Wali al-Din Abu Zayd Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldun al-Hadrami, author of the Muqaddima and the Kitab al-Ibar, was born in Tunis in 732 AH (1332 CE) and died in 808 AH (1406 CE) 1 2 3. He wrote for Sultan Abu Inan at Fez, was imprisoned in 758 AH until the sultan died, and then became confidential secretary to his brother Abu Salim 4 3. He completed the Muqaddima in five months ending in the middle of 779 AH, then revised it and attached to it the histories of the Arabs and the Berbers 5. He opens it by calling history a noble art of many benefits, and he makes the subject of his science umran, the necessary human association 6 7.
He reached Egypt in 784 AH, taught at al-Azhar, and was made Maliki judge by al-Zahir Barquq in 786 AH 8. In 803 AH he went out with the army to Syria and was brought before Timur at Damascus, where the jurist Abd al-Jabbar ibn al-Nu'man al-Khwarazmi interpreted between them 9. He died suddenly, still a judge, in Ramadan 808 AH and was buried in the Sufi cemetery outside Bab al-Nasr 8.
Al-Sakhawi quotes the judgement of al-Maqrizi that nothing like his Muqaddima had been made, and with it views critical of his judgeship and his history 8 10 11. The Mawsu'at A'lam al-Ulama' wa-l-Adaba' calls him the author of the first book on the philosophy of history and human society among the scholars of Arab-Islamic civilisation 2.
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