Ibn Khaldun

Ibn Khaldun, whose full name is rendered Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldun, was an Arab scholar of Yemeni descent, born on May 27, 1332, in Tunis under the Hafsid Sultanate, and died on March 17, 1406, in Cairo under the Mamluk Sultanate. He is best known as the author of the Muqaddimah, the introduction to his larger history of the world, a work widely credited as a founding text of historiography, sociology, economics and demography, and he pursued a long political career across the courts of Tunis, Fez, Granada and Tlemcen before settling permanently in Cairo. Separately from that scholarly reputation, Ibn Khaldun also had a direct career as a working jurist: in 1384 the Mamluk Sultan Barquq appointed him professor at the Qamhiyyah Madrasah and Grand Qadi, the chief judge, of the Maliki school of Islamic jurisprudence in Cairo, one of the four Sunni legal schools. He held this senior judicial post six separate times over the following two decades, though never for long, since his efforts at judicial reform repeatedly provoked resistance that forced his resignation within a year on each occasion, and he was appointed to the office one final time only a month before his death in 1406. This recurring judicial career, distinct from his historical and philosophical writing, established him as a practicing authority on Islamic law within the Mamluk state's own court system, responsible for deciding real cases under Maliki jurisprudence rather than only theorizing about law and society.