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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Logic in the Islamic Legacy: a General Overview The Beginnings The study of mantiq was initially part of the foreign disciplines, and only in the twelfth century was it was accepted as an essential preliminary to a Muslim education. The other essential elements were the Islamic disciplines which prepared a scholar to read the Koran and Traditions, and to extract from them theological and legal doctrines.

One such discipline was the etiquette of debate in which pragmatic arrangements stipulated for a debate about legal principles were extended to serve as rules for any kind of debate at all; it was to be replaced by dialectic by the fourteenth century. Certain other Islamic disciplines deal with language-related questions. Muslim interest in Mantiq and philosophy started in the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258), approximately two centuries after the advent of Islam.

In the Prophetic and Rashidin era (the early few decades of Islam) Mantiq philosophy were almost unknown for different reasons. It was the 'nation building' era. The proximity to the Prophet's times and the fresh understanding of the religion which was not influenced by the inter-cultural encounters with other nations raised no need for philosophy.

In the Ummayyad era which succeeded the Rashidin Caliphate philosophy and Mantiq were the business of non Muslims of the newly incorporated countries such as Syria. According to Ibn Khuldun's theory of associating prosperity of science with urbanization early Muslims did not show interest in the sciences of old nations as those Muslims were not urbanized yet. When the Islamic State was firmly established and became prosperous they turned their attention to those sciences.

The cumulative nature of knowledge and the emergence of Islamic schools of thought and sects contributed to the spread of logic and philosophy as tools to be employed by different groups albeit within the framework of Islam.

The schism which erupted between the intellectual leadership and the political leadership, and the big schism between Islamic sects (in particular Shiaites and Sunni Muslims) led each party to draw upon the Koran and Hadith (Prophet's Tradition), employ exegesis and manipulate human interpretations in ways that were not known during the time of the Prophet and the Rashidin Caliphs.