The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History

by Ibn Khaldun; Rosenthal, Franz; Rosenthal, Franz; Dawood, N. J.; Lawrence, Bruce B.; Rosenthal, Franz

• ISBN13: 9780691120546
• ISBN10: 0691120544
• Edition: Abridged
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-10-11
• Publisher: Bollingen Foundation

Summary

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 Khalducirc;n (d. 1406), this monumental work laid down the foundations of several fields of knowledge, including philosophy of history, sociology, ethnography, and economics. The first complete English translation, by the eminent Islamicist and interpreter of Arabic literature Franz Rosenthal, was published in three volumes in 1958 as part of the Bollingen Series and received immediate acclaim in America and abroad. A one-volume abridged version of Rosenthal's masterful translation was first published in 1969. This new edition of the abridged version, with the addition of a key section of Rosenthal's own introduction to the three-volume edition, and with a new introduction by Bruce B. Lawrence, will reintroduce this seminal work to twenty-first-century students and scholars of Islam and of medieval and ancient history.

Table of Contents

Introduction to the 2005 Edition	p. vii
From the Translator's Introduction to the 1958 Unabridged Edition	p. xxvii
Introduction	p. xxxvii
Invocation	p. 3
Foreword	p. 5
The Introduction	p. 11
Book One of the Kitab Al-`Ibar	p. 33
Human civilization in general	p. 45
First Prefatory Discussion	p. 45
Second Prefatory Discussion	p. 49
Third Prefatory Discussion	p. 58
Fourth Prefatory Discussion	p. 63
Fifth Prefatory Discussion	p. 65
Sixth Prefatory Discussion	p. 70
Bedouin civilization, savage nations and tribes and their conditions of life, including several basic and explanatory statements	p. 91
On dynasties, royal authority, the caliphate, government ranks, and all that goes with these things. The chapter contains basic and supplementary propositions	p. 123
Countries and cities, and all other forms of sedentary civilization. The conditions occurring there. Primary and secondary considerations in this connection	p. 263
On the various aspects of making a living, such as profit and the crafts. The conditions that occur in this connection. A number of problems are connected with this subject	p. 297
The various kinds of sciences. The methods of instruction. The conditions that obtain in these conditions	p. 333
Prefatory Discussion
Concluding Remark	p. 459
Index	p. 460
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