Ibn Khald?n

(b. Tunis, 27 May 1332; d. Cairo, 17 March 1406)

history, sociology.

‘Abddash;al-Rahman, the son of Muhammad, derived his family name, Ibn Khald?n, from a remote ancestor named Khald?n, who is said to have settled in Spain in the eighth century, not long after the Muslim conquest. His family gave up its patrician home in Seville before the Christian conquest of the city in 1248, crossing over to northwest Africa and eventually establishing itself in Tunis. Close ties with the ruling circles in northwest Africa and excellence in legal and religious scholarship were a family tradition. After the ravages of the Black “Death, which killed his parents, Ibn Khald?n entered the service of the Hafsid ruler of Tunis. He soon was dissatisfied and, in 1352, left to look for a more flourishing intellectual atmosphere and more promising career opportunities. Accepting an invitation of Ab? ‘In?n, the Merinid ruler of Fez, Ibn Khald?n arrived at Fez in 1354. There he completed his education, profiting form contact with the able scholars assembeld at Ab? ‘Inans’s court. Early in 1357 his Tunisian connections made him suspect to Ab? ‘In?n he was imprisoned and was not released untill Ab? ‘Inamacr;n’s death, twenty-one months later.

Realizing that fez was heading toward increasing political instability, Ibn Khaldün succeeded, with difficulty, in obtaining permission to leave the city. In December 1362 he reached Granada, where he was cordially welcomed by its ruler, Muhammad V. A diplomatic mission undertaken for Muhammad V in 1364 offered Ibn Khaldün the opportunity for a brief visit to his ancestral city, Seville. In the spring of 1365 an invitation extended to him by the Hafsid Abü Abdalläh of Bougie made it possible for him to return to northwest Africa. During the following decade his activities had to be adapted to turbulent course of northwest African power politics.

An attempt to escape to Spain did not succeed, and ultimately Ibn Khaldün took refuge in Qal’at Ibn Saläma, a small village in the Algerian hinterland northwest of Biskra. Here, during a stay of over three years (1375-1378), he started work on his world history. In November 1377 he completed the first draft of its “Introduction” (Muqaddima), which was to bring him lasting fame. By then, however, he was becoming restless in the isolation of Qal?at Ibn Saläma. He asked for and obtained permission from the ruler of Tunis, the Hafsid Abü ’-?Abbäa, to return to the city of his birth. According to Ibn Khaldän himself he soon gained the confidence of Abü ’l-‘Abbäs but thereby aroused the envy of other courtiers and officials, who undermined the ruler’s trust in him. Feeling uncertain of his situation, he thought it advisable to escape from Tunis. To this end he used the time-honored subterfuge of declaring his intention to make a pilgrimage to Mecca. He arrived by boat at Alexandria on 8 December 1382 and proceeded to Cairo, where he arrived on 6 January 1383. He remained in Egypt for the rert of his life, edcept or periods of travel in Syria and Palestine and an eight-mouth trip to Arabia in connection with the pilgrimage.

Ibn Khaldün’s talents as a scholar and diplomat were soon utilized by the new ruler of Egypt, Barqüq (1382-1399), and his career finally reached fulfillment. Ibn Khaldün was given various academic positions; and coveted appointment to a judgeship came to him for thr first time on 8 August 1384, when he was made Egyptian chief judge of the Mälikites, many of whom had—like himself—strong ties to northwest Africa. Judgeships were highly sensitive positions dependent on political circumstances and the ruler’s favor. Thus, it is not astonishing that Ibn Khaldün was deposed from the judgeship and reappointed to it five more times, the last reappointment coming a few days before his death. During his twenty-three years in Egypt, Ibn Khaldütook an active part in internal Egyptian politics and in international affairs, capitalizing, in particular, upon his northwest African connections.

In 1401, during a military expedition to Syria initiated by Barqüq’s young successor, Faraj, a memorable meeting took place between Ibn Khaldün and the great Tamerlane, who was then laying siege to Damascus. despite all his judicial, political, and academic activities, Ibn Khaldün found the time to continue his scholarly research, mainly with a view to improving an expanding his great historical work, Since he wrote an autobiography, possibly the longest work of its kind until then, and was also much noticed by contemporary biographers, the story of his life is known in considerable details; but larger questions of the sources of his genius and the psychological motivation for his many extraordinary activities can only, if at all, be answered by uncertain and unsatisfactory speculation.

Ibn Khaldün entitled his world history “Book of the Lessons and Archive of Early and Subsequent History, Dealing With the Political Events Concerning the Arabs, Non-Arabs, and Berbers, and the Supreme Ruleers Who Were Contemporary With Them.” Its introduction and first book became known as an independent work, entitled “The Introduction” (Muqaddima), even during the lifetime of Ibn Khaldün, who was convinced of his work’s originality and significance. The Muqaddima was indeed the first large-scale attempt to analyze the group relationships that govern human political and social organization factors. Against a background of Muslim legal thought and Islamized Greek philosophy, human society is described as following a constantly repeated rhythm of growth and decay. which includes a continous slight forward movement provided by the retention of certain cultural achievements of earlier generations.

Human beings require cooperation for the preservation of the species, and they are by nature equipped for it. Their labor is the only means at their disposal for creating the material basis for their individual and group existence. Where human beings exist in large numbers, a division of activities becomes possible and permits greater specialization and refinement in all spheres of life. The result is ’ umrän (“civilization” or “culture”), with its great material and intellectual achievements, but also with a tendency towards luxury and leisure which carries within itself the seeds of destruction.

