Islam played a key role as an intermediary linking the various cultures and markets of India, China, Europe and Africa. The culture of al-Andalus was shaped by its inheritance from Classical times, as well as the circulation of products and the spread of technological and scientific advances. New products, crops, techniques and inventions arrived there. These changes had a decisive influence on the developing Catalan culture to the north. For decades, Catalan monasteries passed on to the rest of Christian Europe a wide range of cultural novelties.