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Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is generally regarded as the greatest intellectual ever to have appeared in the Arab world--a genius who ranks as one of the world´s great minds. Yet the author of the Muqaddima, the most important study of history ever produced in the Islamic world, is not as well known as he should be, and his ideas are widely misunderstood. In this groundbreaking intellectual biography, Robert Irwin provides an engaging and authoritative account of Ibn Khaldun´s extraordinary life, times, writings, and ideas.

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Robert Irwin takes a genuinely fresh look at one of the greatest Arab thinkers. Too often--as he shows--Ibn Khaldun has been lifted out of the fourteenth century and remodeled to fit our modern assumptions. This lively and deeply knowledgeable account makes him authentically unmodern, and utterly fascinating.--Noel Malcolm, All Souls College, University of Oxford

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Robert Irwin is senior research associate at the School of Oriental and African Studies in London and a former lecturer at the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. His many books include Dangerous Knowledge: Orientalism and Its Discontents and Memoirs of a Dervish: Sufis, Mystics, and the Sixties, as well as seven novels. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

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