An insight into the medieval Muslim mind

At a press conference in October 1981, Ronald Reagan quoted Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) in support of what is known as supply-side economics. Although the 14th- century politician and thinker wrote extensively about economics and was almost unique among medieval Arab writers in so doing, it is quite ‘marvellous’ writes Robert Irwin, the author of a new intellectual biography of this famous North African, that he ‘should have anticipated American Republican party fiscal policy’.

Irwin wears his immense erudition lightly and gives an often very funny account of how orientalists, historians and modern Arab nationalists have interpreted Ibn Khaldun’s most famous work, the Muqaddima (also known as the Prolegomena) more often than not to suit their particular assumptions. Six centuries after his death, the man of whom the French orientalist Émil-Félix Gautier declared‘il est unique, il écrase tout, il est genial’ continues to be all things to all men. Irwin quotes Michael Brett, an expert on medieval African history who had come to the following conclusion: ‘That Ibn Khaldun continues to mean all things to all men is a measure of his greatness as well as of his ambiguity.’