. They experimented with reflection, refraction, lenses, etc... and that is original work with literature to support it.
For French speakers out there, I saw a great documentary called something like 'History of the world from a middle eastern point of view' in 2 parts that discusses the islamic golden age and its downfall to the mongols. Apparently Bagdad was the place to be before the Mongols destroyed it.
This is more accurate. But I think their influence was much more far reaching than just passing on Greek literature:
- Before paper, parchments were used. A bible took 3000 sheep or goat to print.
- They adopted Indian numerals and adapted them to the form we use today. Imagine Copernicus calculating trajectories of planets with Roman numbers.
- Nicolaus Copernicus started his studies using almanacs and tables such as the Alfonsine tables, the tables were originally in Arabic and were collected/translated by Alfonso X of Castile in Toledo. They included observations ranging from the days of Ptolomy onwards.
- Many Western discoveries came from innovations in optics (e.g: telescope, microscope). The Islamic empire did great contributions to the field of optics. They experimented with reflection, refraction, lenses, etc... and that is original work with literature to support it.