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This rating is very much a compromise, which is really saying something.

First, the positive: I cannot exaggerate my respect for Ibn Khaldun the historian, economist and sociologist. His theories on the rise and fall of medieval Islamic dynasties are so sound that the majority of modern works I've read just echo his words. He's centuries ahead of his time in terms of his attention to economic and social history, and his first chapter - debunking impossible claims by early historians from Greece, Rome and the Caliphates with simple logic - is an amazing example of historiography. Like a lot of pre-modern historians, Ibn Khaldun's work is also...kind of charming. Unlike a lot of ancient historians, however, the charm doesn't come from inaccuracies and clever phrasing but from the meticulous put-downs of his fellow historians. It's historiography at its most catty It's also over too soon.

The problem is, aside from a fantastic opening, actually reading the book is pretty dull. It's not helped by the difficulty of translating Arabic and the fact that even the translator's Orientalism-seeped terminology is seeming pretty dated now. (I read the 1967 Franz Rosenthal translation) Ibn Khaldun's popularity means that his views have been repeated and improved upon for hundreds of years. You don't get much out of reading his exact words that you won't get out of a decent modern historian writing in English...and you might have to sit through a lot of discredited and not particularly interesting medical knowledge to get there.

The Muqaddimah has a certain charm, and its author is all kinds of amazing, but it's too old to be of use to people looking for theories of history and too difficult to translate for people looking for fascinating stories. Look for a modern historical work about Ibn Khaldun or, even better, a historian who cites him as an inspiration. The genius of Ibn Khaldun's work is that you can understand his ideas without reading his exact words.