Usually the line is pretended to be a digest of Ibn Khldun thought, unfortunately this is quite inaccurate, as Ibn Khaldun's theories are wider and more sophisticated than that.

Now that I think of it Ibn Khaldun is precisely this example of an accomplished thinker that went through the hardest times possible in the Old World : he went through the Black Death in the 1340, his whole family died while travelling to reunite with him after many years of forced separation, he was imprisoned, deported, exiled many times...