Ibn Khaldun, Abd Al-Rahman Abu Zayd Ibn Muhammad

Born May 27, 1332 in Tunis; died Mar. 17, 1406 in Cairo. Arab historian and philosopher, follower of the Arab philosopher Averroës.

Ibn Khaldun occupied various posts between 1349 and 1375 at the courts of the rulers of Tunis, Fès, Granada, and Bejaia. In 1379 he returned to Tunis; in 1382, persecuted by the clergy, he fled to Egypt, where he worked as a qadi (judge) and taught at al-Azhar, al-Qamhiyya, and al-Zahiriya madrasas (Islamic universities). Ibn Khaldun’s principal work, the Book of Instructive Examples from the History of the Arabs, Persians, Berbers, and Peoples Who Lived With Them on the Earth (Kitab al-Ibar) consists of three parts. The first, the “Introduction”(Muqaddimah), treats the problems, methodology, and principles of historical research. In this part, Ibn Khaldun presents his teachings on the development of society. Differences in people’s way of life, the principal difference being that between nomadic and sedentary life, he attributes to differences in geographical milieus. The second part is the “History of the Peoples of the Muslim East.” The last part, the “History of the Peoples of the Maghreb,” notable for its thoroughness and precision of description, is the basic source for the medieval history of North Africa. Ibn Khaldun is also the author of an autobiography, one of the first examples of this genre in medieval Arabic literature.