[trhway]

>It's easy to forget how different the Middle East looked before the conquest of Islam starting in 600 AD.

it naturally looked differently due to different climate. For example there was booming agriculture in Carthage back then - modern Tunisia. The climate warming during the first millennia made Mediterranean Basin less grain-production and animal farming suitable while more suitable for the nomadic Arabs riding out of Arabia. That warming also made life more convenient (in particular conditions became much better for agriculture, the backbone of the civilization) in the previously cold and swampy Mid and North Europe where as a result we see the wave of rise of the civilization.

Coincidentally, we have Caliphates decline and Reconquista happening when the climate started to cool down toward the Little Ice Age. The map of Reconquista looks like a geographical climate regions map https://stuffedeyes.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/what-was-... (compare to https://www.spanish-town-guides.com/photo/spain_climate_map....)