In the Middle Ages and through the Renaissance, the Arab world was set to dominate the world for centuries. It had the best scientists, the strongest militaries, the amplest technology, and most importantly, a centrally located geography. So why didn't it? The answer is the printing press. It didn't take advantage of Chinese discoveries in paper and the movable type, which predated printing in the west by a long shot.
It had the right alphabet for printing. Like English yet unlike Chinese, Arabic had a manageable number of characters. It was also fortuitous in being closer than the west to Eastern developments in printing. Surely, it could have borrowed from the Chinese much sooner than Gutenberg did in the 15th century for a press that would eventually revolutionize literacy and learning around the globe.
But its culture was so mired by religious conservatism that printing could never get off the ground. It was seen as blasphemous to write anything about the Koran, which was seen as written by "God"; more value was placed on memorizing it. Thus, the Koran was never distributed the way the Bible was in the west, creating a roadblock for printing that would stifle the communication of ideas in the Middle East.
Gutenberg's printing press allowed communication to flourish in western Europe. And with it came advantages in accounting, politics, law, cartography, teaching, medicine, infrastructure, and the spread of news and ideas that would accelerate prosperity for all its nations. It was fuel for the "Protestant Ethic" that Max Weber believed had motivated western Christians to prosper, a religious counterpart to Islamic stagnation. While the Arab world was clinging to religion, the west embraced a progressive medium, and it never looked back. By the time printing was welcome in the Arab world, it was too late.
Source:
Boorstin, Daniel J. The Discoverers. 1983. Pages 539-547.
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