Having studied some history of math it's pretty mind-boggling how this is ignored. Not to mention the developments made, e.g. Algebra (al jabr).
I speculate one of the reasons Italy was so prolific on this field and anticipated Europe is it's proximity and being a trade center.
> This entire thing is a long propagated mythology that things were at their best when Europe dominated the Mediterranean
I don't understand how saying that they lost access to their greatest scholar, Aristotle, and had to rely on people from another part of the Mediterranean to preserve and return his works to them, supports a claim that "things were at their best when Europe dominated the Mediterranean".
Also, do you have some source for what you are saying? If you look at the cite in my post, you can read much of what I said, including about Aristotle.
Uh yes? Spain was part of the Umayyad Caliphate and then various other Caliphates until the Reconquista ended Islamic Spain in 1491. Islam never lost Aristotle.
Saying that Europe largely lost Aristotle isn't propagating the myth, repeating Hegel and Descartes Eurocentric views is, as is saying civilization is fragile when it survived fine.
A lot of the reason the European's liked old things is that they could then claim it was European knowledge rather than Islamic. Examples include Aquinas commissioning a translation of Aristotle from Greek sources, as the existing copies were translated from Arabic.
As for sources, yours only shows that Aquinas rationalised Aristotle and Catholicism, which is true. On what I've said, if you didn't know about Al-Andalus I don't know where to begin. Anything about the Umayyad Caliphate would be a start, or almost any modern history of the age.
I'm also completely ignoring that the "Fall of Rome" happened in 1453, largely considered the end of the Middle Ages.
Sorry to continue on, wanted to establish that these things are certain. Don't want to fall into a new blend of scholasticism.