Knowra The Muqaddimah The Muqaddimah The Muqaddimah is Ibn Khaldun’s 14th-century introduction to a universal history. It develops a theory of society and political change to explain how historical states rise and decline.
Asabiyyah : Asabiyyah is the group solidarity that enables a community to act collectively and establish political power. Ibn Khaldun uses group solidarity to explain how dynasties gain power and why their cohesion fades.
Dynastic cycle : A dynastic cycle is a recurring pattern in which ruling houses rise, consolidate power, and eventually lose authority. Ibn Khaldun describes dynasties as vulnerable to the erosion of the solidarity that brought them to power.
Ibn Khaldun : Ibn Khaldun was a 14th-century North African historian, statesman, and scholar, best known for the Muqaddimah. He wrote the work as an introduction to his broader history and grounded its arguments in political experience.
Ibn Khaldunism : Ibn Khaldunism is the study and interpretation of Ibn Khaldun’s ideas about society, state power, and historical change. This field examines how the Muqaddimah’s concepts have been interpreted and applied across disciplines.
ʿUmran : ʿUmran is human social organization, including settled life, institutions, and the conditions that shape civilization. The work treats social organization as the subject that makes historical events intelligible.
Taxation : Taxation is the compulsory collection of revenue by a government from people, property, or economic activity. The work links excessive taxation to weakened production and declining state revenues.
Kitab al-Ibar : Kitab al-Ibar is Ibn Khaldun’s universal history, of which the Muqaddimah serves as the introductory volume. The Muqaddimah introduces the historical project whose later volumes recount peoples and dynasties.
Sociology : Sociology is the systematic study of social relationships, institutions, and collective life. The work’s sustained analysis of social structures has led scholars to compare it with later sociology.
Khaldunian cycle : The Khaldunian cycle is a model in which cohesive groups establish dynasties that weaken through luxury and successive generations. This cycle connects asabiyyah, state formation, and dynastic decline in the work’s account of change.
State formation : State formation is the process by which political authority becomes organized into durable institutions and territorial rule. The work traces state-building to the capacity of cohesive groups to establish and defend authority.
Show all 22