Ibn Khaldun: Political Thought

Ibn Khaldun is one of the outstanding thinkers about the nature of society and politics in the pre-modern Arab world. This volume presents the political writings of the fourteenth-century philosopher, stressing their enduring relevance. Arnold Toynbee used to say that Ibn Khaldun's work was the most impressive endeavour to build a theory out of history ever undertaken before the nineteenth century. However, translators and historians discovered Ibn Khaldun at the time when new revolutionary economic and political conditions were dismissive of his philosophy. In this edition, Gabriel Martinez-Gros brings Ibn Khaldun's political thought to the forefront, exploring his theories in the context of his era, but also emphasizing their profound resonances with modern society. Far from the caricature of Ibn Khaldun as a 'tribal philosopher', Martinez-Gros shows that Ibn Khaldun's thought is about creating wealth in an agrarian society, concerned with economic concepts, demography, war and violence.