Content
Ibn Khaldun starts the Muqaddimah with a thorough criticism of the mistakes regularly committed by his fellow historians and the difficulties which await the historian in his work. He notes seven critical issues:
"All records, by their very nature, are liable to error...
- ...Partisanship towards a creed or opinion...
- ...Over-confidence in one's sources...
- ...The failure to understand what is intended...
- ...A mistaken belief in the truth...
- ...The inability to place an event in its real context
- ...The common desire to gain favor of those of high ranks, by praising them, by spreading their fame...
- ...The most important is the ignorance of the laws governing the transformation of human society."
Against the seventh point (the ignorance of social laws) Ibn Khaldun lays out his theory of human society in the Muqaddimah.
Sati' al-Husri suggested that Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah is essentially a sociological work, sketching over its six books a general sociology; a sociology of politics; a sociology of urban life; a sociology of economics; and a sociology of knowledge.
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