Ibn Khaldun

Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldun was a Sunni jurist of the Maliki madhhab (one of Sunni Islam's four legal schools), a statesman, and the historian whose work reshaped how scholars think about the rise and fall of societies. He was born in Tunis in 1332 (732 AH) into a family that traced its origins to Seville in al-Andalus, leaving when Christian forces advanced. Educated in Tunis, he served a series of Maghrebi and Andalusian courts as secretary, envoy, and minister, his fortunes rising and falling with each dynasty. He held office in Fez, served the Nasrid ruler Muhammad V in Granada, and worked as chamberlain in Bijaya.

Worn down by court politics, he withdrew around 1375 to a fortress in what is now Algeria, where over roughly three years he drafted the Muqaddima ("Introduction"), the prologue to his universal history. In it he proposed 'ilm al-'umran, a "science of human civilization," and the concept of 'asabiyya (group solidarity) to explain why dynasties cohere and then decay. Many later historians regard this as a founding work of historiography and social theory, though that assessment is a modern judgment rather than how his own age received him.

He settled in Cairo around 1382 under the Mamluk sultans, teaching and serving repeatedly as chief Maliki qadi (judge). His wife and children reportedly drowned at sea while joining him. He made the pilgrimage to Mecca and, in 1401, famously met the conqueror Timur outside besieged Damascus. He died in Cairo in 1406 (808 AH).