Early Islamic history showed the Middle East outpacing the West

Evidence

In my early studies I was mainly interested in the period when the Islamic Middle East was most different from the West, least affected by the West, and in most respects far in advance of the West. I never lost my interest in early Islamic history, but it ceased to be my primary concern. — Bernard Lewis, From Babel to Dragomans, 108

Categorization

• XREF: Feeds the Said-adjacent cluster: a Western scholar choosing to study the Islamic Middle East precisely when it was most autonomous from and ahead of the West — the inverse of the dependency narrative. — connects to: Islam’s early expansion produced multiple distinct subcivilizations across three continents — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 124; Middle Eastern traders visited the West long before Europeans traveled East
• yield-rescued: below the book’s yield-target cutoff, included anyway for connecting to: Islam’s early expansion produced multiple distinct subcivilizations across three continents — Samuel P. Huntington, The Clash of Civilizations and the…, 124; Middle Eastern traders visited the West long before Europeans traveled East