Scholars credit the European Renaissance and Enlightenment to the fall of Constantinople in 1453, when Greek scholars in particular were driven from the Byzantine capital, taking with them everything they had learned about their own Greek intellectual heritage and classical philosophical tradition, thanks, in part, to the scholarly enterprise of Islamic scholasticism and a spirit of intellectual cooperation that had existed until that time. The "expulsion of excellence" that followed closely on the heels of Mehmed II's military victory in 1453 proved problematic for an emergent, modern-Muslim,
