Why Is Mark Zuckerberg Reading Ibn Khaldun’s ‘al-Muqaddimah’?

If Facebook-mogul Mark Zuckerberg really is reading a book “every other week,” we’ll assume that he’s reading the abridged version of Franz Rosenthal’s translation of the great fourteenth-century scholar’s work:

Or — if he is taking on all three volumes — then one hopes he’s cancelled meetings for the fortnight.

Although there was initially great fanfare about the January 2015 launch of Zuckerberg’s book club, eliciting numerous comparisons to Oprah’s bestseller-making club, it was also rather quickly declared a dud.

Still, Zuckerberg has persisted. His choice of Ibn Khaldun as his 6/1 book seems to have — if nothing else — delighted a number of Tunisians, who hurried to post images of their hometown scholar to the thread.

According to Business Insider, Zuckerberg’s A Year of Books selections have thus far have been “mostly contemporary,” so Ibn Khaldun is a bit of a curveball. On Facebook, Zuckerberg wrote his view on the book: