Abstract
Ibn Khaldun's social thought has largely been ignored by sociologists in the West, although Yves Lacoste and Arnold Toynbee considered it to be the greatest work of its kind. He lived at a time of crisis in Arab-Muslim civilisation, and a paradigm crisis in historiography. His `Ilm Al `Umran, the New Science, was designed to provide a better understanding of the history of Arab-Muslim societies. Its introduction, the Muqaddimah, has been interpreted by Muhammed Al-Jabri as an evolutionary analysis of human phenomena including an objective account of the supernatural. It is an account of the dynamics of Arab society `explaining how and why things are as they are'.
The central concept of the New Science is Al `Assabiyya, which is a specifically Arab interpretation of what holds groups together. This was partially transformed by the `invasion economy' in Ibn Khaldun's time and we can extend this analysis to modern oil-dependent countries. Khaldun shares a dualist typological approach (bedouin/sedentary) with Western sociologists. In his case, both first-hand interaction with the social realities of his time and commitment to Arab-Muslim civilisation were combined with a demand for freedom of thought and rigorous science.
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