ABSTRACT
The obvious question which arises for anyone looking at these volumes is why the thinkers who are discussed here are classified under the description of Islamic philosophy. Some of these thinkers are not Muslims, and some of them are not philosophers in a straightforward sense. What is Islamic philosophy? This has been a controversial question for a long time, and it is indeed difficult to find a label which is entirely satisfactory for such thinkers and systems of thought. To label such philosophy as Arabic does indeed make appropriate reference to the language in which the Qur’ān was originally transmitted, but it is hardly appropriate as a description of the philosophy we have in mind here. Many of our thinkers did not write in Arabic, and many of them were not Arabs. It is true that an important strand in Islamic philosophy developed in the Arabic language, and in Arabic translations of Greek texts, but this is only a strand, however important it may have been. A vast proportion of Islamic philosophy was written in languages other than Arabic, especially Persian, and by non-Arabs, and that continues to be the case today. Whatever is meant by Arabic philosophy cannot hope to be comprehensive enough to encompass the whole of Islamic philosophy.
