IBN KHALDUN (AH 732-808/1332-1406 CE), Muslim
historian, famous as the first systematic theoretician of the social, economic,
psychological, and religious forces that determine human history and society.
Born in Tunis into an aristocratic and scholarly family that had left Seville
for Northwest Africa almost a century earlier, he received the thorough
education customary among the Muslim middle and upper classes. Entering
government service shortly after he lost his parents and many of his teachers
to the Black Death, he soon left Tunis and in 1354 arrived in Fez, where he was
well received by the Marinid ruler but also had to suffer the customary
tribulations of political involvement.
The Northwest African period of his life included a
sojourn of a little over two years in Andalusian Granada (December
1362-February 1365), during which he undertook a diplomatic mission to
Christian Seville, and over three years of quiet retirement from active
politics (1375-1378) in rural Qal'at Ibn Salamah (province of Oran). There he
started work on his great history of the world (Kitab al-'Ibar) and completed its "introduction," the Muqaddimah, in 1377. Returning to his
native Tunis in order to complete the history, he reentered government service
but soon felt that his position at court was shaky. Under the pretext of going
on the pilgrimage to Mecca, he left Tunis in October 1382 for Egypt. There he
spent the rest of his life as a college professor and administrator and
achieved the zenith of his career with an appointment to the prestigious and
influential Malik! judgeship. His religious experience was enlarged by a
pilgrimage to Mecca (1387-1388) and, in particular, a visit to the holy cities
of Palestine (1400). A meeting with the Mongol ruler Timur in Damascus early
in 1401 was another noteworthy event of his Egyptian period. He died
unexpectedly in Cairo on 17 March 1406.
Ibn Khaldun's approach to religion was conditioned by the
fact that he lived in a Muslim society and was a prominent member of its
religio-juridical establishment. Both as an enormously complex institution and
as a powerful religious force in society, Islam is always present in his work
and his thought. The encyclopedic outline of Muslim civilization in the Muqaddimah contains brief and factual
sketches of the religious sciences and institutions; these sketches are
admirably persuasive and have proved useful, for Muslims and nonMuslims
alike, as a first introduction to the subject. The historical development of
the sciences connected with the Qur'an, the prophetic traditions (hadith), and jurisprudence is analyzed
in a deceptively simple manner, and the great political-theological problems
agitating Muslim society, such as the character of the caliphate and the ever
present messianic expectations, are discussed astutely.
A matter of vital concern in Ibn Khaldun's life and time
was the religious and social meaning of the relationship of Islam, in its
dominant traditional manifestation as a sum of fundamentalist theology and
law, to the individual and group emotionality of internalized religion
represented by Sufism (tasawwuf, "mysticism").
He is credited with a legal responsum (fatwa)
and historical description and discussion of theories on mysticism, that
expands on the chapter devoted to Sufism in the Muqaddimah. He supports traditional Sufism and rejects its
ecstatic, seemingly antinomian forms, while being fully aware of their great
impact on society. Other supernatural sciences, that were taken very seriously
throughout medieval Islam, such as sorcery, astrology, and
"scientific" attempts at divining the future, are discussed as to
their compatibility with the traditional religious outlook. In general, Ibn
Khaldun applies a sense of realism to his basic concern with the forces
governing human society. His approach to the religious/political institutions
and religious sciences of Islam is predicated upon the assumption that human
rationality, different though it is from revealed religion, affects them as it
does all other cultural activity. Even where psychological or supernatural
factors appear to be involved, man's task is to rely on reason, seconded by
observation and experience, for understanding and explaining his world.
This approach raises the question of how Ibn Khaldun
reconciled his views on the normal course of human affairs with the dominant
religious traditions and beliefs. The importance of his work results from his
remarkable attempt to explain the historical processes in human terms, assumed
by him to possess universal validity. Culture, equated with human life, is
seen as dependent upon population density, a natural assumption in premodern
times possibly confirmed for people in the fourteenth century by the
devastation of the Black Death. Man's innate psychological need to belong and
give political support to a group dominated by one or more leading
personalities, for which Ibn Khaldun chose the code word 'asabiyah, translated approximately as "group feeling,"
is instrumental in producing the circular ebb and flow of concentrations of
political power necessary for all civilization; religious convictions are
beneficial, at times even indispensable, for an 'asabiyah to achieve its potential. Economic factors-to a large
extent controllable by proper human management, provided that the wisdom and
will for it are present-complete the picture of human society, or societies,
as based upon reason, numbers, and psychology.
What role, then, belongs to the principal religious te
nets of Islam, such as God, prophecy, and the other
world? Ibn Khaldun could not disregard this question. He takes for granted the
undeniable reality of the vast metaphysical structure set up by traditional
Islam. Although he argues that prophecy cannot be proved by logical means, and
he explains prophecy, on the human side, as depending on an extraordinary power
of the soul, he accepts as a matter of course the existence of a succession of
chosen human beings who are transmitters of the divine message, culminating in
the prophet Muhammad. Metaphysical forces are seen to have exercised a large,
and often lasting, influence in certain ages, particularly at the origin of
Islam. The potential for divine interference in human affairs at any given time
continues to exist. Such interference, however, as in the form of miracles
whose occasional occurrence cannot be denied, constitutes an interruption of
the ordinary and need not be reckoned with in studying human society and the
rules governing it. The widespread speculation about the end of the world concerned
him only inasmuch as it was a belief that tended to conflict with political
realities. There was practically no need for him to discuss life after death,
which he accepted as a powerful belief.
It is tempting to ascribe to Ibn Khaldun a kind of secularism
and even claim for him a tendency to separate religion from politics and
sociology. This view is anachronistic and disregards Muslim reality. Ibn
Khaldun was not an original religious thinker, but he showed a deep and no
doubt genuine appreciation of the importance of Islam and religion in general.
As befitted his position in life, he was sincere in his reverence for traditional
Islam and the dogmas and practices it had produced. His individual religious
views were not such as to cause much of a stir among his contemporaries, and
there was little reason for later generations to pay attention to them. It was
his way of looking at history that deeply impressed succeeding historians,
especially among the Ottoman Turks. The full significance of his achievement
began to find worldwide appreciation in the nineteenth century.
A classified bibliography can be found in Aziz Al-Azmeh’s
Ibn Khaldan in Modern Scholarship (London,
1981), pp. 229-318. Among
translations of Ibn Khaldun's works, two are recommended: The Muqaddimah, 3 vols., an English translation by Franz
Rosenthal (1958; reprint, Princeton,
1980), and Le voyage d'Occident et d'Orient, a French translation of the Autobiography by Abdesselam Cheddadi
(Paris, 1980).
Muhsin Mahdi's Ibn
Khaldan's Philosophy of History (London, 1957). While there are numerous studies of his sociological,
philosophical, and historical thought, few are devoted to the
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