ARAB MEDIEVAL SCHOLAR’S WISDOM MAY OFFER A WINDOW ON THE MODERN POLITICAL WORLD

The medieval scholar Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun, a famous Tunisian historian of the 14th and 15th centuries, created a model for the history of states, which he said had a natural life of birth, maturity and death. His Muqaddimah, published in Arabic in 1377, written as a prelude to an ambitious survey of global history, said states went through three stages, always ending – as the adage about politics says - in failure. Ibn Khaldun, who died in Cairo in 1406, argued states, just like humans, pass through three stages, which are: birth, growth and a fall. ...


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