Introduction of Ibn Khaldun

With a study of everything written about the introduction in all languages. Born Abdul Rahman bin Muhammad bin Khaldun in 732 AH (1332 AD) in Tunis to a family from Seville, and he died, after a life full of fluctuations, in 808 AH (1406 AD) in Cairo. He had moved there in 782 AH (1382 AD), where he taught at Al-Azhar University and worked as a Maliki judge. He held high political positions in many of the cities of his time: in Fez, Granada, and Tlemcen. He undertook two important missions: the first, as a envoy for the ruler of Granada, visited the Christian King of Castile, and was sent by the Mamluk Sultan to Damascus, where he met Timur Leng, the ruthless leader of the second Mongol campaign, which he discusses in his autobiography. Ibn Khaldun gained eternal fame with his famous introduction to the book Al-Ibar, in which he laid the foundations of social science in its various aspects, so much so that it was said: it is a treasury of social, political, economic, and literary sciences, and an attempt to establish a theory of the movement of history. He derives the dynamics of history from the contradiction between city dwellers (urban) and Bedouins, and between civilization ("urbanization"). Civilization forms in cities when a family succeeds in establishing a stable state, but as wealth accumulates, relaxation and a tendency toward luxury occur, public morals deteriorate, envy and distrust spread. As a result of unlimited waste, the ruler sooner or later becomes unable to pay his forces, and to protect himself from attacks by these forces, he employs guards made up of strangers who have no emotional ties to him. Therefore, they often overthrow him and seize power. However, the end of a ruling dynasty can come from outside: a strong man gathers around him a group bound by a fighting, tribal spirit, emerging from an unspent Bedouin core, causing the declining ruling family to fall, and its place is taken by a new one. Then the same historical cycle begins again. Within this framework, Ibn Khaldun examines all aspects of civilization, sciences, arts, and religious life. That is why some modern scholars called him "the father of sociology."