Ibn Khaldun's Writing Style

Ibn Khaldun was the first major Muslim philosopher after Ibn Rushd. After Ibn Rushd's refutation by Al Ghazali, philosophy suffered a big setback in the Muslim World. The audience of Ibn Khaldun's writing is people from all walks of life who can benefit from his history and its interpretation. At the risk of being labeled as a philosopher, Ibn Khaldun wrote for both the masses (aam) who followed Islam without developing an understanding of it, as well as the initiated (khaas) who followed Islam while trying to understand it through reasoning. This is reflected in the writing style of Al Muqaddimmah as well as Kitaab Al Abaar.

As Ibn Khaldun explained the narrative to the two groups, he writes for them in parallel, transmitting the knowledge simultaneously to the masses and the selected few. Whereas the masses got exoteric information that was useful for them. Those who were able to understand were delivered with esoteric insights into his philosophy which made sense to them. There was no contradiction between the exoteric and the esoteric knowledge.

He did this by writing with dual meaning. Sometimes, he wrote short cryptic side notes in a different terminology that would be passed over by the masses as incomprehensible but was beneficial to the philosophers to understand the philosophic implications of the text. At other times, he uses quotes from the Quran and Hadiths or other statements, which if the reader pauses and reflects on would understand the higher philosophic truth of his exposition. 

Although, Ibn Khaldun uses philosophy extensively to discuss the abaar (wise lessons) from history, he does not refer to any philosophic sources, nor does he go into tangents to explain philosophic concepts in his work on the philosophy of history. 

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