True. I have heard, however, that the Mohammedans ripped off the "zero" concept from India.
====================================
Especially important were Moslem contributions to mathematics, without which the science we take for granted could not have developed. "Arabic numerals" and the concept of zero, both learned from India and dispersed to the world, revolutionized math in the West, as did algebra, a Moslem invention. Moslem medicine was the best in the world, and Moslem alchemy led to modern chemistry. A Moslem musician set out the elements of musical notation. Moslem navigators invented the astrolabe and perfected the quadrant and mariner's compass that made possible the great voyages of the Age of Discovery — as, for instance, the one by Columbus that eventually led to the formation of the United States.
====================================
Islam did have an amusing couple of centuries, the 12th and 13th. However, the learning of Islam derived not from within, but from those bastions of the Christian Byzantine Empire the Muslims overran.
It is there that they took over the remnants and trappings of Classical Civilization, which they had handily destroyed. Northern Africa, Egypt, Lebanon, Syria, Constantinople ... those were all Christian lands, which over the centuries were forcibly converted to Islam by the sword.
The proof of the matter is that since those heady times of supposed Islamic intellectual glory, the Muslim lands have actually retrogressed. Their civilization, such as it is, is stagnant: has been for nigh on a 1,000 years.