Developing in the late ninth century ad and evolving without interruption for the next four centuries, medieval Islamic philosophy was instrumental in the revival of philosophizing in Europe in the Middle Ages. Philosophers in the Islamic world were strongly influenced by Greek works and adapted some of the Platonic, Aristotelian, and other ideas to their brand of monotheism. But they also developed an original philosophical culture of their own, which had a considerable, but hitherto largely unexplored, impact on the subsequent course of western philosophy. Their problems and concerns are echoed in medieval European philosophy, and resonate to some extent in early modern philosophy.

Notwithstanding the substantial influence that it has had on western philosophy, medieval Islamic philosophy is not generally regarded as part of the philosophical canon in the English-speaking world, and such figures as Ibn Sīnā (Avicenna) and Ibn Rushd (Averroes) remain obscure by comparison with Augustine and Aquinas. More often than not, they are either considered curiosities deriving from an entirely different philosophical tradition, or preservers of and commentators on the Greek philosophical heritage without a sufficiently original contribution of their own. The reasons for these omissions and for the disparagement of Islamic philosophy are steeped in the often conflicted history of Islam and Christendom. This is not the place to go into an account of the reception of these texts in the west and of their declining fortunes in the canon, since the purpose here is to reintroduce a small portion of these works to readers more familiar with the standard western philosophical corpus.