Abstract

The have another kind of poetry which is widely in use among them. It employs four lines, of which the fourth has a rhyme that is different from that of the first three. The fourth rhyme, then, is continued in each stanza through the whole poem. …1This brief quote from the final portion of Ibn Khaldūn's Muqaddima is perhaps an unwittingly perfect representation of his cyclical approach to sociology and history. Many of his commentators have remarked on his development of a dynastic theory that sees a dynasty rise and decline within roughly four generations.2 The question that arises from such a deterministic account of history is: how, then, can human society progress, as indeed history indicates that it...