Muqaddimah

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The Muqaddimah, or the Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun (Arabic: مقدّمة ابن خلدون), records an early Muslim view of 'universal history'. Many modern thinkers view it as one of the first works of sociology. The Arab historian Ibn Khaldun wrote the work in 1377 as the preface or first book of his planned world history, the kitab al-ibar, but already in his lifetime it became regarded as an independent work.

Ibn Khaldun starts the Muqaddimah with a thorough criticism of the mistakes regularly committed by his fellow historians and the difficulties which await the historian in his work. He notes seven critical issues:

"All records, by their very nature, are liable to error...
...Partisanship towards a creed or opinion...
...Over-confidence in one's sources...
...The failure to understand what is intended...
...A mistaken belief in the truth...
...The inability to place an event in its real context
...The common desire to gain favor of those of high ranks, by praising them, by spreading their fame...
...The most important is the ignorance of the laws governing the transformation of human society."

Against the seventh point (the ignorance of social laws) Ibn Khaldun lays out his theory of human society in the Muqaddimah.

Ibn Khaldun drew on an Arabic translation of Orosius' universal history for information on Greco-Roman and Christian history. In general, however, his curiosity on these subjects was not great.

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