Knowledge and Beauty in Classical Islam

<p>This volume offers an aesthetic reading of the <i>Muqaddima</i> by Ibn Khaldūn (d. 1406) a text that has been studied up to the present as a work on historiography. It argues that the <i>Muqaddima</i> is also a comprehensive treatise on classical Arab-Islamic culture and provides a picture of classical Arab-Islamic aesthetics in its totality. </p><p>The theme of the book is the intrinsic connection between beauty and knowledge in the <i>Muqaddima</i>. Whenever Ibn Khaldūn deals with the problem of knowledge and science he also deals with the problem of sensual beauty as an instrument or an obstacle to attain it. Ibn Khaldūn’s philosophy of history is necessarily also an aesthetics of history. His key-notion of “group feeling” the physical ethic and aesthetic virtue of Bedouin societies is at once the origin of the ascent of centralised States and the cause of their ruin. It represents a tragic contradiction that applies to the history of the Maghreb but then takes a universal value. It reflects a range of other contradictions inherent to the system of classical Arab-Islamic aesthetics. These contradictions undermine the aesthetic system of the <i>Muqaddima</i> from within and provide decisive elements for the emergence of modern aesthetics. </p><p>Offering a comparative approach the volume is a key resource to scholars and students interested in Arabic and Islamic studies philosophy aesthetics and global history.</p>