PK-101 Islamic Studies

Ibne Khaldun: Ibn Khaldun (27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406) was a leading
Arab historiographer and historian. He is widely considered as a forerunner of
the modern disciplines of historiography, sociology, economics, and
demography. He is best known for his book, the Muqaddimah or Prolegomena
("Introduction"). The book influenced 17th-century Ottoman historians like
Kâtip Çelebi, Ahmed Cevdet Pasha and Mustafa Naima, who used the
theories in the book to analyze the growth and decline of the Ottoman Empire.
Also, 19th-century European scholars acknowledged the significance of the
book and considered Ibn Khaldun to be one of the greatest philosophers of
the Middle Ages. His family's high rank enabled Ibn Khaldun to study with the
best teachers in West. He received a classical Islamic education, studying
the Qur'an, which he memorized by heart, Arabic linguistics; the basis for
understanding the Qur'an, hadith, sharia (law) and fiqh (jurisprudence). He
received certification (ijazah) for all of those
subjects. The mathematician and philosopher Al-Abili of Tlemcen introduced
him to mathematics, logic and philosophy, and he studied especially the works
of Averroes, Avicenna, Razi and Tusi. At the age of 17, Ibn Khaldūn lost both
his parents to the Black Death, an intercontinental epidemic of the plague that
hit Tunis in 1348–1349. Following family tradition, he strove for a political
career. In the face of a tumultuous political situation in North Africa, that
required a high degree of skill in developing and dropping alliances prudently
to avoid falling with the short-lived regimes of the time. Ibn Khaldūn's
autobiography is the story of an adventure, in which he spends time in prison,
reaches the highest offices and falls again into exile. At the age of 20, he
began his political career in the chancellery of the Tunisian ruler Ibn Tafrakin
with the position of Kātib al-'Alāmah (seal-bearer), which consisted of writing
in fine calligraphy the typical introductory notes of official documents. Ibn
Khaldūn main work is the Kitāb al-ʻIbar or "Book of Lessons". Record of
Beginnings and Events in the History of the Arabs and the Berbers and Their
Powerful Contemporaries"). Concerning the discipline of sociology, he
described the dichotomy of sedentary life versus nomadic life as well as the
inevitable loss of power that occurs when warriors conquer a city. According to
the Arab scholar Sati' al-Husri, the Muqaddimah may be read as a sociological
work. The work is based around Ibn Khaldun's central concept of 'aṣabiyyah,
which has been translated as "social cohesion", "group solidarity", or
"tribalism".