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Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography

Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography

by RobertIrwin (Author), Robert Irwin (Author)

  • New

    Hardcover 2018

    $28.82
Synopsis

The definitive account of the life and thought of the medieval Arab genius who wrote the Muqaddima

Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is generally regarded as the greatest intellectual ever to have appeared in the Arab world--a genius who ranks as one of the world's great minds. Yet the author of the Muqaddima, the most important study of history ever produced in the Islamic world, is not as well known as he should be, and his ideas are widely misunderstood. In this groundbreaking intellectual biography, Robert Irwin provides an engaging and authoritative account of Ibn Khaldun's extraordinary life, times, writings, and ideas.

Irwin tells how Ibn Khaldun, who lived in a world decimated by the Black Death, held a long series of posts in the tumultuous Islamic courts of North Africa and Muslim Spain, becoming a major political player as well as a teacher and writer. Closely examining the Muqaddima, a startlingly original analysis of the laws of history, and drawing on many other contemporary sources, Irwin shows how Ibn Khaldun's life and thought fit into historical and intellectual context, including medieval Islamic theology, philosophy, politics, literature, economics, law, and tribal life. Because Ibn Khaldun's ideas often seem to anticipate by centuries developments in many fields, he has often been depicted as more of a modern man than a medieval one, and Irwin's account of such misreadings provides new insights about the history of Orientalism.

In contrast, Irwin presents an Ibn Khaldun who was a creature of his time--a devout Sufi mystic who was obsessed with the occult and futurology and who lived in an often-strange world quite different from our own.

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More Information

Format: Hardcover
 Pages: 272
 Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: 23 Jan 2018
ISBN 10: 0691174660
ISBN 13: 9780691174662

Media Reviews
A compelling new account of the 14th-century Arab historian and polymath. . . . Irwin has produced an exemplary work.---Gavin Jacobson, Financial Times
In Robert Irwin, Ibn Khaldun has finally found a biographer and interpreter almost as versatile and learned as he was himself.---Eric Ormsby, Wall Street Journal
Irwin wears his immense erudition lightly and gives an often very funny account of how orientalists, historians and modern Arab nationalist have interpreted Ibn Khaldun's most famous work. . . . Irwin offers his readers a superb work of intellectual recovery, one which presents Ibn Khaldun as a creature of his time. . . . He has resurrected for us the medieval Muslim mind.---Francis Ghil s, The Spectator
Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography is both an introduction to his work and an intervention into Ibn Khaldun studies.---Sameer Rahim, Prospect
The great merit of Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography is that it encourages us to treat the intellectual history of the Islamic world not as a battleground for contemporary ideological struggles but as a subject worthy of investigation in its own right.---Fitzroy Morrissey, Standpoint
Few scholars are more fun to read than Robert Irwin. Not just an authority on medieval Arabic culture, he's also a literary journalist and novelist who writes with clarity, zest, and an almost encyclopedic erudition. To illuminate the life and thought of the fascinating fourteenth-century historian Ibn Khaldun, Irwin looks at The Arabian Nights, the philosophy of Averroes, Islamic occultism, Sufism, the researches of modern Arabists, and even the science fiction of Isaac Asimov. The result is an exhilarating work of intellectual recovery--learned, entertaining, and very welcome. --Michael Dirda, Pulitzer Prize-winning critic and author of Classics for Pleasure and Browsings
Robert Irwin takes a genuinely fresh look at one of the greatest Arab thinkers. Too often--as he shows--Ibn Khaldun has been lifted out of the fourteenth century and remodeled to fit our modern assumptions. This lively and deeply knowledgeable account makes him authentically unmodern, and utterly fascinating. --Noel Malcolm, All Souls College, University of Oxford
Few scholars could engage Ibn Khaldun with the expansive reference and acute insight of Robert Irwin. His is a masterful study of the outstanding visionary of Islamic civilization. This book will be required reading not just for students of world history but for all who want to grasp the future of the past. --Bruce B. Lawrence, author The Koran in English: A Biography
Using his virtually unrivaled knowledge of the Mamluk world, Robert Irwin puts Ibn Khaldun in his context as no one else has done. Irwin also gives a marvelous account of how Orientalists, historians, colonialists, and nationalists have interpreted Ibn Khaldun to serve their purposes, from the Ottoman Empire to the present. This is the work of a scholar at the height of his powers. --Francis Robinson, author of The Mughal Emperors
Questioning conventional views of Ibn Khaldun, this important book reflects Robert Irwin's deep knowledge and understanding of the medieval Muslim mind. --Hugh Kennedy, author of Caliphate: The History of an Idea
Author Bio
Robert Irwin is senior research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and a former lecturer at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. His many books include Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents and Memoirs of a Dervish: Sufis, Mystics, and the Sixties, as well as seven novels. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.