How can we reconcile traditional history's stories of a highly developed Arab civilization in the Middle Ages with what the Arab world has been like over the past 500 years?
Is it possible that one and the same ethnos
• before the 8th century was a horde of crude barbarians, alien to intellectual activity;
• in the 8th - 13th centuries turned into a locomotive of world science;
• and in the 14th century again sank to the level of barbarians?
Answer: no.
An ethnos is a biological community linked by a common origin and possessing common biogenetics. The biogenetics of an ethnos determines its physical, mental and intellectual characteristics. The characteristics of an ethnos are characterized by constancy, otherwise ethnoses would not exist.
Intellectual characteristics include the ability to learn and be creative. If we are told that over the course of several hundred years the intellectual characteristics of one and the same ethnic group have changed to the opposite twice, then
1) either we are dealing with different ethnoses,
2) or they are trying to mislead us.
Chapter 13 of the book by the French orientalist Andre Servier shows that both factors were present:
1. The highly developed Arab civilization of the Middle Ages arose not in their native Arabia, where the Arabs remained in a state of barbarism until the 20th century, but in the territories of civilized peoples who, having been conquered by Islam, continued their creative activity despite persecution by the conquerors. This was the last flowering of the Greco-Latin civilization. But, ultimately, its light was extinguished by Arab barbarism and the dogmas of Islam.
2. The Arabic writings of the Middle Ages are distorted copies and compilations of the works of the authors of the Alexandrian school, as well as of Greek, Syrian, Persian and Indian authors of the pre-Islamic period. "These crude and distorted Arabic writings came into circulation in medieval Europe as the works of Arabic genius. Their true character was discovered later, when, during the Renaissance, the original Greek manuscripts were exhumed from ancient libraries and scholars were found capable of translating them."
LOW INTELLECTUAL ABILITY
An additional argument in favor of the mythological nature of stories about the "highly developed Arab civilization of the Middle Ages" is the extremely low level of intelligence of representatives of the Arab ethnic group.
According to the websites Data Pandas and World Data, the average IQ of Middle Eastern Arabs is 82, and that of North African Arabs is 77, while the average IQ of Northern Europeans is 99.
Of course, the IQ test is not an absolute measure of intelligence, much less creativity. Therefore, to complete the picture, we will use another indicator - the number of Nobel Prize winners (excluding Peace Prize winners).
In 2022, the number of Arabs in the world was 465 million. This huge super-ethnos has given the world only two Nobel laureates: writer Naguib Mahfouz (Egypt) and chemist Ahmed Zewail (Egypt). On the other hand, Denmark, with a population of 5 million, has given the world 13 Nobel laureates.
LOW SELF-MANAGEMENT CAPACITY
Another factor that exposes the mythological nature of the story of the "greatness of the medieval Arabs" is the low capacity for self-government characteristic of Arab ethnic groups.
If the ethnic groups of Europe, during the 300-year period of development of capitalism, overcame the stage of the tribe and became peoples, and then nations, creating national states, then the ethnic groups of the Arab super-ethnos remain at the stage of the tribe to this day, and they owe their statehood to the Europeans.
The modern Arab nations are artificial, and the states created for them are failed, for example, the Lebanese Republic, the Syrian Arab Republic, the Republic of Iraq, the State of Libya, and the Republic of Yemen.
The artificiality of the nation and the failure of its state are manifested in intertribal and interfaith wars that flare up whenever the power of the ruling tribe or the dominant religious denomination weakens.