3. MUSLIM CONTRIBUTION TO SCIENCE

~ 148 ~ historiography should come under the influence of this concept of the ‘divine right of the kings’ so that, in practice, it became a chronicle of the lives of royal families with scant reference to the common man. With the onset of the Islamic revolution in Arabia and neighbouring countries, objects of nature like the sun and moon were dislodged from their divine pedestals. In link manner, kings were removed from the seat of extraordinary greatness. Now a king was just a human being like any other. The influence of the Islamic revolution, which ultimately reached Asia, Africa and many European countries, paved the way for a new atmosphere on a universal scale. With the new way of thinking, the old king-centred mentality gave way to a mancentred ethos. Prominent expression was given to a new approach to historiography in the writings of Abdur Rahman Ibn Khaldun, who in the foreword to his Kitab al-Ibar, propounded his theory of how history should be written. This foreword, or Muqaddamah, is considered so important that it has been published many times in several languages.