on Islam it's really hard a weird history, a 100 years after it's appearance there was a golden age, basically think the Renaissance but earlier, it lasted until the sack of Baghdad by Hulegu (Mongols).
trigonometry was then advanced to it's current stage, science and medicine were advanced at a rate not seen before, this obviously being peculiar due to these "sciences" were in many ways contrary to the teachings of Islam and the ways of the adab, but were nonetheless highly regarded in society. The ulama tolerated these outlooks and practices with reservation. Even Christians in these countries were involved in high society and in science.
We would not know of Aristotle if it wasnt for Islamic philosophy, they preached greek philosophy and combined it with Chinese and Indian ideas. European philosophy actually continued because of translations of islamic philosophy into Latin. Greek medical texts were translated into arabic and then into Latin. When it came to Medicine, Galen and Hippocrates were the authority in Islam followed by the Greeks that developed it further under Ptolemaic Egypt. Every major city in the middle ages under Islamic rule had a huge hospital, architecture and engineering took on another step. The House of Wisdom was established in Baghdad and it again took literature from all over the known world and translated it into arabic and persian. Despite being conquerors at the time they were also more open to exploring other cultures and assimilating knowledge, sometimes knowledge which would go against what their religion taught them. Men like Ibn Khaldun are remembered in great sciences, whilst Ibn Battuta at the time because of the safety and freedom of the Islamic world was able to travel more than 75,000 miles on his travels around the known world, 3 times more than Marco Polo who was around at the same time. Not sure if he smashing birds though, he could have got around 44 flags at the time.
So what the fuck happened?