Les Prolégomènes (Muqaddimah), Volume I
- Language:
- French
- Status:
- Selection or partial work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~290,000 words · 1,380 passages
Cite this work
- APAIbn Khaldun. (n.d.). Les Prolégomènes (Muqaddimah), Volume I. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/ibn-khaldun/les-prolegomenes-muqaddimah-volume-i
- MLAIbn Khaldun. Les Prolégomènes (Muqaddimah), Volume I. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/ibn-khaldun/les-prolegomenes-muqaddimah-volume-i.
- ChicagoIbn Khaldun. Les Prolégomènes (Muqaddimah), Volume I. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/ibn-khaldun/les-prolegomenes-muqaddimah-volume-i.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The first volume of the Muqaddimah, where Ibn Khaldun establishes his method before doing any history: how a false report is recognised, why historians go wrong, and what is simply impossible.
Context and history
This is the part that made his name. Ibn Khaldun does not merely explain the past: he asks how one knows what happened, and lays down that a report must be measured against what the nature of society allows. That criterion — judging facts by what is possible under given conditions — is why he is read today as the founder of a science of society, six centuries before there was one.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Deux années plus tard, il fut nommé grand cadi malékite de D'IBN KHALDOUN. v cette ville. Le zèle qu'il déploya alors en supprimant des abus et en châtiant les prévarications des gens de loi lui attira beaucoup d'ennemis et entraîna sa destitution. En 1387, il fit le pèlerinage de la Mecque, d'où il revint au Caire, afin de se dévouer uniquement à l'étude et à l'enseignement. Ce fut en l'an i3c)4 qu'il composa son autobiographie. Il avait alors soixante-deux ans. Nommé encore grand cadi, il fut destitué de nouveau, puis, en l'an i4oo, il accompagna le sultan en Syrie et tomba entre les mains de Tamerlan. Remis en liberté, il rentra en Egypte, devint encore grand cadi malékite du Caire, et y mourut le i5 mars 1 4o6, à l'âge de soixante et quatorze ans.