Toynbee and Ibn Khaldun

Abstract

In the years before the First World War the Orient Express used to run a daily train de luxe between London and Vienna. From Vienna there were trains every Monday and Thursday (first class only) to Constantinople. The journey took 75 hours and cost ?22 and 11 shillings. In those palmy days the train travelled from empire to empire and British travellers customarily travelled without a passport. By 1921 everything had changed. British passports came in with the Defence of the Realm Act of 1915 and papers were frequently demanded on the route to Istanbul. The Orient Express passed through nation states with uncertain futures towards a Turkey which was fighting to become a nation. It was on the Orient Express, on the line between Nish and Adrianople in September 1921, that Arnold Toynbee, in a moment of creative vision, first sketched the plan of his massive A Study of History, the writing of which was to occupy him for the next 40 years.2 Arnold Toynbee was born in 1889 and educated at Winchester and Balliol. (As an undergraduate Toynbee became friendly with the Arabist D.S. Margoliouth. The latter told Toynbee that he made a custom of reading the Quran in Arabic once a year. This commanded Toynbee's admiration 'for the Quran is appreciably longer than the Bible'. This reminiscence suggests that Toynbee never actually looked at the Quran, for it is in fact shorter than the New Testament.)3 During the First World War Toynbee

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