Muslim science.

By any index, the Muslim world produces a disproportionately small amount of scientific output, and much of it relatively low in quality. . . .

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While Islam has yet to reconcile faith and reason, other factors such as dictatorial regimes and unstable funding are more important obstacles to science and technology's again flourishing in the Muslim world. Significant progress, in other words, depends on changes in values and institutions -- no small order.

THE HISTORICAL RECORD

We start with a brief history of science and technology in the Muslim world . . . . In a nutshell, the Muslim experience consists of a golden age in the tenth through thirteenth centuries, a subsequent collapse, a modest rebirth in the nineteenth century, and a history of frustration in the twentieth century. The deficiency in Muslim science and technology is particularly intriguing given that Muslims were world leaders in science and technology a millennium ago . . . .

Golden Age. The period 900-1200 A.D. represents the approximate apogee of Muslim science, which flourished in Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, and Cordoba, among other cities. Significant progress was made in such areas as medicine, agronomy, botany, mathematics, chemistry, and optics. As Muslims vied with Chinese for intellectual and scientific leadership, Christian Europe lagged far behind both.

This golden age was definitely Muslim in that it took place in predominantly Muslim societies, but was it Islamic, that is, connected to the religion of Islam? States were officially Islamic, and intellectual life took place within a self-consciously Islamic environment. Ahmad al-Hassan and Donald R. Hill, two historians of technology, see Islam as "the driving force behind the Muslim scientific revolution when the Muslim state reached its peak." But non-Muslims had a major role in this effort, and much of the era's scientific achievements took place in a tolerant and cosmopolitan intellectual atmosphere quite independent of the religious authorities.

Why Does the Muslim World Lag in Science? By Aaron Segal, Middle East Quarterly, 6/99 (emphasis added; footnotes omitted).