Logical Fragments in Ibn Khaldūn's Muqaddimah

This autobiography already makes for absolutely fascinating reading. Ibn Khaldūn lived an itinerant life serving as a magistrate for—in modern geographic terms— Spanish, Moroccan, Tunisian and Egyptian Islamic courts. In that function in Granada, Spain, he negotiated treaties with the Christian Spanish crown (with Pedro the Cruel, which does not sound too encouraging). The autobiography follows a stupefying cyclic pattern: Ibn Khaldūn goes to state X to serve ruler A; then, unfortunately, ruler A dies/is murdered/is deposed, due to intervention of his son/his prime minister/other family or court official B. Ibn Khaldūn then: flees from state X to state Y in case he remained loyal to the former ruler A, or, alternatively, remains in state X in case he had switched allegiance to the new ruler B in time. This suggests, rather improperly as it is the undersigned suggesting it, a somewhat flighty character, but the picture in fact emerging from these repetitive sequences of events is that of a steady mind living in troubled times, who chooses according to principles of justice and fairness, with the greater good of the population and known Muqaddimah, equally well-known by its Latin title Prolegomena. He lived