The aim of this paper is twofold: to present the rise and development of intellectual history as a distinct field of historical enquiry in modern Western historiography and to discuss some of its main theoretical and methodological issues. The paper provides an overview of intellectual history, including some of the views of its pioneers. The paper also briefly discusses the current state of intellectual history in the Arab region and the difficulties that the scholars working on the intellectual history of Islam in particular face, suggesting steps to improve its status as an academic discipline.