Ibn Khaldun

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Khaldūn was born in Tunis on 27 May 1332 and died in Cairo on 17 March 1406. He served rulers across the Maghreb and al-Andalus as secretary, minister and diplomat, and in Cairo was appointed chief Maliki judge several times. During the siege of Damascus in 1400–1401 he met the conqueror Timur.

During a period of retreat at Qalʿat Ibn Salāma, in present-day Algeria, he wrote the Muqaddimah (completed in a first version in 1377), the introduction to his universal history, the Kitāb al-ʿIbar. In it he studies human civilisation (ʿumrān) itself: how social cohesion (ʿaṣabiyya) allows groups to found states, how luxury and the weakening of that cohesion lead to decline, and how economic, environmental and cultural factors shape history. He also set out critical rules for evaluating historical reports.