History in Ibn Khaldūn’s Classification of Sciences

This article aims to discover why Ibn Khaldūn omitted history in his general classification of sciences. Following a brief discussion of several unsatisfactory answers, the article continues by conducting a historical investigation of the antecedents of the Khaldūnian classification of sciences that inspired Ibn Khaldūn in this classification. In this respect, Aristotle is essential. However, the Aristotelian approach certainly did not reach Ibn Khaldūn directly. The author of the muqaddimah adopted it only after Muslim authors profoundly reworked it, intending to incorporate non-Aristotelian disciplines. Still, examining the logic of the classification of sciences in Ibn Khaldūn is insufficient to account for why history was eliminated from this classification. To explain this elimination, it is necessary to study the philosophical and epistemological undertones that determined the Khaldūnian conception of science and historical study.