The Muqaddimah

Ibn Khaldun wrote the Muqaddimah in 1377 as the introduction to a universal history, and it is generally treated as the first work to attempt a science of society, examining the causes of the rise and fall of states rather than recording their events.

His central concept is asabiyyah, usually translated as group feeling or social cohesion. He argues that tribal groups living under harsh conditions develop strong cohesion through kinship and shared hardship, that this cohesion allows them to conquer settled societies which have lost theirs, that the conquerors then acquire the luxury and specialisation of settled life, and that cohesion decays across roughly four generations until a new cohesive group replaces them. He documents the cycle from North African and Middle Eastern history.

He also makes economic arguments that anticipate later work. He argues that labour is the source of value, that the division of labour and the size of the market determine what a society can produce, that taxation at low rates raises more revenue than at high rates because it preserves the incentive to produce, and that dynasties reliably increase taxation as their expenditure grows, which destroys the productive base and completes the cycle. He treats the state's spending as a driver of urban economies and analyses prices, crafts and the growth of cities.

The work is long, and the translation most readers use is Rosenthal's. Its explanatory framework is deterministic in ways modern historians reject, its empirical base is one region over a few centuries, and its claims about climate and character are of their period. It remains worth reading for the cohesion cycle and the taxation argument, both of which are stated with unusual clarity for the fourteenth century.