Ibn Khaldun served as a judge, a diplomat, and a political advisor across North Africa and the Middle East. In a mountain fortress in Algeria, he wrote the Muqaddimah, a work that anticipated sociology, economics, and the philosophy of history by centuries.

This episode examines how a 14th-century Tunisian scholar developed a theory of civilizational rise and fall that remains startlingly relevant.

• His concept of asabiyyah and how group solidarity builds and destroys empires
• The cyclical theory of dynastic rise, peak, and collapse
• His meeting with Tamerlane outside the walls of Damascus
• Why modern historians consider him the first social scientist