Turkey's Erdogan orders the conversion of Hagia Sophia back into a mosque

[polymath257]

Rather an over simplified view, frankly.

A great deal of Greek knowledge was preserved by the Byzantine empire. This is the source of many of the texts later translated for western Europe.

Islamic civilization didn't *just* preserve that knowledge: it extended that knowledge in many different directions. In particular, a lot of advances were made in medicine, mathematics, astronomy, optics, etc.

Once in Europe, it was primarily the Christian monks that did the translations and the Christian cathedral schools that discussed and promoted the 'new' learning. It was there that many ideas concerning motion, inertia, the nature of the vacuum, and other physical concepts were elucidated. It was a monk that first investigated what we know would call fractional exponents and imagined irrational exponents.

Also, the Christian view partly underlies the very notion of a 'natural law', with the corresponding idea that humans could potentially discover and understand such laws. Much of this discussion serves as the foundation for the much later rise of modern science.

My view towards science is that it's best utilized and practiced by all humans together; not just a portion of society. Under this view I treasure the "Open Source" method of spreading knowledge.

Science in its image today is a collaboration of cultures. The Church didn't believe in that and its actions prove it, but Muslims opened their universities for all; even non-Muslims. That's why the Church fell; and Muslims ruled in that era.

Except that you have the timing wrong. The Byzantine state didn't fall until 1453, well past the time when the Islamic lands were at the peak of their scientific inventiveness. By the time the Ottomans took Constantinople, the era of Islamic science was long past.

Also, Islamic lands did NOT have universities in the western sense: they had madrassas, which were usually donated under a waqf, which had to obey religious restrictions on the material covered.

Another big reason for the decline of Islamic learning was, of course, the destruction of the Bayt al Hikma in Baghdad by the Mongols. The Islamic lands in what is now Spain managed to survive a bit longer.