An examination on Ibn Khaldun's thoughts about urban and urbanization in his book Muqaddimah

Ibn Khaldun who is excepted the father of social sciences in Islamic world constituted a dicipline namely "umran" in Muqaddimah introduction to Kitâb'ul Iber that is proving of universal history. Main aim of umran science is determination of system and continuousness, which implicts casuality and law of social and historical events. In that way truth can be reached through seperating impossible events from possible events owing to umran science something like touchstone. Ibn Khaldun stated community life and its facts and institutions that necessarily come into exiscente. Threfore he could analyze communities from primitive nomad cultures to complicated city cultures, their institutions and organizational forms. In this context, aim of thesis study is determination of Ibn Khaldun's thoughts about urban and urbanization, and specification of whether he could reach causalities and laws in field of urban and urbanization or not. In this sense, modern urban theories are examined in scope of thesis. Once analysed without anachronism, it is propounded that Ibn Khaldun's thoughts about urban, urbanization and urbanity are mostly valid in modern period in principle. Keywords: Ibn Khaldun, umran science, hadara culture, urban, urban theories