"Mantiq" is the Arabic equivalent of "logic". It points to the practice of defending the tenets of Islam through rational argument.

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 Qur'an and Hadith and to extract from them theological and legal doctrines. 

Muslim interest in Mantiq and philosophy started in the Abbasid Caliphate (750-1258), approximately two centuries after the advent of Islam.