Education, teaching, refinement and urbanization (a Khaldounic point of view)

Abstract

To many Western, Arab and Muslim scholars, Ibn Khaldoun is considered the pioneer of social sciences. Hence, there is a huge number of books and articles in different languages have been written tackling Ibn Khaldoun's ideas from the different perspectives of History, Sociology, Politics and Economics. In spite of their variety and importance, they fail -in my humble opinion- to get to the hidden purpose of lbn K.haldoun's work, which was the reformation of Muslim Civilization. Therefore, the task of this paper is to highlight the meaning and dialectics of some of Ibn Khaldoun's tools of reformation: education (Tarbiyah), teaching (Ta'Iim), refinement (Ta'dib) and urbanization ('Imran).