The Muqaddimah by Ibn Khaldun
Published 1377 · 512 pages · 200,000 words · about 15 hours at an average pace · History, Nonfiction, Philosophy, Politics & Society
How hard is The Muqaddimah to read?
The Muqaddimah scores 46 out of 100 for difficulty on ReadingRate, making it moderately challenging. The score is a weighted composite of nine measures: four of how hard the prose is to parse, five of how hard the meaning is to extract.
- Vocabulary: 45 out of 100
- Arabic philosophical terminology in translation. Historical vocabulary.
- Sentence structure: 42 out of 100
- Abstraction: 60 out of 100
- Highly abstract social theory with historical illustration.
- Information density: 62 out of 100
- Extremely dense. Covers vast intellectual territory.
- Narrative indirection: 15 out of 100
- Systematic treatise with historical examples.
- Symbolic density: 15 out of 100
- Analytical rather than symbolic.
- Ironic distance: 12 out of 100
- Scholarly, detached analytical tone.
- Resolution withholding: 100 out of 100
- Cyclical theory is itself the resolution.
- Structural complexity: 38 out of 100
- Complex treatise organized into multiple books and chapters.
How The Muqaddimah is regarded
The Muqaddimah holds a literary regard score of 81 out of 100, weighing its place in the canon, its critical reception, its influence on other writers, and the standing of its author. Regard is measured separately from difficulty: a demanding book is not necessarily an admired one.