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Juicy
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This may be off topic as Wikipedia has a pretty complete article on the Islamic Golden Age.

The short answer is yes, while European nobles were sitting on wooden/stone chairs in cold stone buildings, the Arab nobles were living a pretty good life quite similar to the old Roman nobles, enjoying many exotic goods and luxuries. Of course, the masses of the people usually didn't have it so good.

During this period the Arabs made considerable advances in science, education, medicine, philosophy etc, basing themselves on the great works of antiquity. In the mean time European scholars were stuck with a very inflexible Catholic church. Italian merchants eventually brought these advances and "resurected" ancient texts back to Europe which triggered the Renaissance, which also coincides with the end of the Islamic Golden Age.

EDIT What I mean by:

while European nobles were sitting on wooden/stone chairs in cold stone buildings

is that there was a severe drop in the standard of living of European nobles following the fall of the Western Roman Empire. They lost access to many of the luxuries goods from the East and much of the engineering, architectural, philosophical and medical knowledge known to the Romans.

Juicy
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