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Comment by Beijinger | Hacker News Reader

What went wrong? During the middle ages the Arabs developed a brilliant civilization, or so we are told. Next, at some time during the fifteenth century, things began going wrong. The Arabs missed the invention of print (only in 1775 did the Ottomans, who at that time ruled over most Arabs, allow the first printing shop to be established. They missed humanism, the Renaissance, and the Reformation. They missed the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment. They missed the French and American Revolutions along with the principles of democracy and human rights; and they also missed the industrial revolution. http://www.martin-van-creveld.com/monsters-ii/

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The printing press was banned as a cynical ploy by Ottoman rulers to suppress the Arab peoples. They knew this would reduce innovation, which Arabs were adept at - maybe even reduce Arab innovation for centuries - but hey, you can’t make an omelette without cracking some eggs right?

Ottomans wrote the whole playbook for Middle Eastern dictators: systematically favor the ethnoreligious groups you like, ensure that any big business opportunities are channeled through them, and then for disfavored ethnoreligious groups, suppress avenues to wealth which can be used against their rulers. Then, with the massive vacuum of intelligence left behind as a result of this policy, let fundamentalists misuse religion in such a way to keep your opponents simple and stupid (whereas during the Islamic Golden Age, scientists were inspired by Islam to make groundbreaking discoveries, and they in turn helped spark the Enlightenment in Europe).

A variation of "divide et impera" divide and rule - a strategy probably as old as the concept of an empire.

The golden age of Muslim civilization had ended over 200 years earlier due to Mongol invasions and their aftermath. After that they stagnated while Europe started to rapidly advance 150 years later.

Read up on the Mongol invasions, and particularly their conquest of Baghdad (the capital of the then ruling Abassid Khilafat). They slaughtered scholars en masses, and dumped so many books into the Tigris that it's said that the river turned black (from ink), not red.

Baghdad is smaller today than it was then. Just to show how much of an impact was felt.

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