The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History - Abridged Edition (Bollingen Series) - Softcover

Khaldūn, Ibn

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0691017549 ISBN 13: 9780691017549

Publisher: Princeton University Press, 1969

Synopsis

The Muqaddimah, often translated as "Introduction" or "Prolegomenon," is the most important Islamic history of the premodern world. Written by the great fourteenth-century Arab scholar Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406), this monumental work laid down the foundations of several fields of knowledge, including philosophy of history, sociology, ethnography, and economics. The first complete English translation, by the eminent Islamicist and interpreter of Arabic literature Franz Rosenthal, was published in three volumes in 1958 as part of the Bollingen Series and received immediate acclaim in America and abroad. A one-volume abridged version of Rosenthal's masterful translation was first published in 1969.

This new edition of the abridged version, with the addition of a key section of Rosenthal's own introduction to the three-volume edition, and with a new introduction by Bruce B. Lawrence, will reintroduce this seminal work to twenty-first-century students and scholars of Islam and of medieval and ancient history.

About this title

Review

"[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: "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

"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

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

-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

Edition details

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Publication date: 1969
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0691017549
• ISBN 13: 9780691017549
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 480
• Editor: Dawood N. J.