The Long Divergence: What Turned the Tables Between the West and Islam?
Posted on November 21, 2011 at 07:50 AM EST
For centuries the Islamic world dominated the West militarily, economically, and culturally. As late as 1683, when Ottoman forces laid siege to Vienna, Muslim military domination was a legitimate fear for the Christian world. Excluding the sophisticated Byzantine Empire—which Muslim Arab forces nearly conquered and Muslim Turkish forces did conquer in 1453—and some of the [...]