Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

Political and Cultural History of Islam
murdered in his home; his body was not found till the fourth day afterward and was so decomposed that it was buried without the usual ceremonial washing and warpping. Only one of ibn-al-Faradi’s works, Ta’rikh ’Ulama1 al-Andaius.’ is extant. This collection of biographies of the Arab scholars of Spain was supplemented by ibnBashkuwal, abu-ai-Qasim Khalaf ibn-rAbdul Malik, in a volume completed in 1139 under the title al-Silah fi Ta’rikh A’immat alAndalus. This is one of two surviving works of ibn-Bashkuwal, who is credited with the composition of some fifty books. Ibn-Bashkuwal was born at Cordova in 1101 and died there in 1183. His Silah was continued by abu-’Abdullah Muhammad ibn-al-Abbar (1199/1260) of Valencia under the title al-Takmilahli-Kitab al-Silah In addition to this work ibn-al-Abbar wrote al-Huliah al-Siyara, a collection of biographies. Another valuable dictionary of learned Spanish Arabs is Bughyat al-Multamis fi Ta’rikh Rijal al-Andalus, by al-Dabbi, abuJa’far Ahmad ibn-Yahya (1203), who flourished in Murcia.
In the history of science we have from the pen of abu-alQasim Sa’id ibn-Ahmad al-TuIaytuli (1029-70) the Tabaqat alUmam’ (Classification of nations), which was a source of al-Qifti, ibn-Usaybi’ah and ibn-al-Ibri, Sa’id held the office of Qazi of Toledo under the dhu-al-Nuns and distinguished himself as historian, mathematician and astronomical observer.18 The two names which stand for the highest literary accomplishment and historical comprehension of which Western Islam was capable are those of the two friends and officials of the Nasrid court, ibn-al-Khatib and ibnKhaldun.
Lisan-al-Din ibn-al-Khatib (1313-74) was descended from an Arab family which had migrated to Spain from Syria. Under the seventh Nasrid Sultan, Yusuf abu-al-Hajjaj (1334-54), and his son Muhammad V (1354-9, 1362-91), he held the pompous title of dhual-wizaratayn. In 1371 he fled from Granada because of court intrigues, only to be strangled to death three years later at Fas in revenge for a private feud. In his death Granada, if not the whole of Arab Spain, lost its last important author, poet and statesman. Of the sixty odd works penned by ibn-al-Khatib, which are chiefly, belletristic, historical, geographical, medicinal and philosophic, about a third have survived. Of these the most important for us is the extensive history of Granada.
Hitti, History of the Arabs, P 566.
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Abdur Rahman ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) was born in Tunis of a Spanish Arab family which traced its ancestry to the Kindah tribe. The founder of the family had migrated in the ninth century from al-Yaman to Spain; his descendants flourished in Seville untill the thirteenth century. Abdur Rahman himself held a number of high offices in Fas before he fell into disgrace and entered (1361) the service of the sultan of Granada, Muhammad VI. The sultan entrusted him with an important mission of peace to the Castilian court. Two years later, after having aroused the jealousy of his powerful friend ibn-al-Khatib, ibn-Khaldun returned to al-Maghrib. Here he occupied a number of positions, finally retiring to Qal’at ibnSalamah, where he began work on his history and resided till 1378. In 1382 he set out on a pilgrimage but broke his journey in Cairo to lecture at its famous mosque, al-Azhar. Two years later he was appointed chief Malikite Qazi of Cairo by the Mamluk Sultan alZahir Barquq. In 1401 he accompanied Barquq’s successor al-Nasir to Damascus on his campaign against the dreadful Tamerlane (Timur), who received ibn-Khaldun as an honoured guest. Thus did this historian play a significant part in the politics of North Africa and Spain, all of which prepared him admirably for the writing of his great work. His comprehensive history, entitled Kitab al-Ibar waDiwan al-Mubtada’ w-al-Khabar fi Ayyam al-Arab wal-Ajam walBarbar (book of instructive examples and register of subject and predicate dealing with the history of the Arabs, Persians and Berbers), is made up of three parts a Muqaddatnah (prolegomena), forming volume one; the main body, treating of the Arabs and neighbouring peoples and the last part, which sketches the history of the Berbers and the Muslim dynasties of North Africa. Unfortunately the critical theories ably propounded in the Muqaddamah were not applied to the main part of the work. However , the section treating of the Arab and Berber tribes of the Maghrib will ever remain a valuable guide.
The fame of Ibn Khaldun rests on his Muqaddamah. In it he presented for the first time a theory of historical development which takes due cognizance of the physical facts of climate and geography as well as of the moral and spiritual forces at work. As one who endeavoured to formulate laws of national progress and decay Ibn Khaldun may be considered the discoverer as he himself claimed- of the true scope and nature of history or at least the real founder of the science of sociology. No Arab writer, indeed no European, had ever taken a view of history at once so comprehensive and philosophic.

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By the consensus of all critical opinion Ibn Khaldun was the greatest historical philosopher Islam produced and one of the greatest of all
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time.