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Book Review: Robert Irwin. Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography, Leland Conley Barrows

Comparative Civilizations Review

Robert Irwin (b. 1946), a British historian, novelist, and essayist, became so enthralled by Arabic Muslim society, politics, language, literature, and culture that while reading modern history at Oxford University in the 1960’s, he became a Muslim during his first summer vacation which he spent at a Sufi Alawi foundation in Algeria. In parallel, he developed a fascination for the Tunisian polymath, Wali al-Din ‘Abd al Rahman Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) who has been variously described as the greatest Muslim intellectual, the greatest social scientist of the Middle Ages, the founder of Sociology and the critical study of history, and a …