1.阿拉伯遗产宝藏。阿拉伯人、外国人、柏柏尔人的历史纲要和殷鉴。 2.中世纪阿拉伯西部地区最后一位著名哲学家伊本·赫勒敦对人类文明、国家、生计、教育、官职……的阐述。 3.新中国成立以来第一批留埃学生、知名阿拉伯语翻译家李振中教授，历时十年翻译而成的鸿篇巨著。 4.今天，我们把伊本赫勒敦的《历史绪论》介绍给中国读者，帮助我们进一步了解阿拉伯国家的历史及其发展规律，了解阿拉伯民族文化的特点和阿拉伯人的思维方式，特别是了解阿拉伯民族许多内在的心理情愫。 5.翻译语言明白晓畅，虽为中世纪作品，但是读起来毫无隔膜。需要强调的是，译者在翻译的过程中，加入了大量的注释，方便读者理解文意。同时，书后还附了中英阿文译名表，方便读者查对、研究。

The Muqaddimah, often translated as "Introduction" or "Prolegomenon," is the most important Islamic history of the premodern world. Written by the great fourteenth-century Arab scholar Ibn Khaldn (d. 1406), this monumental work laid down the foundations of several fields of knowledge, including philosophy of history, sociology, ethnography, and economics. The first complete English translation, by the eminent Islamicist and interpreter of Arabic literature Franz Rosenthal, was published in three volumes in 1958 as part of the Bollingen Series and received immediate acclaim in America and abroad. A one-volume abridged version of Rosenthal's masterful translation was first published in 1969. This new edition of the abridged version, with the addition of a key section of Rosenthal's own introduction to the three-volume edition, and with a new introduction by Bruce B. Lawrence, will reintroduce this seminal work to twenty-first-century students and scholars of Islam and of medieval and ancient history.