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They were Persian scientists in the Abbasid Dynasty. And it should be noted that the Abbassids massacred the Umayyad clan to become the next Islamic force. I mean this was the continuation of the caliphs - the successors of Muhammad - after the first four Sunni ones. Indeed the Greeks were great, and in Persia it was Greek colonization until around 250 BC that left a storied mark on their future development - Greek language, philosophy, and art came with the colonists. Throughout Alexander's former empire, Greek became the common tongue of diplomacy and literature. The Greeks greatly assisted in bringing learning and helping build the processes of intellectual inquiry in the Persian Empire - the Muslim Arabs did conquer it for Islam, but the Greeks had already implanted their influence by that time. And Persian scientists continued to build on what the Greeks originally brought to them. Although it could be argued they were slightly more famous for passing on historical knowledge. And Averroes is a famous example of a muslim who helped reintroduce Greek learning back into Western Europe - Aristotle's works. The New Testament is also called the Greek Testament or Greek Scriptures by some, they were the ones who translated it and took it out to the world. The Greeks were converts to Christianity. Christianity finally did something to the Greeks that the Greeks had been doing to everyone else: influenced their culture. And it is also argued that some of the bad aspects of Greek culture, like some of Plato's philosophy, influenced how Christians perceived God from the scriptures. For instance, the meaning of the Greek word for predestination means "pre-limited" not predetermination. But Calvinists have used Romans 8:29 to mean that every thing is predestined - they are reading their philosophy into the Bible, not reading their theology from the Bible. And it was this Neo-Platonic Greek style philosophy that tended to ride along with the Greek scriptures. I mean the city portrayed in Plato's Republic was a kind of precursor to modern totalitarianism, it was unfree (controlled and pre-determined one might say), and Karl Popper famously noted this in 'The Open Society and its Enemies.' So Greek culture came with Greek scriptures, most notably some of Plato's views. And the State taking over Christianity also stumbled the path forward and Western Christendom didn't really begin to recover until the Magna Carta - the foundation for the West's future success. For that matter, Christianity might have died away or still be a minor sect of Judaism if the Romans hadn't adopted it. The muslims (Umayyads) borrowed heavily from Persian and Byzantine administrative systems and moved their capital to Damascus, in the center of their empire. In comparison, the fruits of Christians before the State adopted the faith became very noticeable, Christians did not borrow from the Roman Empire to make themselves great, the Roman Empire corrupted Christianity into its fold to further its cause. The thing to remember about the Chinese, and the Persians under Islamic rule, is that they never went on with it. Once the Renaissance hit Europe, Europe only grew stronger, and the achievements loom over this world today and shape its future. While I appreciate the magnet, paper, and the early research into Astronomy (and no doubt Sun Tzu's Art of War) China's achievements did not follow through to dominate the world, rather the Europeans took what they liked there - and the travelling Jesuits played a big role here - and did it instead. And that can be taken as a sign of a superior culture.
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