Abd al-Rahman Ibn Khaldun

14th-century Arab scholar who founded historiography and social science centuries before European thinkers

Born in 1332 Tunis, Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah introduced revolutionary concepts like social cohesion (asabiyyah) and cyclical history 400 years before Marx or Vico. His theories on climate's impact on civilization and economic supply-demand principles predated modern sociology and economics.

As a polymath, he served sultans from Granada to Cairo while surviving political purges. His autobiography reveals how he used exile periods to develop his theories. Unlike contemporaries focused on chronicling events, Khaldun analyzed patterns—why empires rise and fall—through empirical observation.

Modern scholars like Arnold Toynbee hailed the Muqaddimah as 'the greatest work of its kind'. His urban-rural dynamics theories anticipate game theory, while asabiyyah concepts influence studies on social capital. Despite this, Western academia only 'rediscovered' him in the 19th century.