The Contributions of Early Islamic Scholars to Psychology: the Concepts of Intelligence, Soul and Spirit

Science is a regular and consistent knowledge of the universe, the subject of facts and events in the world, a way of using methods and experimentation, and reaching several codes based on reality. And methodical and systematic information obtained by the method and validated by the application, always and everywhere with validity and certainty qualities. From this point of view, the subject of psychology, which is a branch of science, is mentioned as the emotions, thoughts, and behaviors of living beings. However, psychology has defined for a long time as the science of behavior and mind includes the study of conscious and unconscious phenomena, as well as feelings and thoughts. Nowadays, psychology is living its modern period, because, today, psychology has become an experimental science which uses the methods of the sciences. The first signs of this period, with the adoption of these scientific methods psychology, began to manifest itself in the last quarter of the 19th century. Also, it should be noted here that psychology, because of its behavioral science, raises the underlying causes of behavior and develops treatments against possible diseases. In a sense, it also undertakes a duty such as 'preventive medicine' before being mentally ill. Psychologists are started to focus on examining the individual’s religious beliefs and practices in the modern period of psychology. Until this time, in the resources which are called ‘classical period of psychology,’ topics covered and discussed by theologians and philosophers who mostly focused on ‘human and the nature of human.’ However, with the development of modern psychology, complex issues such as examining the concept of soul and revealing the relationship between soul and body are left to the branch of philosophy. Therefore, the direct link has ended between experimental psychology and religion. Nevertheless, the purpose of the Psychology of Religion is to bring religion and psychology back together. Thus, the psychology of religion was born as a result of the efforts of Psychology which became a science by itself, separated from the history of religion and philosophy. In 1899, Edwin Starbuck became the first psychologist to use the name ‘Psychology of Religion.’ However, after its emergence, for a variety of social reasons, the Psychology of Religion has made plodding progress, but after 1960, it has been on a rapid rise. As a result, as revealed in this study, Islamic scholars have put forward various views in the field of psychology under the titles of Philosophy, Kalam, and Sufism starting from the