The Muqaddimah

An Introduction to History - Abridged Edition

Ibn Khaldûn, N. J. Dawood, Franz Rosenthal

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9780691166285, 9780691099460
• eBook ISBN: 9781400866090
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

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 Khaldûn (d. 1406), this monumental work established the foundations of several fields of knowledge, including the 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 the United States and abroad. A one-volume abridged version of Rosenthal's masterful translation first appeared in 1969.

This Princeton Classics edition of the abridged version includes Rosenthal's original introduction as well as a contemporary introduction by Bruce B. Lawrence. This volume makes available a seminal work of Islam and medieval and ancient history to twenty-first century audiences.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Introduction to the 2005 Edition
• From the Translator's Introduction to the 1958 Unabridged Edition
• Introduction
• Invocation
• Foreword
• The Introduction: The excellence of historiography. An appreciation of the various approaches to history. A glimpse of the different kinds of errors to which historians are liable. Why these errors occur
• Book One of the Kitâb Al-'Ibar: The nature of civilization. Bedouin and settled lift, the achievements of superiority, gainful occupations, ways of making a living, sciences, crafts, and all the other things that affect civilization. The causes and reasons thereof
• Chapter 1: Human civilization in general
• Chapter 2: Bedouin civilization, savage nations and tribes and their conditions of life, including several basic and explanatory statements
• Chapter 3: On dynasties, royal authority, the caliphate, government ranks, and all that goes with these things. The chapter contains basic and supplementary propositions
• Chapter 4: Countries and cities, and all other forms of sedentary civilization. The conditions occurring there. Primary and secondary considerations in this connection
• Chapter 5: 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
• Chapter 6: The various kinds of sciences. The methods of instruction. The conditions that obtain in these conditions Prefatory Discussion: On man's ability to think, which distinguishes human beings from animals and which enables them to obtain their livelihood, to co-operate to this end with their fellow men, and to study the Master whom they worship, and the revelations that the Messengers transmitted from Him. God thus caused all animals to obey man and to be in the grasp of his power. Through his ability to think, God gave man superiority over many' of His creatures
• Concluding Remark
• Index