3. MUSLIM CONTRIBUTION TO SCIENCE

~ 140 ~ Historians have generally acknowledged that the science of history remained undeveloped before the emergence of Ibn Khaldun, and that he was the first person to develop a philosophy of history. The Encyclopaedia Britannica even goes so far as to say that “he developed one of the world’s most significant philosophies of history.” 71 The question arises as to how it became possible for Ibn Khaldun to discover something, which had remained undiscovered for centuries. The answer is that other historians were born before the Islamic revolution, while Ibn Khaldun was born after it. On the basis of monotheism, Islam had brought about a revolution, which eliminated the difference between King and commoner. All human beings, the offspring of Adam and Eve, were held to be equal. It was, uniquely, this great revolution of equality that paved the way for an Ibn Khaldun—himself a product: of this revolution—to lay the foundation of modern history in which the central position was held not by ‘royal figures’ but by humanity itself One belief which had hampered the development of the science or art of history was polytheism. The