This study is an attempt to gain a better understanding of Ibn Khaldun's political theory contained in The Muqaddimah from the stance that religion and his faith in Islam are at the core of his political theory. Though there is a great deal of scholarship that has been dedicated to the interpretation of Ibn Khaldun's political theory contained in The Muqaddimah, there are a limited number of works that deal exclusively with the role of religion in his conception of the State. Those that do tend to either exaggerate Ibn Khaldun's secular thought in the realm of politics or understate his originality as a political scientist. Thus, this study will attempt to prove that his political theory is indeed theocentric by way of examining the true nature of 'aṣabiya, which to Ibn Khaldun was the basis for all forms of human social and political organization, and its relationship with religion in terms of its function in the establishment and propagation of the State. In addition, we will also attempt to dispel the notion that the overall tone of The Muqaddimah is pessimistic and fatalistic; indeed when one examines the political theory contained in The Muqaddimah from a theocentric viewpoint it is made apparent that it was Ibn Khaldun's strong religious convictions that ultimately present a sense of optimism in his work.

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Ibn Khaldun is a great Moslem thinker of the fourteenth century (b. 1332, d. 1406 A. D.). Modern writers are inclined to consider him as a pioneer or a precursor in the science of society and the philosophy of history. Some of them consider him as the first sociologist in the history of mankind and even the founder of modern sociology. His Prolegomena, which is the primary subject of study in the present work, is regarded by one authority as one of the six important monographic works in general sociology. The aim of this dissertation is not to study either Ibn Khaldun or his theory in minute detail. In fact, other modern students have successfully achieved that task. The aim of this work is, rather, a different one. Our aim here is to see Ibn Khaldun in a different light, or, to use Mannheim's term, through a perspective which is greatly different from the customary one. Ibn Khaldun lived in a culture quite different from our present culture, and was accustomed to view the world within a frame of reference with which we are perhaps completely unfamiliar. The first duty that lies, therefore, before us, in order to be able to understand Ibn Khaldun, is to reconstruct his perspective or his frame of reference anew, and to try to look at the social phenomena through it. In this work, the space which is devoted to the discussion of Ibn Khaldun's theory per se is small in comparison to that devoted to the reconstruction of the perspective and the categories of thought according to which Ibn Khaldun and his fellow writers viewed their world. This work is, as its subtitle shows, a study in the sociology of knowledge. Ibn Khaldun is then taken as a point in case. He is studied primarily to show how his theory and the theories produced in his culture can fit into the general scheme of the sociology of knowledge as recently developed by modern sociologists. / text