Charleston County Public Library

Ibn Khaldun, an intellectual biography, Robert Irwin

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages [227]-236) and index

individual biography

index present

non fiction

Ibn Khaldun

bibliography

990803030

Robert Irwin

an intellectual biography

"Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is generally regarded as the greatest intellectual ever to have appeared in the Arab world--a genius who ranks as one of the world's great minds. Yet the author of the Muqaddima, the most important study of history ever produced in the Islamic world, is not as well known as he should be, and his ideas are widely misunderstood. In this groundbreaking intellectual biography, Robert Irwin provides an engaging and authoritative account of Ibn Khaldun's extraordinary life, times, writings, and ideas. Irwin tells how Ibn Khaldun, who lived in a world decimated by the Black Death, held a long series of posts in the tumultuous Islamic courts of North Africa and Muslim Spain, becoming a major political player as well as a teacher and writer. Closely examining the Muqaddima, a startlingly original analysis of the laws of history, and drawing on many other contemporary sources, Irwin shows how Ibn Khaldun's life and thought fit into historical and intellectual context, including medieval Islamic theology, philosophy, politics, literature, economics, law, and tribal life. Because Ibn Khaldun's ideas often seem to anticipate by centuries developments in many fields, he has often been depicted as more of a modern man than a medieval one, and Irwin's account of such misreadings provides new insights about the history of Orientalism. In contrast, Irwin presents an Ibn Khaldun who was a creature of his time--a devout Sufi mystic who was obsessed with the occult and futurology and who lived in an often-strange world quite different from our own"--Dust jacket

Ibn Khaldun among the ruins -- The game of thrones in fourteenth-century North Africa -- The nomads, their virtues, and their place in history -- Underpinning the methodology of the Muqaddima : philosophy, theology, and jurisprudence -- Ibn Khaldun's sojourn among the Mamluks in Egypt -- The sufi mystic -- Messages from the dark side -- Economics before economics had been invented -- What Ibn Khaldun did for a living : teaching and writing -- The strange afterlife of the Muqaddima -- Ending up