The Muqaddimah
Book description
The Muqaddimah, often translated as "Introduction" or "Prolegomenon," is the most important Islamic history of the premodern world. Written by the great fourteenth-century Arab scholar Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), this monumental work established the foundations of several fields of knowledge, including the philosophy of history, sociology, ethnography, and economics. The…
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Why read it?
1 author picked The Muqaddimah as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?
Ibn Khaldun's book is a classic work of world history, written in the mid-1300s CE. It is part of a seven-volume work and the first volume (The Introduction, or Muqaddimah) is the best known and most read. Readers who wish to read an Islamic polymath may be pleasantly surprised by Ibn Khaldun's erudite mind and by how "modern" many of his discussions about politics, economy, and culture are. Several versions are available in translation. I read the Princeton University Press abridged version, 2015.