1604;مقدمة), often translated as "
Introduction" or "
Prolegomenon," is the most important Islamic history of the premodern world. Written by the great fourteenth-century Arab scholar
Ibn Khaldun (d. 1406), this monumental work established the foundations of several fields of knowledge, including the
philosophy of
history,
sociology,
ethnography, and
economics.
The first complete English translation, by the eminent Islamicist and interpreter of Arabic literature Franz Rosenthal, was published in three volumes in 1958 as part of the Bollingen Series and received immediate acclaim in the United States and abroad.