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Ibn Khaldun

Arab historiographer and historian

  • Fame79.5
  • Momentum1.2
  • Writers rank#80
Source-basedFalling
  • Fame79.5
  • Momentum1.2
  • Writers rank#80
  • Wikipedia53.4K
Lived 1332–1406, aged 74
WritersWriter / Author

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  • Wikipedia
    139 languages
    Cross-language footprint
  • Era
    1332–1406
    Aged 74
Summary
Updated 2026-09-09

A 14th-century Arab scholar who built a theory of how civilizations rise and fall six centuries before European sociology existed. His Muqaddimah laid out patterns of history that Ottoman historians later used to diagnose their own empire's decline.

Biography

About

Born in 1332, Ibn Khaldun moved through the courts and upheavals of North Africa and Andalusia as diplomat and scholar before retreating in 1375 to write the Muqaddimah in six months — a work that treated history as a science with observable laws governing the birth, growth, and collapse of states. The framework influenced Ottoman thinkers from the 17th century onward, including Kâtip Çelebi and Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, who applied his cycles to their own empire's trajectory. He met Tamerlane in 1401, a late encounter between the theorist of power and one of its most violent practitioners. Modern r…

Voice

In their own words

Sourced, dated quotes from Ibn Khaldun

Ibn Khaldun
said
The sciences of only one nation, the Greeks, have come down to us, because they were translated through Al-Ma'mun's efforts.
— Muqaddimah (1377)
Ibn Khaldun
saidundated
Civilization both in the East and the West was visited by a destructive plague which devastated nations and caused populations to vanish.
— Quoted in Michael W. Dols, The Black Death in the Middle East, Princeton University Press, 1977, p. 67.
Ibn Khaldun
saidundated
The only people who accept slavery are the Negroes, owing to their low degree of humanity and proximity to the animal stage.
— As quoted in Bernard Lewis, Race and Color in Islam, Harper and Row, 1970, quote on page 38. The brackets are displayed by Lewis.
Ibn Khaldun
saidundated
When civilization [population] increases, the available labor again increases.
— Muqaddimah, 2:272–73 quoted in Weiss (1995), p. 30
Ibn Khaldun
saidundated
Eventually, Aristotle appeared among the Greeks. He improved the methods of logic and systematized its problems and details.
— Muqaddimah, Translated by Franz Rosenthal, p. 39 and p. 383, Princeton University Press, 1981.
via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA
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By the numbers

Score breakdown

The six component signals behind the Fame score, and their ranks across the leaderboards.

Fame
Falling
79.5
Composite of search demand, mentions, audience & graph footprint.
Score components
Momentum1.2
Historical25.9
Now attention9.9
Source confidence60.0
Completeness60.0
Global rank
—
Country rank
—
Category rank
#80
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