Product Description
This award-winning historical novel deals with the stormy life of the outstanding Arab philosopher Ibn Khaldun, using historical sources, and particularly material from the writerâs works, to construct the personal and intellectual universe of a fourteenth-century genius. The dominant concern of the novelâthe uneasy relationship between intellectuals and political power, between scholars and authorityâaddresses our times through the transparent veil of history.
We meet Ibn Khaldun as a man of the mind, a man of the heart, and finally as a man of action, trying to minimize the imminent horrors of invading armies and averting the sack of Damascus by Tamerlane, only to spend his last years lonely and destitute, having been fired from his post as qadi, having lost his wife, and his attempts at saving the political situation having come to nil.
About the Author
BENSALEM HIMMICH has written a number of philosophical works as well as several novels and collections of poems. The Theocrat received the al-Naqid Award and was chosen by the Authorsâ Union in Egypt as one of the best novels of the twentieth century. He is the vice-president of the Moroccan and Arab World Writersâ Union and is professor of philosophy at Mohamed V University in Rabat.