Islamic Civilization in Thirty Lives

‘Thucydides invented history, but Ibn Khaldun turned it into a science.’

man is not self-sufficient, and since food, shelter and the like require cooperation – that is, social organization – man is necessarily a political animal.

While Zaydis and Isma‘ilis tended towards political activism, even revolution, Imamis were pragmatic quietists.

‘ism had begun as a political protest movement against the Umayyads, but the Imamis were especially successful at charting a course out of opposition and into co-existence with their Sunni counterparts. The process began in the eighth century, and it accelerated in the ninth, tenth and eleventh

World history, on this reading, is not a European achievement, but a Mongol one.

‘Truth,’ he wrote, ‘does not contradict truth.

The irony is that ‘medieval’ Islamic ideas were an important part of the cultural matrix that produced the destruction of religious orthodoxies.

The event occasioned panegyrics for Saladin’s achievement: ‘You took possession of Paradises palace by palace, when you conquered Syria fortress by fortress…You have risen up in the darkness of the battle like the moon when it climbs slowly in the night…’

The Book of Roger, which was set into print in Rome in 1592, enjoys the distinction of counting as the first non-religious work to be published in Europe; shortly after, in 1619, it was translated into Latin. Centuries after it was written, it still contained information that was new to Europeans.

From the middle of the twelfth century, Europeans had the work available to them, but there is no evidence that they bothered to read it until the early fourteenth century.