Work · Philosophy in the Islamic World
Muqaddimah
An introduction to history: group solidarity, dynasties, economics.
Introduction
The Muqaddimah (“Introduction”) was meant as the first volume of a world history, the “Book of Lessons”. Ibn Khaldun wrote the first version in 1377 in a few months in the fortress of Qalat Ibn Salama in present-day Algeria and revised it later in Cairo. After a foreword on the errors of historians, six chapters follow: on human society in general, including geography and climate, on rural and nomadic life, on dynasties and the caliphate, on cities, on crafts and ways of earning a living, and on the sciences. Franz Rosenthal’s English translation of 1958 made the work widely available, and it is read today in sociology, economics and historiography.
Read the full text
Free full text, often an older edition or translation
Connections
Taken up in
- The Conditions of the Renaissance1949 · Malek Bennabi
- The Formation of Arab Reason1984 · Mohammed Abed al-Jabri
Criticized in
- Ibn Khaldun’s Social Philosophy: An Analytical and Critical Study1918 · Taha Hussein
As of November 2026 · Improve this page · How Agora is made