The Muqaddimah

“The Muqaddimah is the Introduction of Ibn Khaldun’s multivolume world history. It is very important because once we say that Muslims engage in politics under certain conditions that aren’t religious principles, then the question is, what are these conditions? That’s what Ibn Khaldun focuses on.” Read more...

The best books on Islam and the State

Ahmet T. Kuru, Political Scientist

“It’s the first work of global history that has what we might now qualify as a social scientific theory, instead of just representing history as providential—although Ibn Khaldun is a fatalist: he does believe that everything is in the hands of God. But he sees God as working in history through what we might call social mechanisms, in particular through the antipathy, the struggle, the dialectic, if you like, between settled and pastoral peoples. He has an idea of a development of society through pastoral to settled conditions. He sees people who are at different stages in that process of development, and connects that to the struggles that forge historical change. The sort of changes he is interested in are primarily changes of dynasty, of power structure at a very high level. But he does have an overall vision, a pattern, what we might now call a ‘master narrative’ of how those changes happened. So he’s a very exciting new voice in global history in the 14th century.” Read more...

The best books on Global History

Felipe Fernández-Armesto, Historian

“Ibn Khaldun began writing the book in 1375 so it’s certainly the oldest on my list. It is also a unique work from that period in its attempt to analyse the context of history by understanding how societies organise themselves and how different modes of organisation can affect the interactions amongst people. The book has had a really powerful influence on me.” Read more...

The best books on Afghanistan

Thomas Barfield, Anthropologist

“He spends about two and a half years writing the first draught of the Muqaddimah, which he will work on for the rest of his life. It’s one hell of a great work. It’s intended as a prolegomenon – an introduction to what he is going to write – and the complexity starts there, really, because he started out with one idea of what he was going to write about…. And then he broadens and broadens” Read more...

Classics of Arabic Literature

Robert Irwin