Towards reconstructing the Muqaddimah following Ibn Khaldun's reading of the Idrisian text and maps

摘要

This article is based on a paper that was intended initially to examine the only world map included in a manuscript of the Muqaddimah made probably under the supervision of Ibn Khaldun himself. Yet because the world map is an integral part of the Muqaddimah's sections on geography (Chapter One: 'Second Prefatory Discussion' and its 'Supplement Note') and since it has been well established now that Ibn Khaldun's text kept growing throughout his life, the author's investigation turned out to be about the history of the geographic text and the ways in which the latter would help ultimately to understand better the growth of the text of the Muqaddimah as a whole. This article will also examine the geographic sections' relationship to prior and contemporary sources, notably the manner in which the Muqaddimah's surviving 'original' world map could have played a major role in propagating the so-called 'Al-Idrisi world map'.