Introduction

Abu Zayd Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldun al-Hadrami (732–808 AH / 1332–1406 CE) was born in Tunis to an Andalusian family of distinguished lineage that had settled in the Maghreb following the fall of Seville. He received a thorough classical education in Quranic sciences, hadith, fiqh according to the Maliki school, Arabic language, and the rational sciences of his age. His life was one of extraordinary movement across the Islamic West — serving courts in Morocco, Tlemcen, and Andalusia, then in his later decades making his way eastward to Egypt, where he taught in al-Azhar and served as chief Maliki judge. He died in Cairo in 808 AH and was buried there. It was during a period of relative solitude in the fortified lodge of Ibn Salama in Algeria that he composed the initial draft of his masterwork, completing the full text in Cairo in the years that followed.

Kitab al-Ibar wa-Diwan al-Mubtada' wal-Khabar fi Ayyam al-Arab wal-Ajam wal-Barbar (The Book of Lessons and the Register of Subject and Predicate in the Days of the Arabs, Non-Arabs, and Berbers) is a universal history in seven volumes. Its famous first volume, known independently as the Muqaddimah (Prolegomena), constitutes perhaps the most original contribution to the theory of history, sociology, and political philosophy produced in the premodern Islamic world. The remaining six volumes record the histories of the ancient peoples and prophets, the Arab tribes, the Islamic caliphates and dynasties, the Berber and Zanata confederacies of the Maghreb, and the rulers Ibn Khaldun himself witnessed or served. Together they form a work of encyclopedic scope matched by an equally ambitious theoretical framework.

The central concept animating the Kitab al-Ibar is 'asabiyyah — the spirit of group solidarity and cohesion that Ibn Khaldun identifies as the motor of political rise and fall. He argues that dynasties are born out of strong 'asabiyyah, typically among tribes of nomadic or frontier origin, and that they inevitably decline as prosperity, luxury, and sedentarization erode the very solidarity that brought them to power. This cyclical theory of history, grounded in careful observation of the Islamic West, gave later scholars a coherent analytical vocabulary for reading historical change that went far beyond mere chronicle. Ibn Khaldun also made significant contributions to economic thought, examining the division of labour, the nature of markets, the role of the state in economic life, and the effects of taxation — insights that have attracted attention from modern historians and social scientists alike.

The student approaching the Kitab al-Ibar is well advised to begin with the Muqaddimah in its entirety before proceeding to the historical volumes, since the theoretical framework established there illuminates the selections and judgments made throughout. Reading the work alongside classical biographies and dynastic histories will provide comparative depth, allowing Ibn Khaldun's analytical lens to be tested against other sources. Scholars of Islamic history, legal and political thought, and the historical sociology of religion will all find this text rewarding. Its perspective is that of a committed Sunni Muslim and Maliki jurist, and his theological assumptions are those of Ahl us-Sunnah wal-Jama'ah, making the work equally valuable as a monument of Islamic intellectual civilisation and as a primary source for the history of the Maghreb and al-Andalus.