Ibnu Khaldun’s star shines the more brightly by contrast with the foil darkness against which it flashes out ; for while Thucydides and Mechiavelli and Clarendon are brilliant representative of brilliant times aand places, Ibnu Khaldun is the sole point of light in his quarter of firmament. He is indeed one outstanding personality in the history of civilization whose social life on the whole was ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short,’. In his chosen field of intellectual activity he appears to have been inspired by no predecesssor, and to have found no kindres soul among his contemporaries, and to have kindled no answering spark of inspiration of any successor ; and yet, in the Prologmena( Muqaddimah) to his Universal History he has concieved and formulated a philosophy of history which is undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been created by any mind in any time or place. It was his single brief ‘acquiescence’ from a life of practical activity that gave Ibnu Khaldun his opportunity to cast his thought into literary shape.
-Arnold J. Tonybee-
‘A Study Of History’ Vol. 3
