Ibn Khaldun, the 14th-century Sufi scholar-stateman and Maliki jurist, has been wrongly taken by moderns as a sociologist avant la lettre, among other misconceptions. His proto-historical and -economic observations of Berber tribal as well as Maghreb, al-Andalusian, and Mamluk society are fundamentally medieval Islamic views, however much they seem to anticipate Montesquieu and Tocqueville. Though he studied social forces at work in events, sociology is inductive whereas Ibn Khaldun was a fatalist: Muqaddimah and other works avoid assessing causality. He thought more as a Muslim moralist: bad behaviors justified God’s striking down the wicked. He followed the counter-rationalist al-Ghazali, and saw the world as did many contemporary clerks. Life as cyclical and bleak: virile tribesmen conquered, made strong by asabiyyah (solidarity); mellowed in cities; and were themselves conquered. His own experience entailed living through the Black Death, prison, and constant intrigues in Fez and spartan towns of north Africa, as well as Cairo. Nonetheless his scholarship was sometimes innovative and has been influential.