As this biography has shown, Ibn Khaldun had an unusually individualistic character. It is ironic, therefore, that Ibn Khaldun's view of history did not seem to allow much room for the agency or free will of the individual. For Ibn Khaldun even the charisma of an individual leader must be sanctified by divine prophecy. Although he described the lives of great sultans, chiefs, prophets, and mahdis in great detail, there was rarely the sense in his philosophy of history that individuals could break through inevitable patterns and cycles. Unlike many previous historians who strung together biographies of great rulers and personalities and called it history, Ibn Khaldun saw events systematically. Individuals were subjected to events, events were subject to social or tribal solidarity, to casabiyya, to divine inspiration, and to the irreversible cycle of the rise and fall of dynasties. Individuals could attempt to slow down the inevitable course of events, but they were ultimately subject to the cyclical laws of history.

In vivid contrast to this apparent determinism, Ibn Khaldun's autobiography, an autobiography that described a great deal of individual will, of decisiveness and initiative on his own part, seemed to contrast with this wider view of history as an inevitable social process – the inevitable death and rebirth of social bodies.