The Muqaddimah, often translated as "Introduction" or "Prolegomenon," is the most important Islamic history of the premodern world. Written by the great fourteenth-century Arab scholar Ibn Khaldn (d. 1406), this monumental work laid down the foundations of several fields of knowledge, including philosophy of history, sociology, ethnography, and economics. The first complete English translation, by the eminent Islamicist and interpreter of Arabic literature Franz Rosenthal, was published in three volumes in 1958 as part of the Bollingen Series and received immediate acclaim in America and abroad. A one-volume abridged version of Rosenthal's masterful translation was first published in 1969. This new edition of the abridged version, with the addition of a key section of Rosenthal's own introduction to the three-volume edition, and with a new introduction by Bruce B. Lawrence, will reintroduce this seminal work to twenty-first-century students and scholars of Islam and of medieval and ancient history.

伊本·赫勒敦（Ibn Khaldun）,1332年出生于突尼斯,自幼从父学习《古兰经》,后到当地著名宗教学府学习“圣训”、教义、语言、诗歌和哲学等知识,是中世纪阿拉伯西部地区（马格里布）最后一位著名的哲学家,还是一位历史学家、社会学家和宗教学者。他的全名是艾布·扎伊德·阿卜杜勒·拉赫曼·伊本·穆罕默德·伊本·赫勒敦。他一生经历坎坷,宦海几度沉浮,这对他的创作思想和哲学思想的形成有着直接的重要影响。伊本·赫勒敦于1406年在开罗逝世。

译者简介

李振中,河南人,1937年出生,回族,哈吉,教授。1955年12月至1961年7月在埃及开罗大学留学,回国后在北京大学东语系任教。1985年12月至1997年12月在北京语言文化大学外国语言学院任教。1993年12月起享受国务院特殊津贴。曾是商务印书馆出版的《阿拉伯汉语词典》《汉阿分类词汇词典》《汉阿词典》主编之一；曾为《中国大百科全书》“宗教卷”“哲学卷”“戏剧卷”的阿拉伯条目撰稿人。译著作品主要有《阿拉伯埃及近代文学史》《甘露街》（纳吉布三部曲之三）等。编著有《马坚传记》《尼罗河畔的回忆》《东方哲学史》《阿拉伯哲学史》等。此外,有多篇论文被《阿拉伯世界》《国外文学》《国外哲学》《东方哲学研究》《世界哲学年鉴》《知识世界丛书》。