section_path: Decline/Political and economic factors
section_name: Political and economic factors
paragraph_text: Political and economic factors
  
  Ahmad Y. al-Hassan has rejected the thesis that lack of creative thinking was a cause, arguing that science was always kept separate from religious argument; he instead analyzes the decline in terms of economic and political factors, drawing on the work of the 14th-century writer Ibn Khaldun.
  
  Several other contemporary scholars have analysed the decline in terms of political and economic factors. Current research has led to the conclusion that "the available evidence is consistent with the hypothesis that an increase in the political power of these elites caused the observed decline in scientific output." The decline could be part of a larger trend where the non-Western world fell behind the West in the Great Divergence. In 1206, Genghis Khan established the Mongol Empire which, during the 13th century, conquered most of the Eurasian land mass, including China in the east and much of the old Islamic caliphate (as well as Kievan Rus') in the west. The destruction of Baghdad and the House of Wisdom by Hulagu Khan in 1258 has been seen by some as the end of the Islamic Golden Age. However, while cultural influence used to radiate outward from Baghdad, after the fall of Baghdad, Iran and Central Asia saw a cultural flourishing by benefiting from increased cross-cultural access to East Asia under Mongol rule.