| 600th anniversary of the death of Abdurrahman Ibn Khaldun, historian (1332-1406) |
Countries : Afghanistan, Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia
Year : 2006
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The first sociologist and historical critic, Abderrahman Ibn Khaldun was born in Tunisia on 27 May 1332, into an Arab family from Andalusia. Educated at the Zituna mosque, he held high public offices in Grenada, Tlemcen, Annaba and Fez. He taught in Cairo, met with Tamerlane in Damascus and became Malikite Cadi in Cairo, where he died at the age of 74 on 17 March 1406.
A great Arab historian, geographer, economist and thinker, described as a genius representing a solitary star in the dark ages, Ibn Khaldun is regarded as the founder of sociology and the father of historical criticism. An exceptionally active thinker, Ibn Khaldun transcended his time, the fourteenth century, and the country where he was born, Tunisia. Reflecting on the forms of political power in North Africa in the fourteenth century, Ibn Khaldun produced a comparative analysis of the relations between nomads and sedentary populations and between social and political forms of collective life, which continues to inform even the most modern political theory. A.J. Toynbee described Khaldun’s Muqaddima (Prolegomena) as “the greatest work in its category, ever created by anybody, in any time and in any place”. Well in advance of his time, Khaldun met with a general lack of understanding and it was only in the nineteenth century that his work began to be recognized. We are indebted to him for a definition of the mission of history and his research on the evolution of human societies where he detected the existence of an ascending cycle of increasing authority followed by a descending cycle of decadence. The universal impact of this Arab precursor of the dialogue among cultures and civilisations impels us to keep highlighting his contribution, which is part of the global development of thought up to our time.
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