Peter Adamson explains that the Islamic world is all the places that have been under Islamic political and cultural control from the rise of Islam in the seventh century through to the present day. So this small book is full of geography, history, religion, and of course, philosophy.

I learned a great deal about the complexity of this Islamic world and its philosophy by reading the introduction, scanning through parts of each chapter, studying its maps and timelines. There was more detail than I could absorb on a first reading about this important topic. This is one of the many volumes in Oxford University Press' Very Short Introductions. It's 130 pages or so. Not a quick read for me, but an interesting one.

I learned that many of the important philosophers who contributed to this topic, through original writings or translations were not Muslims. Some were Jewish, or Christian, and much of the groundwork of the various strands of the resulting philosophy came by way of the writings of Greek and other Pagan philosophers. And each area, each era, each society had its own ideas. Theologians, philosophers, clerics, and legal scholars all contributed to the rich history of philosophy in the Islamic world. ( )