The Middle East in the Middle Ages by Robert Irwin

Khaldun's concern is not materialism (which would define him as a modern thinker according to Irwin) but morality, Ibn Khaldun was a moralist and ethical thinker, not a scientist.

The approach employed by Irwin places Ibn Khaldun in a society recovering from the Black Death, which claimed both of his parents. Irwin does not dispute the quote from Reagan but he does point out Khaldun had no interest in economics and had no substantive theory on it.įundamentally, Khaldun's writings were not history or science in the modern sense, rather they were both philosophical and mystical works with much more in common with his contemporaries, than with Karl Marx or Max Weber. At the end of the empire, the tax rates were high and the revenues were low.'' US President Ronald Reagan famously quoted Ibn Khaldun to support his argument for lower taxes, 'May I offer you the advice of the 14th century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, who said, 'At the beginning of the empire, the tax rates were low and the revenues were high. These arguments are unlikely go down well, as both in the Arab and western world, Khaldun is seen as somewhat of a prophet for modern times. The Muqaddima has nothing to teach us about how modern society and politics works, he had nothing important to say about economics, and beyond 14th century North African politics, the ideas are antiquated. His premier work al-Muqaddima (the Introduction) is steeped in metaphysical discourse and, according to Irwin, of little use in the modern world. He was in every sense of the word a man-of-his-time.

This desire to shatter modern scholarship on Ibn Khaldun at times overshadows the book Khaldun was not a secret modern rationalist living in the middle ages, but very much a man of his time with a deep interest in Sufism, orthodox Islam, occultism and futurism. The tendency to see Khaldun as a modern man living in premodern times is exactly the idea Irwin aims to dismantle in his new book.

The Middle East in the Middle Ages by Robert Irwin