Muqaddimah

The Muqaddimah (Arabic: مقدّمة meaning "the introduction") is a 14th-century Arabic treatise on historiography, sociology, and the philosophy of history written by Ibn Khaldun. Some modern thinkers view it as the first work dealing with the social sciences of sociology, demography, and cultural history. The Muqaddimah also deals with Islamic theology, historiography, the philosophy of history, economics, political theory, and ecology. Ibn Khaldun wrote the work in 1377 as the introduction and the first book of his planned work of world history, the Kitab al-ʿIbar ("Book of Lessons"; full title: Kitābu l-ʻibari wa Dīwāni l-Mubtada' wal-Ḥabar fī ayāmi l-ʻarab wal-ʿajam wal-barbar, waman ʻĀsarahum min Dhawī sh-Shalṭāni l-Akbār, i.e.: "Book of Lessons, Record of Beginnings and Events in the history of the Arabs and Foreigners and Berbers and their Powerful Contemporaries"), but already in his lifetime it became regarded as an independent work on its own.