Political Philosophy

Kitāb al-ʿIbar

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Ibn Khaldun

1377

Kitāb al-ʿIbar (The Book of Lessons, or The Book of Examples) is Ibn Khaldun's complete universal history — an enormous work in seven volumes of which the Muqaddimah forms the first. The remaining six volumes trace the history of the Arabs from pre-Islamic times through the Islamic conquests and caliphates, the history of the Berber peoples and dynasties of North Africa and al-Andalus, and the history of other peoples Ibn Khaldun had access to. The Kitāb al-ʿIbar was intended not as a mere chronicle but as an illustration of the theoretical principles laid out in the Muqaddimah: each historical episode is examined for how it conforms to or deviates from the laws of civilisational development, the dynastic cycle, and the dynamics of ʿaṣabiyya. Ibn Khaldun drew on his direct experience as a statesman and diplomat in Tunis, Fez, Granada, and Cairo, as well as on an enormous range of Arabic sources. The result is the most comprehensive attempt to understand the history of the Islamic world — and human civilisation more broadly — through a systematic explanatory framework, combining the rigour of a philosopher with the empirical richness of a historian.