I will continue to dig.
500 ad - 1300 ad.
Where were the largest learning centers in the world? The largest libraries, universities, hospitals?
Baghdad's "House of Wisdom" is considered the first university in the world. Located at the crossroads of the greats civilizations at the time it drew knowledge from Europe, Arabia, China, India, etc., the merging point for western and eastern thought. It was via this route that the collar harness (pivotal tech here) migrated from China to Europe. Amongst other bits of Chinese and Indian technology, medicine etc.
Baghdad was the largest city in the world at the time. The principle center of learning in the world until the mongol invasion.
The Persian Dr.s were the most advanced in the world: Al-Kindi, Abu al-Qasim al-Zahrawi, Avicenna, whose texts on medicine and surgery written in 1025 were used as texts by most western universities until the 1700s.
Al-Kindi, Ibn Sahl, and AlHazen furthered the understanding of physics by building upon the works of the Greeks advancing the understanding and manufacture of optics; mirrors and lenses. AlHazen writings were translated into Latin around 1200 and were the basis for the European understaning of the field for then next 400 years.
He rejected the "emission theory" of Ptolemaic optics with its rays be emitted by the eye, and instead put forward the idea that light reflected in all directions in straight lines from all points of the objects being viewed and then entered the eye
Muhammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī built upon the works of the Greeks and published The Compendious Book on Calculation by Completion and Balancing establishing algebra as its own field of math.
During the same time the western Europeans had pretty much fallen back on to hedge Dr.s and folk medicine. The centers of learning of western Europe paled to the size of the faculties and libraries available in Persia. And when universities were founded in western Europe (12th century) they borrowed heavily from the writings and learning of Persia. European medicine is founded on the translation of Byzantine and Arabic works.
Cordoba under the caliphate exported many of the ideas from Arabia to Europe. Sanitation, literacy, health care, were all better in Cordoba than in the christian neighbors to the north. Cordoba boasted great architecture, park and gardens, and one of the largest libraries in the world at the time Al-Ḥakam II with 400,000 volumes of Greek, Arabic, Hebrew and Latin writings.
Cordoba benefited from its Persian influence. Its denizens used toothpaste and deodorant..... can you say the same for the citizens of Paris at the time? Literacy rates, life expectancy, standard of living was all higher in Baghdad and Cordoba than in Paris, London, Rome etc.
The society was somewhat secular, it took the Christians returning from power for the Jews to be banished from Spain. Cordoba under the Caliph enjoyed a diverse culture and economy. Art, literature, poetry all flourished. To my perspective being ahl al-dhimma in the caliphate of Cordoba would have been much preferable to being a serf.
Which is not to say that there was no learning in western Europe but it paled to the scale and availability in Baghdad, and realizing that Persian learning was built upon the great traditions of the Greeks, Indians, Chinese, Egyptians, Rome, etc.. The Carolingian Empire had a bit of "Renaissance" and there were others, but the influence of the Arab world is stamped all over the Renaissances of the early and high middle ages.
I don't know about you, but I would have much rather lived in Cordoba than Paris, or Rome in the 10/11th century. Paris at the time was a little more than a muddy outpost on an island. ;)
The Dark Ages are called that for a reason. Between the plagues, the marauding vikings. the mongol hordes, the church's treatment of thinkers and heretics, I would pick 10/11th century Cordoba over Paris, London or Rome in a heartbeat.
And yes I would argue that it was the lifestyle, art, libraries, and schools of Cordoba that sparked the Italian Renaissance.