An Introduction to History

The Classic Islamic History of the World

Translated and intorduced by Franz Rosenthal

With a new introduction by Bruce B. Lawrence

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 Khaldun (d.1406), this monumental work laid down the foundations of several fields ofknowledge, including philosophy of history, sociology, ethnography, and economics.