Ibn Khaldun

Ibn Khaldun was an Arab historian and thinker born in Tunis in 1332 to a family of Andalusi origin. He served rulers in Tunis, Fez and Granada before writing his universal history, whose introduction, the Muqaddimah, explains the rise and fall of dynasties through asabiyya, or group solidarity. He spent his last years in Cairo as a Maliki judge and met Timur outside Damascus in 1401.