Was there any light during the dark ages

Recently we have has seen increasing awareness in the Western media  about the scientific contributions of Muslim scholars during the medieval period when Muslims ruled good percentage of the land mass of the planet Earth. This period is usby many scholars that the knowledge bankually considered as do called Dark Ages of Europe. It is held that works of Muslim scholars during this so called dark ages were the most important input for European renaissance. In fact same period is generally known as Golden Age of Islam. Efforts to decode the contributions made by medieval Muslim scholars should not be looked at as Muslim appeasing activity  happy. Knowing about the scientific development of this era will lead to new theories of Knowledge. It is quite possible that many of researches by the Muslim scholars were not picked up by European scientists. Most important of all we will have a theory of Knowledge which will be very different from what is held now – much more integrated and unifying.
Recently a movie and a book have been published that talks about how inventions of middle ages principally led by Muslims are relevant for our modern world.

http://www.1001inventions.com/

I am sure many of you already know about it. There is interesting documentary by Regeh Omar when he was in BBC called “Islamic History of Europe” and another documentary on Muslim rule in Europe by Bettany Hughes titled “When the Moors Ruled in Europe” also supposed to be done under the flagship of BBC.

Additionally Professor Prof Jim Khalili, University of Surrey received Micheal Faraday Prize on science communication from Royal Society of UK for working on these issues. His Michael Faraday Prize Lecture that some of the Middle age scientist could easily make into the list top ten scientist on the basis of their creative work. You can also visit his home page http://www.jimal-khalili.com for further ideas about his work. . He has also written some opinion pieces in Guardian but most importantly he has a book on this topic called Pathfinders: The Golden Age of Arabic Science. Now if you are really keen to know more you can see three hour documentary done by Jim again under the patronage of BBC. The urls as follows

Islam and science Part 1 http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3342750741448358648#

Islam and Science Part 2  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O0FSgNE4Lxc

Islam and Science Part 3  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3LjdnKE_i9E

please write back to me if you know more links or sources then also write by more information.

Another body of Science which is usually missed in such discussions is economic Science. In fact Schumpeter in encylopediac book Histroy of Economic though called it a era of ‘Great Gap’ in economic thinking. This view was success fully challenged by Shaikh M. Ghazanfar in his edited book Medieval Islamic economic thought: filling the “great gap” in European economics
Indeed it reminds us that Muslims had tradition of very advanced research in sciences (Theological, Social and Natural). But the most important question that emerges from this rich heritage of Muslims is how come Muslim world experienced a deep and long lasting decline in this field. This is not a small period– right from 12th century to 20th Century. And as a student of economics I am led to infer that overall decline of Muslim world (mass poverty and failure of governance systems of Muslim countries and societies) are result of such decline. This is the learning that we have from latest theories of economic growth.

And this leads me to focus on history. I am searching for factors that led to such a prolonged halt of advance research during this period (12th century to 21st century) among Muslims. One alleged reasons is closure of the gates of Ijtehad (making any new interpretation of the Quar’an and Hadith). I think people like Sir Syed and Allama Equal and their colleagues deeply realized this fact. This motivated them discuss reconstruction of religious thought in Islam. But actual question is what led to closure of the gate of Ijtehad. This is exactly what I am searching for. In fact there is no proper documentation about how this process of Ijtehad came to an end and who were/was exactly responsible for it and why did he/they do that.