Ibn Khaldun and Some Classic Views in 20th Century Linguistics

Abstract

The Muqaddimah of Ibn Khaldun or the Prolegomena (in Greek), is a book written by the Arab North African’s Ibn Khaldun who records an early view of universal history. We need to point out that some modern thinkers view it as the first work dealing with the: philosophy of history, or the social sciences of sociology, demography, historiography or cultural history, and economics. We need to add that the Muqaddimah also deals with Islamic theology, political theory and the natural sciences of biology and chemistry. Ibn Khaldun wrote the work in 1377 as the preface or first book of his planned world history, the Kitab al-Ibar (lit. Book of Advice), but already in his lifetime it became regarded as an independent work. The following article will try to make a comparison between Ibn Khaldun’s linguistic work in his Muqaddimah and some Western linguists i.e., Chomsky and Bloomfield. We have found that it is really mazing and interesting to show that there are some ideas, concepts, etc., discussed by Ibn Khaldun, appears again by some linguists who live in the 20th century.