Social Science · a Light

He named a new science before writing the history

The Muqaddimah is only the introduction to Ibn Khaldun's history, and it is the part still read. In it he announces a subject nobody had named, the science of human social organisation, and then sets about doing it. He argues that a state's revenue is largest when its rates of tax are low and shrinks as the rates rise, an observation Arthur Laffer credited to him when the same idea shaped American tax argument in the 1980s. He explains prices by supply and by the labour inside a good. He tests old chronicles against what an economy could actually feed and rejects their numbers as impossible. He also reasons from climate to character in ways no reader accepts now. The book was translated into French in the 1860s and into English by Franz Rosenthal in 1958.

Ibn Khaldun · Muqaddimah, 1377