This book presents Ibn Khaldun's anticipatory sociology of civilisations and power. Half a millennium before the birth of modern sociology in the West, Ibn Khaldun-scholar, political counsellor, and Malikite judge-wrote a revolutionary sociological-philosophical treatise, the Muqaddima. This book places his broad, complex, and refined treatise against the background of the Islamo-Greek culture of his time and analyses its main sociological, but also philosophical, historical, and scientific perspectives. Finally, thanks to its "universalisable" core, the author recontextualizes the teachings from the Muqaddima to reveal the deep insights it provides into the society, politics and law of contemporary liberal and multicultural civilisations.
A deeper reception of Ibn Khaldun's perspective is not only important in understanding the Arab contribution to social theory, social history and philosophy, but also diversifies the sociological project beyond the Euro-American standpoint.
Given its interdisciplinary appeal, the book addresses a wide readership of students and scholars in sociology, the sociology of law, philosophy of law, philosophy of history, political philosophy, history of civilisations, political sociology, and Arabic studies.
Preface.- Foreword.- Chapter 1. The Rediscovery of Ibn Khaldun's Work.- Chapter 2. Sense and Form of a "New History".- Chapter 3. Inside the Muqaddima: Sociocultural Compactness and Social Transformations.- Chapter 4. The Internal Forces of the Crisis and the "Colouring" of Civilisation.- Chapter 5. The Topicality of Ibn Khaldun's Thought: From the Muqaddima to Our Society.- Index.
Annalisa Verza graduated in law from the University of Bologna, and received her PhD from the Università degli Studi di Milano in analytical philosophy and general theory of law. She teaches philosophy and sociology of law, and her research interests and publications span from contemporary liberalism to multiculturalism, and from legal-philosophical concepts in the Jewish and Muslim traditions to feminism and law, and to the relation between technology, second welfare and society. She has published 3 monographs and about 70 academic articles in major journals in the field.
