Islamic literature is literature written with an Islamic perspective, in any language.

The best known fiction from the Islamic world is The Book of One Thousand and One Nights (Arabian Nights), a compilation of many earlier folk tales set in a frame story of being told serially by the Persian Queen Scheherazade. The compilation took form in the 10th century and reached its final form by the 14th century; the number and type of tales have varied from one manuscript to another. All Arabian fantasy tales were often called "Arabian Nights" when translated into English, regardless of whether they appeared in any version of The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, and a number of tales are known in Europe as "Arabian Nights" despite existing in no Arabic manuscript.

This compilation has been influential in the West since it was translated in the 18th century, first by Antoine Galland. Many imitations were written, especially in France.

Ferdowsi's Shahnameh, the national epic of Iran, is a mythical and heroic retelling of Persian history. Amir Arsalan was also a popular mythical Persian story, which has influenced some modern works of fantasy fiction, such as The Heroic Legend of Arslan.

Ibn Tufail (Abubacer) and Ibn al-Nafis were pioneers of the philosophical novel. Ibn Tufail wrote the first Arabic novel, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (Philosophus Autodidactus ), as a response to al-Ghazali's The Incoherence of the Philosophers. Ibn al-Nafis then wrote his novel Theologus Autodidactus as a response to Ibn Tufail's. Both of these narratives had protagonists (Hayy in Philosophus Autodidactus and Kamil in Theologus Autodidactus) who were autodidactic feral children living in seclusion on a desert island; these are the earliest examples of a desert island story. However, while Hayy lives alone with animals on the desert island for the rest of the story, Kamil's story extends beyond the desert island setting, developing into the earliest known coming of age plot and eventually becoming the first example of a science fiction novel.

A Latin translation of Philosophus Autodidactus first appeared in 1671, prepared by Edward Pococke the Younger, followed by an English translation by Simon Ockley in 1708, as well as German and Dutch translations. These translations later inspired Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe, regarded as the first novel in English. Philosophus Autodidactus also inspired Robert Boyle to write his own philosophical novel set on an island, The Aspiring Naturalist. The story also anticipated Rousseau's Emile in some ways, and resembles Mowgli's story in Kipling's The Jungle Book and Edgar Rice Burroughs's Tarzan in that a baby is abandoned but taken care of and fed by a mother wolf.

Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy, considered the greatest epic of Italian literature, derived many features of and episodes about the hereafter directly or indirectly from Arabic works on Islamic eschatology: the Hadith and the Kitab al-Miraj (translated into Latin in 1264 or shortly before as Liber Scale Machometi, "The Book of Muhammad's Ladder") concerning Muhammad's ascension to Heaven, and the spiritual writings of Ibn Arabi. The Moors also had a noticeable influence on the works of George Peele and William Shakespeare. Some of their works featured Moorish characters, such as Peele's The Battle of Alcazar and Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice, Titus Andronicus, and Othello, whose title character is a Moor. These works are said to have been inspired by several Moorish delegations from Morocco to Elizabethan England at the beginning of the 17th century.

For the literature of some predominantly Islamic cultures, see: