Ibn Khaldun

Allen Fromherz is Professor of History at Georgia State University and director of the Middle East Studies Center. He graduated Summa Cum Laude from Dartmouth College in 2002 and received his PhD from St. Andrews University in Scotland in Medieval Islamic History in 2006. Dr. Fromherz has held several international fellowships including Fulbright, Gerda Henkel Stiftung, the Sultan Qaboos Cultural Center. He was a senior fellow in the humanities at NYU Abu Dhabi (2016). He has lived in various parts of the Gulf, including Oman, United Arab Emirates and Qatar. He is President of the American Institute for Maghrib Studies (AIMS). His publications include: Ibn Khaldun (Edinburgh University Press, 2010); The Almohads (IB Tauris, 2012); Qatar (Georgetown Univeristy Press, 2016) and The Near West (Edinburgh University Press, 2016).

This book by U.S. professor Allen James Fromherz tries to push back against some of the more simplistic contemporary adoption of Ibn Khaldun. It frames his highly original ideas in the context of the turbulent historical and personal circumstances in which he found himself in 14th century North Africa and Andalusia. This, Fromherz suggests, is a more reliable guide to his work than trying to shoehorn him into modern-day concerns: “The temptation to identify Ibn Khaldun as a modern mind ignores the direct relationship between his times and his thought.”

• Acknowledgements; Preface; Map: Ibn Khaldun's Mediterranean; Timeline; 1. Historian meets History; 2. Ibn Khaldun's Early Life; 3. Ibn Khaldun the Statesman; 4. Egypt; 5. Ibn Khaldun's Method; 6. Modernity; 7. On being Ibn Khaldun; Bibliography; Index.