Muqaddima

The Muqaddimah, also known as the Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun (Arabic: مقدّمة ابن خلدون‎‎) or Ibn Khaldun's Prolegomena (Ancient Greek: Προλεγόμενα), is a book written by the Arab historian Ibn Khaldun in 1377 which records an early view of universal history. Some modern thinkers view it as the first work dealing with the philosophy of history or the social sciences of sociology,demography,historiography,cultural history, social darwinism, ecology,darwinism and economics. The Muqaddimah also deals with Islamic theology, political theory and the natural sciences of biology and chemistry.

Ibn Khaldun wrote the work in 1377 as the introduction chapter and the first book of his planned work of world history, the Kitābu l-ʻibar ("Book of Lessons"; full title: Kitābu l-ʻibari wa Dīwāni l-Mubtada' wal-Ḥabar fī ayāmi l-ʻarab wal-ʿajam wal-barbar, waman ʻĀsarahum min Dhawī sh-Shalṭāni l-Akbār, i.e.: "Book of Lessons, Record of Beginnings and Events in the history of the Arabs and Foreigners and Berbers and their Powerful Contemporaries"), but already in his lifetime it became regarded as an independent work on its own.

Ibn Khaldun starts the Muqaddimah with a thorough criticism of the mistakes regularly committed by his fellow historians and the difficulties which await the historian in his work. He notes seven critical issues:

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