Ibn Khaldun - The father of the philosophy of history

Abdurahman Ibn Khaldun is one of the last scholars of the Golden Islamic Age and certainly the last in the North Africa and Andalus region before the end of the Islamic Golden age in the fourteenth century. He was born in 1332 AD in Tunisia from an Andalusian family from Sevile which was forced to migrate from Sevile after Reconquista in Spain. He studied in Fez ( a famous school in North africa during medivals) and lived in Tunisia for a long time and finally moved to Cairo in Egypt and died in 1406 AD. He lived in a critical period of the Middle east and north africa history when the Mongol invasion destroyed Persia and Baghdad and the islamic intelectualism was declining as a result of the cultural deterioration by the destructive Mongol invasions. This deterioration was accelerated by the invasion of Timurlane (Teimur ). At the same time the Reconquista in Spain and Portugal was completed and most of Andalus (Spain) except the Kingdam of Granada was captured by the christian kingdom of castile ( They re-took Spain and established Spian in the present cultural atmosphere).

The situation led him to think more deeply on the historical events and the reason that a culture decline. His methodology is completely extraordinary during his life and is completel close to the methodology of some europian philosophers and thinkers in 18th and 19th century including Hagel. His work " Introduction = Al Mudaddimah " is a master peice in the old sociology and the philosophy of history, politics and economics. He used the dynasties in North Africa and Middle east as samples and categorized the reasons that a cultural rises and declines. His book has a review on different ancient cultures including persians.

Another work is the book Assabiayah = " ties". He invistagte the history of moor and arab tribes in North Africa and try to conclude the factors in their political deterioration and try to model the similar cultures in the world at his time.

It sounds interesting to manetion a small part of his book " Introduction" on Persians as he extensvely admired the Persian culture and he name some facts that the Prsian cultural at his time was declining ( For a while the scholar centre of the Islamic world was moved from the east Islamic territory including Persia and Baghdad to the west such as Cairo and Tunisia and Morocco"

" On Persians :

"It is a remarkable fact that, with few exceptions, most Muslim scholars both in the religious and intellectual sciences have been non-Arabs."

"Hadith of Persians and belief":

"Thus the founders of grammar were Sibawaih and after him, al-Farisi and Az-Zajjaj. All of them were of Persian descent…they invented rules of (Arabic) grammar…great jurists were Persians… only the Persians engaged in the task of preserving knowledge and writing systematic scholarly works. Thus the truth of the statement of the prophet becomes apparent, "If learning were suspended in the highest parts of heaven the Persians would attain it"…The intellectual sciences were also the preserve of the Persians, left alone by the Arabs, who did not cultivate them…as was the case with all crafts…This situation continued in the cities as long as the Persians and Persian countries, Iraq, Khorasan and Transoxiana, retained their sedentary culture."

Here are some links on Ibn Khaldun :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ibn_Khaldun

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muqaddimah