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This episode of the 1Dime Radio podcast is all about the ideas of Ibn Khaldun and his classic text The Muqaddimah. Simultaneously a philosopher and a historian, and often considered to be "the first sociologist," Ibn Khaldun was among the first proper "social scientists" to develop a "science of society" - something quite close to what we today call "historical materialism."
What insights can the work of a 14th century Medieval Arab thinker give us often today? Quite a lot, actually. Ibn Khaldun's insights on the cyclical rise and decline of civilizations, political power, religion, "Royal Authority" and his famous (but misunderstood) concept of "Asabiyyah" ("Group feeling"), were not only ahead of his time, but also have a lot to teach us today.
To unpack the key ideas of Ibn Khaldun and discuss interpretations of The Muqaddimah, I am joined by professor Adnan Husain, a historian at Queens University who specializes in Middle Eastern history and Medieval European history. He is also the co-host of the Guerilla History podcast with Breht O'Shea from Revolutionary Left Radio
In part two of the podcast (the backroom) on Patreon, Adnan and I discuss the ambiguities surrounding Ibn Khaldun's Writing and problems with popular interpretations of his work, such as that of Robert Irwin. In it, I ask Adnan's opinion on my hypothesis (articulated in a paper that will eventually get published) that Ibn Khaldun's apparent "contradictions" and instances of "Platonism" (which problematize his generally materialist system) may not be unaccounted contradictions, but deliberate acts of "esoteric writing" to avoid persecution, a method of reading texts "between the lines" popularized by Leo Strauss in his seminal text "Persecution and the Art of Writing." Check it out at patreon.com/onedime !
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