Seminar on ‘Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddima: A 14thCentury Analysis of Long-run Dynamics’
A seminar titled ‘Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddima: A 14th Century Analysis of Long-run Dynamics’ was delivered by Dr. M. Kabir (formerly Visiting Scholar, CDS) at the Joan Robinson hall, CDS on Friday, 18 January, 2019.
Abstract: One great gap in our understanding of the history of economic thought is the contributions made by the Arab scholars between the sixth and fifteenth centuries. The most well known, among these numerous scholars, is Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406). Al Muqaddima (1377), an introduction to his larger work, Kitab-alIbar (History of the World), is considered as a major forerunner to the disciplines of historiography, sociology, demography and economics. While the incorporation of these disciplines into a single work emanates from his view on history as a study of social organization, al-Muqaddima, it is argued, turns out as the first major contribution to the analysis of long-run dynamics of economic growth.