A Medieval Muslim and Darwin

In 1377, about a century after Joinville was puzzling over his little rock with the perfectly formed fish inside it (c 1248), a North African Arab scholar, Ibn Khaldun, was considering the underpinnings of all human society in his Mugaddimah ('Introduction') to history. Here He starts musing about the progression of life in a way that prefigures Darwin and Wallace's theories of evolution.

On should then look at the world of creation. It started out from the minerals and progressed, in an ingenious, gradual manner, to plants and animals. The last stage of minerals is connected with the first stage of plants, such as herbs and seedless plants. The last stage of plants, such as palms and vines, is connected with the first stage of animals, such as snails and shellfish which have only the power of touch. The word 'connection' with regard to these created things means that the last stage of each group is fully prepared to become the first stage of the next group.

The animal world then widens, its species become numerous, and, in a gradual process of creation, it finally leads to man, who is able to think and reflect. The higher stage of man is reached from the world of the monkeys, in which both sagacity and perception are found, but which has not reached the stage of actual reflection and thinking. At this point we come to the first stage of man.

There is no hint in Ibn Khaldun, a conventionally pious Muslim of the fourteenth century, that this is in any way a remarkable departure from Muslim beliefs.