I've encountered a lot of anti-intellectual sentiments while working and living in the Arabian Peninsula. Was there ever a time where Arabians (people of the peninsula, not Arabs in general) had a strong intelligencia and made notable contributions to science, technology, arts, engineering, or mathematics? I know their neighbors in Persia and the larger Middle East region certainly have, but I'm blanking on specifically Arabian contributions.
I'd like to take on this question, but before I do I think I'd like to know whether you count an intelligencia that made "notable contributions to science, technology, arts, engineering, or mathematics" as including those who wrote Islamic history or Islamic clerics and theologians?
Because my gut answer is yes but if for some sort of ideological reasons you're not including someone like Ibn Abd Al-Wahhab as a member of the "intelligencia" then we're probably going to have very different views on the question.