Ibn Khaldun 1332 – 1406

Ibn Khaldun was a North African Arab historian and philosopher, born in Tunis to a family of Andalusian scholars. His Muqaddimah, the prolegomenon to a vast universal history, lays the foundation for what he called the science of human social organization, anticipating much of modern sociology, historiography, and political economy. He developed the concept of asabiyyah, or social cohesion, as the engine of dynastic rise and fall, and offered the first systematic theory of the cyclical character of civilizations. Ibn Khaldun spent his later years as a chief judge in Cairo and famously met Tamerlane outside Damascus.

Ibn Khaldun — Abu Zayd Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldun al-Hadrami — was born in 1332 in Tunis to a family of Andalusian origin that had emigrated after the fall of Seville. He received a thorough training in Quranic sciences, Arabic philology, Maliki jurisprudence, and the philosophical and historical literature, and from his early twenties was drawn into the turbulent politics of the Maghreb and Granada, serving and falling out with rulers in Fez, Granada, Bougie, and Tlemcen.

After several political disasters he withdrew in 1375 to the fortress of Qalat ibn Salama in present-day Algeria and there composed the Muqaddimah, the prolegomenon to his world history Kitab al-Ibar; the historical work itself follows in seven books. From 1382 he settled in Cairo, taught at the Azhar and the Qamhiyya madrasa, served six terms as chief Maliki judge, and undertook the famous embassy that brought him face to face with Tamerlane outside besieged Damascus in 1401.

The Muqaddimah analyzes the rise and fall of dynasties through the concept of asabiyya, the social cohesion of tribal and urban groups, and treats history as a science with its own principles, drawn from geography, demography, economics, and the sociology of power. Ibn Khaldun has been claimed as a founder of sociology, historiography, and political economy. He died in Cairo in 1406.