al-Muqaddima

About al-Muqaddima:

This work is a revised edition of al-Muqaddima (Arabic) checked against seven different editions. Al-Muqaddima is Ibn Khaldun's introduction to Kitab al-Ibar (The Book of Lessons and the Record of Beginnings and News in the Days of the Arabs, Persians, and Berbers and Their Contemporaries of the Greatest Sultans) and it quickly became the most important book in Ibn Khaldun's body of works. Al-Muqaddima can be summarized as a set of foundational theories that Ibn Khaldun established for the study of human civilization, al-hadara, as he called it and assumed that civilization is not affected by singular individual events and ideas but rather by societies. Ibn Khaldun found that these laws can be applied to societies living in different times, for example, an agricultural society is the same agricultural society centuries removed or at any time in history. What we will are discovering about Ibn Khaldun's work is him being a systems thinker, one who held that human beings are the outcome of their circumstances and their natural and manmade systems they live by.

كُتبت الطبعة الأولى من المقدّمة عندما كان ابن خلدون في الخامسة والأربعين من عمره، في سنة 1377م. وعلى الرغم من أن هذا العمل يُعدّ جزءًا تمهيديًّا لمصنفه الرئيسي كتاب العِبَر (كتاب العِبَر والدُّرر في أخبار المُلوك والبَشَر)، فإن المقدّمة تتميّز بقيمتها النظرية، بخلاف سائر أجزاء العِبَر. ففيها يتجاوز ابن خلدون مجرد وصف الأحداث وملاحظتها، ليقدّم رؤيةً مفاهيمية وتحليلًا نقديًّا للتفسيرات التاريخية، مُتناولًا الوظائف والأسباب والنظم التي تُنتج الظواهر الاجتماعية والطبيعية. ولذلك، أصبحت المقدّمة أهمّ أعمال مفكّر يُجسّد نهاية عصرٍ وبداية عصرٍ آخر.

About the Author:

Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun was born on May 27, 1332 CE, corresponding to the first of Ramadan 732 AH, in the city of Tunis during the Hafsid era. He died on March 16, 1406 CE, correspond-ing to Ramadan 25, 808 AH, at the age of 76 years. He was buried in one of the Sufi cemeteries outside Bab al-Nasr in Cairo.