OxTalks will soon move to the new Halo platform and will become 'Oxford Events.' There will be a need for an OxTalks freeze. This was previously planned for Friday 14th November – a new date will be shared as soon as it is available (full details will be available on the Staff Gateway).
In the meantime, the OxTalks site will remain active and events will continue to be published.
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This paper documents a decline in scientific output in the medieval Islamic world and empirically links the decline to the political empowerment of religious leaders. A contraction in secular bureaucratic structures strengthened conservative religious elites who altered institutions to discourage the study of topics that undermined their societal control. The decline geographically tracks these institutional changes from east to west, providing additional evidence that rent-seeking religious leaders contributed to the decline of Islamic science.
