The university has a strong focus on the humanities and social sciences, and espouses a multilingual approach to education, namely in Turkish, English and Arabic.

IHU was established by the Turkish Youth and Education Service Foundation, set up by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan in 1996 when he was Mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality.

[2] In December 2019, IHU set up a four year project to improve the understanding of the work of Al-Tirmidhi.

[4] The university is located in Başakșehir, in the western outskirts of Istanbul, where a new campus opened in the fall of 2020.

It also has a campus besides the Süleymaniye Mosque in Fatih, which houses the Alliance of Civilizations Institute (Turkish: MEDIT) and Islamic Studies department.