Dear IKN reader, promise to read the quote in this one because it’s simply wonderful.
One of IKN’s fave readers and mailpals (so shy he doesn’t even like to see his initials) sent in a quote from The Muqaddimah, written in 1377 by Ibn Khaldun, that he found used in a professional study book The 48 Rules of Power, by Robert Greene. For more on The Muqaddimah and its author do what I’ve been doing this morning and check out this fascinating wikipedia page but we’ll get straight to the quote, you’ll see just why my mailpal thought of the junior mining world.
“Many weak-minded persons in cities hope to discover property under the surface of the earth and to make some profit from it. In the Maghrib there are many Berber “students” who are unable to make a living by natural ways and means. They approach well-to-do people with papers that have torn margins and contain either non-Arabic writing or what they claim to be the translation of a document written by the owner of buried treasures, giving the clue to the hiding place. In this way. they try to get sustenance by (persuading the well-to-do) to send them out to dig and hunt for treasure. Occasionally one of these treasure hunters displays strange information or some remarkable trick of magic with which he fools people into believing his other claims, although, in fact, he knows nothing of magic and its procedures…“The things that have been said about (treasure hunting) have no scientific basis, nor are they based upon (factual) information. It should be realized that although treasures are found, this happens rarely and by chance, not by systematic search… Those who are deluded or afflicted by these things must take refuge in God from their inability to make a living and their laziness in this respect. They should not occupy themselves with absurdities and untrue stories.”
THE MUQADDIMAH
IBN KHALDUN
1332 – 1406
And that’s the best thing I’m going to do on the blog today all week this year. Many thanks, A. Person.