Abdu r-Raman bin Muammad bin Khaldn Al-Hadrami, May 27, 1332 AD/732 AH March 19, 1406 AD/808
8 AH) was an Arab historiographer and historian born in Tunis and is sometimes viewed as one of the forerunners of modern historiography, sociology andeconomics (alongside the earlier Indian scholar Chanakya. He is best known for his Muqaddimah (known as Prolegomenon in English), which was discovered, evaluated and fully appreciated first by 19th century European scholarship, although it has also had considerable influence on 17th-century Ottoman historians like ajj Khalfa and Mustafa Naima who relied on his theories to analyze the growth and decline of theOttoman empire. Later in the 19th century, Western scholars recognized him as one of the greatest philosophers to come out of the Arab world.
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Biography :
Ibn Khaldun's life is relatively well-documented, as he wrote an autobiography in which numerous documents regarding his life are quoted word-for-word. However, the autobiography has little to say about his private life, so little is known about his family background. Generally known as "Ibn Khaldn" after a remote ancestor, he was born in Tunis in AD 1332 (732 A.H.) into an upperclass Andalusian family, the Ban Khaldn. His family, which held many high offices in Andalusia, had emigrated to Tunisia after the fall of Seville to Reconquista forces around the middle of the 13th century. Under the Tunisian Hafsid dynasty some of his family held political office; Ibn Khaldn's father and grandfather however withdrew from political life and joined a mystical order. His brother, Yahya Ibn Khaldun, was also a historian who wrote a book on the Abdalwadid dynasty, and who was assassinated by a rival for being the officialhistoriographer of the court.[10] In his autobiography, Ibn Khaldun traces his descent back to the time of Muhammad through an Arab tribe from Yemen, specificallyHadhramaut, which came to Spain in the eighth century at the beginning of the Islamic conquest. In his own words: "And our ancestry is from Hadhramaut, from the Arabs of Yemen, via Wa'il ibn Hajar, from the best of the Arabs, well-known and respected." (p. 2429, Al-Waraq's edition). However, the biographer Mohammad Enan questions his claim, suggesting that his family may have been Muladis who pretended to be of Arab origin in order to gain social status. Enan also mentions a well documented past tradition, concerning certain Berber groups, whereby they delusively "aggrandize" themselves with some Arab ancestry. The motive of such an invention was always the desire for political and societal ascendancy. Some speculate this of the Khaldun family; they elaborate that Ibn Khaldun himself was the product of the same Berber ancestry as the native majority of his birthplace. A point congenial to this posits that Ibn Khaldun's unusual written focus on, and admiration for Berbers reveals a deference towards them that is born of a vested interest in preserving them in the realm of conscious history; such is that which the true Arabs of his day would find no enthusiasm for and indeed a vested interest in suppressing. Moreover the special position that he affords Berbers in his work is fully vindicated upon comparing it with his vitriolic attitudes towards the Arab, and his relative disinterest in the state of affairs outside the Maghreb. In contrast, Muhammad Hozien chooses to believe: "The false [Berber] identity would be
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valid however at the time that Ibn Khalduns ancestors left Andalusia and moved to Tunisia they did not change their claim to Arab ancestry. Even in the times when Berbers were ruling, the reigns of Al-Marabats and al-Mowahids, et al. the Ibn Khalduns did not reclaim their Berber heritage.". This point ignores the aforementioned phenomenon of adopting an Arab ancestry to garner prestige.
Education:
His family's high rank enabled Ibn Khaldun to study with the best teachers in Maghreb. He received a classical Islamic education, studying the Qur'an which he memorized by heart, Arabic linguistics, the basis for an understanding of the Qur'an, hadith, sharia (law) and fiqh(jurisprudence). He received certification (ijazah) for all these subjects.[13] The mystic, mathematician and philosopher, Al-Abili, introduced him to mathematics, logic and philosophy, where he above all studied the works of Averroes, Avicenna, Razi and Tusi. At the age of 17, Ibn Khaldn lost both his parents to the Black Death, an intercontinental epidemic of the plague that hit Tunis in 13481349. Following family tradition, Ibn Khaldn strove for a political career. In the face of a tumultuous political situation in North Africa, this required a high degree of skill developing and dropping alliances prudently, to avoid falling with the short-lived regimes of the time. Ibn Khaldn's autobiography is the story of an adventure, in which he spends time in prison, reaches the highest offices and falls again into exile.
