When Baghdad was centre of the scientific world

I sometimes point out in lectures on early Islam and Christianity that the Islamic empire seems to have expanded militarily so quickly that it outstripped the ability of the conquerors to supply elites and civil servants to run the societies they now ruled. Result? Christians -among others- were often holders of high office in early Islam. This of course nuances the claim you may sometimes hear Muslims make as to the civilisational credentials of Islam -sometimes it was Christians under Muslim patronage who were doing the 'heavy lifting': "The most famous of all the Baghdad translators, Hunayn ibn Ishāq, was born in the ancient Christian city of Hira and never converted to Islam. He would spend many years travelling around the world in his search for Greek manuscripts. It is the medical work of the physician Galen that is his most important legacy, for not only did it open up the Islamic world to this great treasure, in many cases it is only via these Arabic translations that much of Galen's work reaches us today."
The article (When Baghdad was centre of the scientific world) mentions the philosophical importance of Al Kindi. Interestingly there was another Al Kindi around who was a Christian and whose contribution was to offer apologetic arguments in relation to Islam.

Anyway, worth looking at the article to get a sense of an Islam that was not (is not) obscurantist but rather a progressive partner in human flourishing.