Ibn Khaldun

Abu Zayd Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldun al-Hadrami was born on May 27, 1332 CE in Tunis, Tunisia, to a family of Yemeni Arab origin that had long been prominent in Andalusian and North African political and scholarly life. He received an intensive classical education in Quranic sciences, Arabic linguistics, Islamic jurisprudence, mathematics, and philosophy, studying under the leading scholars of his day.

Ibn Khaldun's early career was marked by turbulent engagement with the courts of the Marinid, Hafsid, and Zayyanid dynasties across North Africa and al-Andalus, where he served as a courtier, diplomat, and political secretary. This immersion in the chaotic politics of a world disrupted by the Black Death and Mongol invasions gave him intimate firsthand experience of how states rise, flourish, and collapse.

Around 1375 CE, he withdrew from political life and spent four remarkable years of intellectual isolation in the fortress of Ibn Salama in western Algeria. It was there that he composed the Muqaddima (Prolegomena), the extraordinary introduction to his universal history Kitab al-Ibar. The Muqaddima is widely regarded as the first work of philosophy of history and sociology, and among the earliest systematic treatments of economics.

Ibn Khaldun introduced the concept of asabiyya (social cohesion or group solidarity) as the engine of political power, arguing that dynasties rise on the strength of tribal solidarity and inevitably decline as luxury softens them. He articulated what is now recognized as an early form of the Laffer curve in taxation, and developed a labor theory of value, a theory of supply and demand, and analyses of trade cycles — all centuries before their European counterparts. He died in Cairo in 1406 CE while serving as a chief judge of the Maliki school.