Ibn Khaldūn, in full Walī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan Ibn Khaldūn, was born in the Khalduniyyah quarter on the 27th of May 1332, in Tunis (Tunisia) and died on the 17th of March 1406, Cairo, (Egypt). He was the well-known and greatest Arab historian, who developed one of the earliest nonreligious philosophies of history. He had complied that in his masterpiece, the Muqaddimah (“Introduction”). He also wrote a definitive history of Muslim North Africa.
The historiographer talked about the family Khalduns who were basically from South Arabian and then moved on to different other regions. The Khalduns had successfully secured high administrative and political services under the Umayyad dynasty. All the family members were involved in the administrative and army. His father also became an administrator and soldier but soon abandoned his career to devote himself to the study of theology, law, and letters. And Ibn Khaldun took his inspiration from his father. The black death of 1349 pulled away from his parents to death.
The historian had written about himself that he had studied, the Holy Quran, Arabic literature, and Philosophy. He had also been in administrative service and served as a prime minister. In his masterpiece “The Muqaddimah” he wrote about the philosophy of history. He studied the nature of society and social change differently that led him to see a new science which he called ʿilm al-ʿumrān (“the science of culture”). He defined the science of his discovery as: “This science has its subject, viz., human society, and its problems, viz., the social transformations that succeed each other in the nature of society.”
This work is full of brilliant observations on historiography, economics, politics, and education. It is held together by his central concept of ʿaṣabiyyah, or “social cohesion.” It is more than a book because he had written it in a wide spectrum. It had remained the masterpiece for all the other historians.
