Europe in Polo's time was rapidly awakening from the long period of isolation that had characterized the Early Middle Ages (c. 500-c. 1000), whereas the Muslim world of Ibn Battuta's era was on the decline from its former glory. In the seventh and eighth centuries, Arab warriors had greatly expanded territories under the control of the Umayyad (661-750) and the Abbasid (750-1258) caliphates, and Arabs had come todominate the world from Morocco to the edge of China. The caliphs had imposed their own version of the Pax Romana, creating a world of peace and prosperity—a realm in which, from the tenth to the twelfth centuries, some of the medieval period's greatest thinkers had thrived.
But several factors had conspired to bring about the Abbasids' decline. One was the arrival of the Turks, a nomadic people from Central Asia who became the dominant political power in the Near East from the tenth century onward. Another was the Crusades (1095-1291), Western Europe's assault on the Holy Land and Byzantium, which led to massive slaughter on both sides and engendered religious tensions that remain alive today.
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