School · 801 CE–1640 CE
Philosophy in the Islamic world
Arabic- and Persian-language traditions transformed Greek inheritances within Islamic intellectual life, bringing philosophy into sustained exchange with medicine, theology, law, and mysticism.
Shared questions
- How do demonstrative reason, revelation, prophetic knowledge, and disciplined spiritual practice relate?
Internal disagreements
- Whether metaphysical demonstration can establish divine attributes and causation without compromising creation and revelation.
Key texts
- The Book of Healing (Kitāb al-Shifāʾ) — Ibn Sīnā's encyclopaedia of logic, natural science and metaphysics became the framework later thinkers argued with.
- The Incoherence of the Philosophers · 1095 — Al-Ghazālī's attack on twenty philosophical doctrines drew Ibn Rushd's Incoherence of the Incoherence in reply.
- The Muqaddima · 1377 — Ibn Khaldūn's introduction to a universal history sets out a science of human social organisation.