Neo-Platonism in Ibn Khaldūn's Poetics

Abstract

AbstractThis article analyses the presence of Neo-Platonic ideas in the poetics of Ibn Khaldūn's (1332–1406). It particularly focuses on the sixth part of the Muqaddima, in which Ibn Khaldūn presents the Arab-Islamic system of knowledge. I argue that Ibn Khaldūn analyses poetry in terms of a peculiar kind of knowledge and that his views on poetry are largely dominated by a Neo-Platonic paradigm, deriving from Avicenna's Psychology and Sufism. I focus on four...