- Lived:
- 1332–1406 · Tunis, Fez, Granada, the desert castle of Qalʿat Ibn Salāma, Cairo
- Tradition:
- Islamic North Africa; philosophy of history and the science of society
- The Big Idea:
- Civilizations are not a parade of random events — they rise, cohere, soften, and fall according to patterns you can study scientifically, and the engine of the whole cycle is group solidarity: the invisible glue he called ʿaṣabiyya.
- In their words:
- "Dynasties have a natural lifespan, just as individuals do."
- If you remember one thing:
- After twenty years of political shipwreck, one man locked himself in a desert castle and invented the study of civilization itself — then walked out of a besieged city to interview the conqueror who was proving his theory true.