The Muqaddimah

An Introduction to History (Unabridged Edition, Volume 1)

Ibn Khaldûn, Franz Rosenthal

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2026
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691290706
• Print ISBN:
  9780691281919
  9780691281902
• Subtopic: Ancient History

Volume one of the classic Islamic history of the world, now available to a new generation of readers in a fully unabridged edition

Written by the great fourteenth-century Arab scholar Ibn Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah, or “Introduction,” is the earliest critical study of history. Though intended as the preface and first book of a world history, it is a wholly self-contained work, one that laid the foundations for fields of knowledge ranging from the philosophy of history to sociology and ethnography and has influenced writers such as Frank Herbert, Bruce Chatwin, and Naguib Mahfouz. A three-volume English translation by the eminent Islamicist Franz Rosenthal was first published in 1958 as part of the Bollingen Series, garnering immediate international acclaim. A one-volume abridged version followed in 1969. Now the complete unabridged edition of Rosenthal’s masterful translation is available again in three beautiful volumes, reintroducing this monumental study of history to twenty-first century audiences.

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Frontispiece
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Translator’s Note to the Second Edition
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations and Symbols
• Translator’s Introduction
• The Muqaddimah: The Introduction and Book One of the World History, entitled Kitâb al-‛Ibar, of Ibn Khaldûn
• Book One of the Kitâb al–‘Ibar: The nature of civilization. Bedouin and settled life, the achievement 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 I: Human civilization in general
• Chapter II: Bedouin civilization, savage nations and tribes and their conditions of life, including several basic and explanatory statements
• Chapter III: On dynasties, royal authority, the caliphate, government ranks, and all that goes with these things. The chapter contains basic and supplementary propositions