The Muqaddimah

Ibn Khaldun, the great 14th-century Arab scholar, is the most authoritative and most beguiling of Arabic polymaths... His learning and ideas have an astonishingly modern relevance. His encyclopaedic work is a wonderfully readable mixture of history, sociology, ethnography, economics, science, art, literature, cookery, and medicine. --Iain Finlayson, Times [The] most remarkable book written during the entire Middle Ages, one of the great intellectual achievements of all time. --Virginia Quarterly Review From review of Princeton's original edition: [N. J. Dawood] has, by skillful abridgement and deft but unobtrusive editing, produced an attractive and manageable volume, which should make the essential ideas of Ibn Khaldun accessible to a wide circle of readers. --Times Literary Supplement From review of Princeton's original edition: 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. --Arnold J. Toynbee, Observer