Civilisations
1332 to 1406, Tunis and Cairo
The hidden laws behind the rise and fall of civilisations.
Start learning Ibn →How Ibn Khaldun, in fourteenth-century North Africa, founded an entirely new science - the study of human society and civilisation itself - four centuries before sociology had a name.
Ibn Khaldun’s central concept - the group solidarity that binds people together, drives the rise of dynasties and civilisations, and whose decay brings them down.
Ibn Khaldun’s great dialectic - the eternal tension between the hardy, cohesive peoples of the desert and the luxurious, civilised, but soft life of the city.
Ibn Khaldun’s pioneering economic thought - the division of labour, the labour theory of value, the dynamics of taxation, and the economic basis of the rise and fall of states.
Ibn Khaldun’s theory that dynasties, like living things, are born, mature, grow old, and die - passing through regular stages over about three generations.
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