Volume one of the classic Islamic history of the world, now available to a new generation of readers in a fully unabridged edition Written by the great fourteenth-century Arab scholar Ibn Khaldûn, The Muqaddimah , or "Introduction," is the earliest critical study of history. Though intended as the preface and first book of a world history, it is a wholly self-contained work, one that laid the foundations for fields of knowledge ranging from the philosophy of history to sociology and ethnography and has influenced writers such as Frank Herbert, Bruce Chatwin, and Naguib Mahfouz. A three-volume English translation by the eminent Islamicist Franz Rosenthal was first published in 1958 as part of the Bollingen Series, garnering immediate international acclaim. A one-volume abridged version followed in 1969. Now the complete unabridged edition of Rosenthal's masterful translation is available again in three beautiful volumes, reintroducing this monumental study of history to twenty-first century audiences.