| Turkish said: "I would begin them in 541 when Justinian invaded and damaged the economic output so much, that it would take over 500 years to recover." Lol, I love how people randomly throw around some numbers, "500 years to recover" Dark Ages prolly refer to the christians tough, since muslims experience their rennaisance period. |
What I mean is that it wasn't until around 1070 when the economic output of Italy had reached the same levels that it had pre-Justinian. After the Justinian invasion, rather than repairing and maintaining Roman architecture, the whole area was left to common peoples whose primary purpose was simple survival.
Golden Age for the Islamic peoples, and this actually did include Spain as well, and a large part of it had to do with the stabilization that occurred over the conquered regions. Many of the huge cultural centers of western civilization (Including Cordoba in Spain, Alexandria in Egypt, and Western Asia Minor). I guess you could say that the Umayyid invasion of Spain wasn't really detrimental to the population there, since by 752 the Umayyid's had already been overthrown here, and the Caliphate of Cordoba had gained its independence. Since Spain continued to grow in this period, it could be argued that the real collapse there didn't occur until the last years of the Caliphate between 1008 and 1031. Cordoba also maintained a Christian majority for most of its existence who shared in this Golden Age (and Christian priests and Jewish Rabbis were allowed to maintain their scholarly work in this period). The Great Library of Cordoba housed over 600,000 volumes until it burned down in the revolts of 1008.
I describe myself as a little dose of toxic masculinity.
