Ibn Khaldun and the Arab Origins of the Sociology of Civilisation and Power

This book presents Ibn Khaldun's anticipatory sociology of civilisations and power. Half a millennium before the birth of modern sociology in the West, Ibn Khaldun—scholar, political counsellor, and Malikite judge—wrote a revolutionary sociological-philosophical treatise, the Muqaddima. This book places his broad, complex, and refined treatise against the background of the Islamo-Greek culture of his time and analyses its main sociological, but also philosophical, historical, and scientific perspectives. Finally, thanks to its "universalisable" core, the author recontextualizes the teachings from the Muqaddima to reveal the deep insights it provides into the society, politics and law of contemporary liberal and multicultural civilisations.

Given its interdisciplinary appeal, the book addresses a wide readership of students and scholars in sociology, the sociology of law, philosophy of law, philosophy of history, political philosophy, history of civilisations, political sociology, and Arabic studies.

Preface.- Foreword.- Chapter 1. The Rediscovery of Ibn Khaldun’s Work.- Chapter 2. Sense and Form of a “New History”.- Chapter 3. Inside the Muqaddima: Sociocultural Compactness and Social Transformations.- Chapter 4. The Internal Forces of the Crisis and the “Colouring” of Civilisation.- Chapter 5. The Topicality of Ibn Khaldun’s Thought: From the Muqaddima to Our Society.- Index.