Statesman, judge, and historian, Ibn Khaldun moved across the courts of Tunis, Fez, Granada, and Cairo. The Muqaddima ("Introduction"), composed as a preface to his universal history of the Berbers and the Arabs, lays out a theory of how civilisations rise and fall — the cycle from desert ‘asabiyya (group solidarity) to urban luxury to collapse — that anticipates large parts of modern social science by half a millennium.
Recurring themes
the philosophy of history
desert vs. urban civilisation
the long cycle of dynasties
the prose of the political historian
Selected works
- 1377Muqaddima
- c.1380Kitab al-‘Ibar
- c.1405Autobiography