Large concentrations of people are possible only urban environments, which therefore present the opportunity for the highest flowering of civilization. The force that makes people cohere and cooperate and then aspire toward the achievement of political control is called ? asabiyya, which may be translated roughly as “group feeling.” Originally a negative term with the connotation of “unfair bias” and as such generally condemned, it was applied in positive sense by Ibn Khaldün. ?Asabiyya is man’s psychological attraction to those of the same blood and racial origins. Outsiders may come to share in the ‘ asabiyya of a group through long and close contact.

Political leaders and dynasties attain their eminence by virtue of the ability to concentrate the group feeling upon themselves and thereby profit from its natural bent for acquisition of power. The achievement of political predominance sets in motion a process of territorial overexpansion that dilutes the group support of the dynasty. More important, it also marks the beginning of an inevitable three-generation cycle of weakening the dynasty’s moral fiber. The dynasty becomes alienated from its supporters, and its realm falls prey to others who are fired by strong and unspoiled group feeling.

All the factors of environment an human psychology operate without the direct intervention of the superhuman, divine establishment. Ibn Khaldün accepts as a fact that God created these factors and saw to it that they would operate as they do. He also acknowledges the existence of occasions on which God directly intervenes in history—for instance, by sending a prophet with a divine message to mankind. But unusual events of this sort bring about only an intensification of the normal situation or an abnormal interruption that soon comes to an end, permitting resumption of the normal development of human affairs.

In the course of reviewing the totality of the institutions of Muslim society in order to illustrate his sociological views, Ibn Khaldün shows himself an able and effective historian of science and scholarship. In the sixth chapter of the Muqaddima, he presents a number of usually brief sketches of the various religious and legal disciplines, of the natural sciences, and of the function of language and literature, together with instructive essays on the methodology of scholarship. Although he neglects certain recondite and remarkable achievements of Muslim science, he gives an acceptable picture of the more obvious elements in the development of each science and successfully captures the general flavor of medieval scholarship and the broad outlines of its history. The reality of some of the occult sciences was not denied by Ibn Khaldü who believed in the legitimacy of white magic and the existence of black magic. Yet, taking sides in an old controversy, he rather lengthily refuted the claims of astrology and alchemy. He was especially concerned with showing the harm that belief in the reality of astrology and alchemy is able to do to human society. A treatise on elementary arithmetic written in his earlier year is not preserved. It was probably of no scientific importance.

As a descriptive historian Ibn Khaldün ranks among the greatest of the Muslim world. He saw no need to spell out constantly and in detail how the ideas expounded in the Muqaddima applied to individual historical exposition bore out these ideas, as in fact it does to some degree. In large portions of his his history he was naturally obliged to follow one or another of the older standard works.; but he also utilized unusual sources some of them of Christian or Jewish origin. He searched for the best information available to make his history of the world as balanced and complete as possible in his time and place. He helped to increase the intense interest in history current in the Egypt of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and among later Ottoman historians and statesmen.

In nearly every individual instance the source of Ibn Khaldün’s information an ideas can be traced, with the noteworthy exception of the origin of the concept of ? asabiyya in a sense that he uses it. But the synthesis, according to all we know, is entirely his own. It stands out boldly in the Muslim context, his own. It stands out boldly in the Muslim context, no matter how greatly it is indebted to Muslim scholarly tradition. It is a summing up of Muslim medieval civilization, but it also points beyond its own time to fundamental problems of the modern science of sociology.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. W. McG. de Slane translated the Muqaddima as Prolégoménes historiques d’Ibn Khaldoun, 3 vols. (Paris, 1862-1868); there is also an English trans. by F. Rosenthal, The Muqaddimah (New York, 1958), 2nd ed., 3 vols. (Princeton, 1967), published as vol. XLIII of the Bollingen Series; and a French trans. by V. Monteil, Ibn Khaldün, Discours sur l’histoire universelle, 3 vols. (Beirut, 1967-1969).

The section from the History on northwest Africa was translated by de Slane as Histoire des Berbeéres et des dynasties musulmanes de l’Afrique septentrionale, 4 vols. (Algiers, 1852-1856; new ed., Paris, 1925-1956).

The Arabic text of the complete Autobiography was edited by M. Ibn Täwit al-Tanji,? as al-Ta‘rif bi-Ibn Khaldün (Cairo, 1951); an English trans. of the report on the meeting with Tamerlane is by W. J. Fischel, Ibn Khaldün and Tamerlane (Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1952).

Further works are Lubäb al-Muhassal, L. Rubio, ed. (Tetuà;n, 1952); and Shif?’il li-tahdhib al-mas?’il, M. Ibn T?wit al-Tanji, ed. (Istanbul, 1958).

II. Secondary Literature. A bibliography by W. J. Fischel is appended to Rosenthal’s trans. of the Muqaddima and is further updated by Fischel in his Ibn Khaldün in Egypt (Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1967). See also ’Abd al-Rahm?n Badawi, Mu’allaf?t Ibn Khaldün (Cairo, 1962); and M. Talbi, “Ibn Khald?n, “in Encyclopaedia of Islam, 2nd ed. (Leiden-London, 1968 [1969]), III, 825-831. Some of the more recent works on Ibn Khald?n are (listed chronologically) Muhsin Mahdi, Ibn Khald?ns Wissenschaft von der menschlichen Kultur (Leipzig, 1959); W. J. Fischel, Ibn Khald?n in Egypt (Berkeley-Los Angeles, 1967);M. Nassar, La pensée réaliste d’Ibn Khald?n (Paris, 1967); and M. M. Rab??, The Political Theory of Ibn Khald?n (Leiden, 1967).

Franz Rosenthal