Ibn Khaldun isn’t exactly a household name—but he should be. Fascinatingly, one great American president was a big fan of Khaldun: Ronald Reagan. “The Gipper” quoted him throughout his Presidency no less than 10 times.
A medieval historian from modern-day Tunisia, Khaldun wrote “The Muqaddimah” in the 14th century. The work was a monumental, “universal” history—an attempt to synthesize all known history from an Islamic perspective and elucidate lessons he hoped would benefit Islamic civilization.