IBN KHALDŪN (AH 732–808/1332–1406 CE) was a Muslim historian, famous as the first systematic theoretician of the social, economic, psychological, and religious forces that determine human history and society. Born in Tunis into an aristocratic and scholarly family that had left Seville for Northwest Africa almost a century earlier, he received the thorough education customary among the Muslim middle and upper classes. Entering government service shortly after he lost his parents and many of his teachers to the Black Death, he soon left Tunis and in 1354 arrived in Fez, where he was well received by the Marinid ruler but also had to suffer the customary tribulations of political involvement.

The Northwest African period of his life included a sojourn of a little over two years in Andalusian Granada (December 1362–February 1365), during which he undertook a diplomatic mission to Christian Seville...