he Muqaddimah: T an Introduction to History

Ibn Khaldun Translated by Franz Rosenthal; abridged and edited by N. J. Dawood

Princeton and Oxford: Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press, 2005. xliv, 465p. $24.95. ISBN: 0691120544.

Review by Issa J. Boullata, Ph.D. McGill University issa. boullata@mcgill.ca

t is almost five decades since Ibn Khaldun’s The Muqaddimah I first appeared in English in three volumes, translated by Franz Rosenthal(l914-2003) ofYale University and published with his introduction in 1958 in the Bollingen Series. Since then, a second edition, with corrections and an augmented bibliographywas published in Princeton in 1967. In the same year a one-volume abridgment ofthis work, with an introduction was made by N. J. Dawood and published in London, andre-publishedin Princeton in 1969. It is this abridgment by Dawood that is now under review as re-published in 2005, with a new introduction by Bruce B. Lawrence. IbnKhaldun(l332-1406), asis wellknown, isoneofthegreatesthab scholars and thinkers, not because ofhis monumental history of the Arabs, non-Arabs, and Berbers and their contemporaries up to his own time, but because of the prolegomenon or introduction, The Muqaddirnah, which he wrote to this history. In this prolegomenon, he laid the foundation of a ‘new science’, which includes disciplines we know today as philosophy of history, sociology, ethnography, and economics. The great British historian and philosopher of history, Arnold J. Toynbee (1889-19751, called The Muqaddimh “undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever been created by any mind in any time or place.. . the most comprehensive and illuminating analysis of how human affairs work that has been made anywhere.”

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Rosenthal’s masterful three-volume translation received wide acclaim in the world of scholarship, as did Dawood’s one-volume abridgment. By adding important sections ofRosenthal’s introduction and a new introduction by Lawrence to his succinct and deftly edited abridgment in this new reprint, Dawood has rendered an important service to students of Islam and medieval history. He could have provided an even more important service had the author included Rosenthal’s bibliography, or even the key sections of it, and enlarged the book’s index to be more comprehensive.

As for Professor Lawrence’s introduction, the only new part of this reprint, it puts Ibn Khaldun’s .The Muqaddimah within more recent scholarship on it, and shows what a continuously engaging work it still continues to be. He edited a useful work entitled Ibn Khaldun and Islamic Ideology (Brill, 1984) and has written other contributions on the subject; he is thus a most knowledgeable scholar to introduce new readers of the 21“ centuryto Ibn Khaldun. Lawrence’s way of connecting Ibn Khaldun’s philosophy of history with the principles of Islamic jurisprudence, which he uses both as a science and a pedagogical tool, is fascinating. He shows, for example, how the principle ofuma’(consensus) in the theory of Islamic law functions as ‘asabiyya (group feeling) does in society by mustering a collective will. Furthermore, he cuts through the oRen bewildering detailed arguments of Ibn Khaldun in The Muqaddima to show how his organizational vision considers human civilization moving from manual, physical labor to refined, intellectual pursuits; from desert to sedentary dimensions; from statecraRassociatedwithtribalorreligious afIXations to centralized rule, then asymmetric empire; from an almost natural and strong ‘asabiyya that unites society to an effete weakness that invites another civilization to take over.

I believe that Dawood’s abridgment ofRosenthal’s translation, now with Lawrence’s introduction, is agood addition to the available works on Islamic history and thought, and makes Ibn Khaldun’s philosophy ofhistory more easily accessible and understandable.

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