Ibn Khaldun lectures were started by IIBI to honour one of the greatest Muslim scholars whose ideas laid the foundation for modern economic theory.

Ibn Khaldun was born in1332 C.E. in Tunis, Tunisia and spent some time in Granada, Spain. He was a sociologist, philosopher, and historian widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest social scientists of the Middle Ages. His contributions to the development of economic thought have gone largely unnoticed in the academic realm of Western nations. The extent to which Ibn Khaldun’s writing may not directly relate to economics should not detract from the value of his contributions to the development of modern economic theory. He reached economic conclusions and “organised them into an extremely coherent model. his ideas found in the Muqaddimah relating to a theory of production, theories of value, money and prices, a theory of distribution, as well as theories of cycles in population and public finance.

There can be little doubt that Ibn Khaldun’s ideas remain relevant to both modern economic theory and the development of a history of economic thought. This included studies on the benefits to society of specialisation and cooperation in production.