 The golden age of Islam, when Muslims ruled the world, well, at least a significant part of it. And when the classical knowledge of ancient Greece and other concurrent civilizations were granted new life through the protection and translations of their ancient literature, philosophical, and scientific treatises, worked from classical authors like Plato, Aristotle, Hippocrates, Galen, Ptolemy, and Diosecretes. A time when Baghdad, Damascus, Cairo, and the cities of Andalusia prospered with numerous educational institutions that saw many advancements in mathematics, astronomy, philosophy, medicine, and other sciences. A time when the knowledge being produced and created was without any restrictions towards the race or religion of its scholars, Christian, Jew, and Muslim, united in creating a zeitgeist of scientific discovery and natural rationalism. An age which began in the 8th century and one that would last for many centuries, and then, all of a sudden, poof, gone, no more discovery, no more knowledge, and no more golden age. So what happened? What led to the collapse of this amazing and vibrant golden age of Islam? There are many hypotheses as to why the age ended, some that are a little simplistic, while others with much more plausibility and credibility. I will present five reasons that attempt to explain why and how the collapse of the golden age happened. The first supposed cause for the fall wasn't necessarily a failure at all on behalf of the Muslim nation, but one due to the ascendancy and advancements of Europe, leading to the Renaissance age and its feeding off of the collective knowledge and scholarship of the Islamic Empire, thereby eclipsing the Muslims within a century or two. Not an easy theory to prove, yet nonetheless, from a historical analysis standpoint, the sequencing does make some sense. The student became the master. The second reason that attempts to explain the fall of the golden age was the cycles of the rise and fall of empires in history, like ancient Egypt, Mesopotamia, Persia, Greece, and Rome. All had their centuries of dominance and role with significant advancements in knowledge and the sciences, as well as accomplishments from a political and military perspective. But these all came to an end when complacency and moral corruption exemplified the behavior and modus operandi of the ruling factions of these times. The same can be said about the golden age of Islam. Gradual fragmentation of the Abbasid Caliphate, the empire responsible for the rise of the golden age, resulted in the proliferation of more and more subsects within the Islamic faith, as well as much more independent seeking political direction among the various Muslim territories, hence creating a major state of discord amongst the nation. Again, not so easy to prove, but when looking at previous empires as precedents, the cycle of rise, domination, and fall does indeed align. Why was the Islamic Empire any different and exempt to such a fate? The third justification for the fall of the golden age is one that western thinkers believe as the one to have most likely contributed towards the downfall, and that is the role of the Muslim polyglot, Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali, known in the West as Al-Ghazal, in establishing a certain epistemological course of Islamic thought. Here is a favorite western thinker giving his five cents worth on the matter declaring how a single man's written words brought down the entire Islamic golden age. In that text included the assertion which gained influence socially but then politically, so then it had power of influence. In there was the assertion that mathematics and the manipulation of numbers was the work of the devil. The entire enterprise collapsed and never recovered. It has not recovered since. Al-Ghazali in the 11th century CE had written a book called Tahafut al-Falasifah, meaning the incoherence of the philosophers. In this book, Al-Ghazali specifically criticized the Ibn Sina philosophical schools doctrines concerning their discourse on religion and the natural world. The book was not an attack on philosophy or science, but on the Avicenna School specifically and their theories that in his opinion were incoherently presented. At no point did Al-Ghazali state that mathematics was the work of the devil. This myth supposes the western narrative that religion and science are at constant conflict with each other. Just as the Christian church was in conflict with the science of Galileo, the same must have been true with Al-Ghazali and the Islamic scientists, philosophers and scholars. I'm not sure how one man brings down an entire empire, but what is fact is that the academic and scientific advancements in the golden age kept continuing on well beyond Al-Ghazali's time and well into the 15th century, thereby busting the myth that his book brought an end to Muslim curiosity, ingenuity and invention. The fourth identified cause for the fall of the golden age has been attributed to the Mongol invasions in the 13th century and the eventual siege and sacking of Baghdad, the center of Islamic power for over five centuries. When hundreds of thousands of Muslims were killed and many educational institutions were raised to the ground, thereby losing many, many hundreds of thousands of manuscripts and books. The Mongols weren't content with the destruction of Baghdad alone, but carried on towards the Levant and captured both Aleppo and Damascus within the decade, consequently ending the reign of the Ayyubid dynasty. Having three epicenters of knowledge and education of an empire comprehensively destroyed due to invasion would only have weakened the ability for the golden age to persevere. Such extreme instability would rock the foundations of any civilization. The final reason for the fall of the golden age of Islam and one I believe to be the most impactful is due to two events that took place almost simultaneously in the 15th century. These two events are the discovery of the New World by Christopher Columbus in 1492 and the first successful maritime route to India via the Cape of Good Hope by Vasco de Gama in 1497 CE. These two new discoveries would hit the Islamic Empire hard, as they degraded the importance of the Silk Road, the network of Eurasian trade routes that depended greatly on the ease and security of passage along Muslim lands. Upon the discovery of new maritime trade routes to India and the Far East, as well as the new lands in the Americas to be exploited, the dependency on the Silk Road diminished drastically, leaving the Islamic Empire and economy in a state of shock. Gone was a taxation levied on the tradesmen seeking passage and gone was the foreign expenditure and historic purchasing power that took place in accommodating the trading industry. The Muslim coffers were far emptier than they ever were for hundreds of years. Expenditure had to be reined in and the first casualty was the patronization of the educational system. Funding ceased for the many schools and scholars who over the many centuries had created so much value for the Islamic civilization. And so the lack of money and its impact on the ability to maintain the creation and development of knowledge was the culprit for the gradual end of the Golden Age. All these reasons vary greatly in their timing and history. They span a period almost four centuries long and when we think about how any civilization that was powerful and prosperous came to an end, there was never a key episode that resulted in its demise. In my opinion, the death of the Silk Road is indeed the most powerful and convincing as it took away the life source of education and invention, the support through money. But maybe we should allow for a point of view where all the reasons mentioned did play their part in the gradual collapse of the Golden Age with the deprioritizing of the Silk Road as the final shot of mercy. The Golden Age of Islam played its vital part in the progress of humanity, the impacts of which we still observe in our day-to-day lives, mathematics, science, medicine, discovery of space and much more. That though is only history. As with any cycle of civilization, the question that presents itself is when will the cycle bring us back to another Golden Age of Islam? When will Muslims stop recalling the past when taking pride in relaying their achievements? How do we overcome the current momentum of latency that the Muslim world has when it comes to advancements in sciences and inventions in technology? The answers to these questions I shall leave for the next video. So till the next time. Bye-bye.