Abstract
The revival of interest in Ibn Khaldun over the course of the twentieth century has been nothing short of phenomenal. Perhaps nothing better represents the appropriation of Ibn Khaldun in mainstream modern scholarship than his mention in a popular sociological theory textbook (Ritzer 1992: 7). Ibn Khaldun has also been trotted out in response to the clash of civilizations (Arnason and Stauth: 2004). Recently, a three-day symposium was devoted entirely to his work, and plans are underway to start an Ibn Khaldun society. More than 600 years after his death, Ibn Khaldun is alive and well.
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Notes
See, for instance, Ibn Khaldun’s more recently discovered manuscript on Sufism, Shifa al-Sail li Tahdhib al-Masail (The Healing of the Seekers). As recently as 1957, Ibn Khaldun’s authorship of this text was largely unknown or doubted. Mahdi (1964 [1957]: 297, fn. 2) refers to it in one footnote and accepts Ibn Khaldun’s authorship of it. F. Rosenthal (1958: xlv, fn. 47a) refers to this “hitherto unknown work of Ibn Khaldun” in his own footnote on Mahdi’s citation. See also the discussion of the mystical versus the scholarly soul in The Muqaddima (1958b, v.1: 197–202).
Volume, chapter, and page numbers refer to F. Rosenthal’s (1958 three-volume English translation of the Muqaddimah. Chapter VI comprises the last part of v. 2 and the entirety of v. 3 in Rosenthal’s translation.
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© 2011 Ali Zaidi
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Zaidi, A. (2011). The Putative Modernity of Ibn Khaldun. In: Islam, Modernity, and the Human Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230118997_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230118997_4
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-29281-3
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