My aim in this book is not just to describe aspects of Islamic philosophy but also to arouse interest in the philosophical problems, arguments and ideas current in the medieval Islamic world. I very much hope that readers of the book will want to go on to read the philosophers themselves. I have tried to bring out something of the range and flavour of Islamic philosophy by following a number of central arguments and issues from their origins in theology to their discussion in philosophy without attempting in any way to provide a comprehensive historical account of the period and its main thinkers. There are a number of books already which describe in some detail the cultural milieu in which philosophy developed in the Islamic world, and there are also books which painstakingly analyse the intellectual predecessors and influences upon the Islamic philosophers. By way of contrast, the emphasis in this book is on the arguments of the philosophers themselves, and the theme of the book is that this is the appropriate emphasis. It is a shame that Islamic philosophy as a topic of interest is at present largely confined to orientalists rather than philosophers. The former often have concerns and interpretative methods which are not shared by the latter, and vice versa. This sometimes has the result that the philosophical point of the argument is lost or confused.