Muqaddimah

The Muqaddimah (Arabic: مقدّمة ابن خلدون, meaning in English: Ibn Khaldun's Introduction), also known as the Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldunor the Prolegomena (Greek: Προλεγόμενα), is a book written by the Maghrebian Muslim historian Ibn Khaldun in 1377 which records an early view of universal history. Some modern thinkers view it as the first work dealing with the philosophy of history^[1] or the social sciences^[2] ofsociology,^[1][3][4][5] demography,^[3] historiography^[4][6] or cultural history.^[7][8] and economics,^[9][10] The Muqaddimah also deals with Islamic theology, political theory and the natural sciences of biology and chemistry. Ibn Khaldun wrote the work in 1377 as the preface or first book of his planned world history, the Kitab al-Ibar (full title: Kitābu l-ʻibār wa Diwānu l-Mubtada' wa l-Ħabar fī tarikhi l-ʻarab wa l-Barbar wa man ʻĀsarahum min Đawī Ash-Sha'n l-Akbār "Book of Lessons, Record of Beginnings and Events in the history of the Arabs and Berbers and their Powerful Contemporaries"), but already in his lifetime it became regarded as an independent work.