Most people think of the golden age as golden in the imagination of storytellers.
But it heralded substantial achievements which have in fact put all of Western countries permanently in its debt. The days numbered thousands, for they constituted years, five hundred of them, all together making up one single Arab dynasty, known in history as the Abbasid, extending from 750 to 1258 AD, and comprising thirty-eight rulers in all. Prophet Muhammad had been dead for something over a century. The center of gravity had shifted from Mecca to Damascus where it remained for a little less than a hundred years under the Umayyads, more as a secular than as a religious state. It was Abul Abbas, himself of Prophet Muhammad's blood, who in 750 AD, raised the standard of revolt against the Umayyads in Iraq and seated himself on the throne as caliph, wearing the prophet 's sacred mantle, evidence to all the world that time and eternity were represented in him.