Books like The Muqaddimah, an introduction to history by Ibn Khaldūn

A seminal 16th‑century Italian treatise, The Prince offers practical guidance for rulers, arguing that ends can justify morally dubious means to secure power and glory.

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A concise survey of human history that examines the patterns of past events and their relevance to present affairs, future possibilities, human nature, and state conduct.

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A philosophical interpretation of history, examining the significance of historical study as a science and a reflection of social values.

"Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is generally regarded as the greatest intellectual ever to have appeared in the Arab world--a genius who ranks as one of the world's great minds. Yet the author of the Muqaddima, the most important study of history ever produced in the Islamic world, is not as well known as he should be, and his ideas are widely misunderstood. In this groundbreaking intellectual biography, Robert Irwin provides an engaging and authoritative account of Ibn Khaldun's extraordinary life, times, writings, and ideas. Irwin tells how Ibn Khaldun, who lived in a world decimated by the Black Death, held a long series of posts in the tumultuous Islamic courts of North Africa and Muslim Spain, becoming a major political player as well as a teacher and writer. Closely examining the Muqaddima, a startlingly original analysis of the laws of history, and drawing on many other contemporary sources, Irwin shows how Ibn Khaldun's life and thought fit into historical and intellectual context, including medieval Islamic theology, philosophy, politics, literature, economics, law, and tribal life. Because Ibn Khaldun's ideas often seem to anticipate by centuries developments in many fields, he has often been depicted as more of a modern man than a medieval one, and Irwin's account of such misreadings provides new insights about the history of Orientalism. In contrast, Irwin presents an Ibn Khaldun who was a creature of his time--a devout Sufi mystic who was obsessed with the occult and futurology and who lived in an often-strange world quite different from our own."--Dust jacket.

Encyclopedic and panoramic in its scope, this fascinating work chronicles the rich spiritual, political, and cultural institutions of Arab history through 13 centuries.

Some modern thinkers view it as the first work dealing with the Philosophy of History, the Social Sciences of Sociology, Demography, Historiography, Cultural History, Social Darwinism, Ecology, Darwinism and Economics. The Muqaddimah also deals with Islamic Theology, Political Theory and the Natural Sciences of Biology and Chemistry.