Ibn Khaldun Dies in Cairo

1406

The Tunisian historian who invented sociology died as a Maliki judge in Mamluk Egypt, his Muqaddimah mostly unread. He had argued that civilizations rise and fall on asabiyyah, the tribal solidarity that softens in cities. Six centuries later, economists still quote him without knowing they are doing it. His cyclical theory of civilization anticipated modern theories of imperial rise and decline by half a millennium.