Political Philosophy

The Muqaddimah

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Ibn Khaldun

1377

The Muqaddimah (Introduction, or Prolegomena) is the introductory volume to Ibn Khaldun's vast universal history, the Kitāb al-ʿIbar, and is widely regarded as one of the greatest works of intellectual history ever written. Composed in 1377 during a period of creative isolation at the fortress of Ibn Salāma in what is now Algeria, the Muqaddimah is a systematic attempt to establish a new science — ʿilm al-ʿumrān, the science of human civilisation — by identifying the natural laws governing the rise and fall of dynasties, states, and cultures. Ibn Khaldun argues that history cannot be understood merely as a chronicle of events; the historian must grasp the underlying social and material forces that make events possible. Central to his analysis is the concept of ʿaṣabiyya (group feeling, social solidarity): the bond of loyalty and collective identity that holds tribal and urban groups together, energises political power, and — when it decays — leaves dynasties vulnerable to replacement by hardier groups from the periphery. The Muqaddimah covers economics (supply, demand, and the division of labour), sociology (the nature of urban and tribal life), political science (the dynastic cycle), philosophy of history, psychology, and educational theory, making it a genuinely encyclopaedic foundation for the social sciences — more than four centuries before Adam Smith, Montesquieu, or Marx.