Almost all had the same features: They resulted shortly after conquest, had strong leaders with a not very strong clerical base, and had a large flow of money or knowledge from other territories.
And all were geographically circumscribed. The main "Golden Age" was in part of the ME. Egypt was a hell-hole, N. Africa bad, and Spain was a disaster. When Spain had it's "Golden Age" it was likewise limited.
All the Golden Ages tended to be scholarly and the minorities nicely under control. If they got out of control, things were bad. And things were only "good" by comparison with some of the worst places in Europe. There were places not so bad in Europe, but they never had "Golden Ages" mostly because nobody felt it was necessary to defend them--and in everybody's interests to continue to have funding and archive research available. (Piss off the British by dissing Ireland? No prob. Piss off the Sultan by dissing Turks? Make sure you do it after you've already retired to Ireland!)
All the Golden Ages ended of their own accord because of factors that were mostly internal. There was usually a three-part demise: society would have settled down comfortably under Islamic rule, the conquest long over and the native populations either restive or assimilated; the imams would gain the upper hand, either enforcing more restrictive Islamic law everywhere or causing more dissent among minorities; revenues from conquered territories plummeted, whether that meant the local coffers running dry, trade routes in danger, or subject territories no longer quite so "subject."
Take Turkey, the Ottomans. It was a great power, then got complacent. It had internal problems that ultimately led to bouts of ethnic cleansing--sometimes the traditional "let's play ethnic chess and move the Cirkassian-pawns to where the Arab-knights are!" Imams made sure that printing showed up in the Ottoman Empire very late, and primarily for religious and state purposes--this was largely true of scholarship in general. It was repressive and nasty--and the tanzimat, the reforms that largely constitute the Ottomans' claim to humaneness, were all but compelled from the outside. The Empire lost territory, and with territory, revenues; and, as its military fell behind and the Brits and French and Russians got the upper hand, it lost control over trade and slave routes.
The Golden Ages usually fell because of internal problems or a continuation of the state of affairs that brought about Islamic domination of a territory. But it's humiliating to admit this, and much easier to claim that some far superior force--who could be ashamed of being beaten by somebody like that--is responsible for your fall from perfection. In so doing, you even get people to accept the assumption--that you had a perfection to fall from--and not dispute it.
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