History of Economic Thought--- Khaldun

	Sign In Sign-Up

WALI AL-DIN 'ABD AR-RAHMAN IBN MUHAMMAD IBN MUHAMMAD IBN ABI BAKR MUHAMMAD IBN AL-HASAN IBN KHALDUN

Ibn Khaldun was born on May 27, 1332, in Tunis. Ibn Khalduns successively held high administrative and political posts under the Umayyad, Almoravid, and Almohad dynasties.

Ibn Khaldun gives a detailed account of his education, listing the main books he read and describing the life and works of his teachers. He memorized the Qur`an, studied its principal commentaries, gained a good grounding in Muslim law, familiarized himself with the masterpieces of Arabic literature, and acquired a clear and forceful style and a capacity for writing fluent verse that was to serve him well in later life when addressing eulogistic or supplicatory poems to various rulers. He wrote books on philosophy, history, geography, or other social sciences;

He was in the era which was the renaissance for the Western world and at the same time the decay of the Islamic civilization. There were crusades and invasions from the East. There were also disputes of Khilafah. Ibn Khaldun represents the climax of history of Islamic economic thought.

Background and early life.

Education and diplomatic career.

The

Muqaddimah: Ibn Khaldun's philosophy of history. In 1375, craving solitude from the exhausting business of politics, Ibn Khaldun took the most momentous step of his life: he sought refuge with the tribe of Awlad 'Arif, who lodged him and his family in the safety of a castle, Qal'at ibn Salamah, near what is now the town of Frenda, Alg. There he spent four years, "free from all preoccupations," and wrote his massive masterpiece, the Muqaddimah (an introduction to history). His original intention, which he subsequently achieved, was to write a universal history of the Arabs and Berbers, but before doing so he judged it necessary to discuss historical method, with the aim of providing the criteria necessary for distinguishing historical truth from error. This led him to formulate what the 20th-century English historian Arnold Toynbee has described as "a philosophy of history which is undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been created by any mind in any time or place," a statement that goes even beyond the earlier eulogy by Robert Flint: (see also Index: historiography)

As a theorist on history he had no equal in any age or country until Vico appeared, more than three hundred years later. Plato, Aristotle and Augustine were not his peers . . . .

But Ibn Khaldun went even further. His study of the nature of society and social change led him to evolve what he clearly saw was a new science, which he called 'ilm al-'umran ("the science of culture") and which he defined thus:

This science . . . has its own subject, viz., human society, and its own problems, viz., the social transformations that succeed each other in the nature of society.

Indeed it is not too much to claim, as did a contemporary Arab scholar, Sati' al-Husri, that in Book I of the Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun sketches a general sociology; in Books II and III, a sociology of politics; in Book IV, a sociology of urban life; in Book V, a sociology of economics; and in Book VI, a sociology of knowledge. The work is studded with brilliant observations on historiography, economics, politics, and education. It is held together by his central concept of 'asabiyah, or "social cohesion." It is this cohesion, which arises spontaneously in tribes and other small kinship groups, but which can be intensified and enlarged by a religious ideology, that provides the motive force that carries ruling groups to power. Its inevitable weakening, due to a complex combination of psychological, sociological, economic, and political factors, which Ibn Khaldun analyzes with consummate skill, heralds the decline of a dynasty or empire and prepares the way for a new one, based on a group bound by a stronger cohesive force.

It is difficult to overstress Ibn Khaldun's amazing originality. Muhsin Mahdi, a contemporary Iraqi-American scholar, has shown how much his approach and fundamental concepts owe to classical Islamic theology and philosophy, especially Averroism. And, of course, he drew liberally on the historical information accumulated by his predecessors and was doubtless influenced by their judgments. But nothing in these sources or, indeed, in any known Greek or Latin author can explain his deep insight into social phenomena, his firm grasp of the links binding the innumerable and apparently unrelated events that constitute the process of historical and social change.

One last point should be made regarding his basic philosophy of history. Clearly, for Ibn Khaldun, history was an endless cycle of flowering and decay, with no evolution or progress except for that from primitive to civilized society. But, in brief descriptions of his own age, which have not received as much attention as they deserve, he showed that he could both visualize the existence of sharp turning points in history and recognize that he was witnessing one of them: "When there is a general change of conditions . . . as if it were a new and repeated creation, a world brought into existence anew." The main cause he gives for this great change is the Black Death, with its profound effect on Muslim society, but he was fully aware of the impact of the Mongol invasions, and he may also have been impressed by the development of Europe, the merchants and ships of which thronged the seaports of North Africa and some of the soldiers of which served as mercenaries in the Muslim armies.

Journey to Egypt.

During his stay in Qal'at ibn Salamah, Ibn Khaldun not only completed the first draft of the Muqaddimah but he also wrote part of his massive history, Kitab al-'ibar, a work that is not of such universal significance but which does constitute the best single source on the history of Muslim North Africa. Such a task, however, required frequent reference to other books and archives; this, together perhaps with nostalgia for the more active world of politics, drew him back to city life. A severe illness finally convinced him to leave his refuge; he secured permission to return to Tunis, where he "engaged exclusively in scholarly work," completing much of his history. But once more he aroused both the jealousy of a prominent scholar and the suspicion of the ruler, and in 1382, at the age of 50, he received permission to sail to Egypt, ostensibly for the purpose of performing the pilgrimage to Mecca.

After 40 days he landed in Alexandria and shortly afterward was in Cairo, then, as now, by far the largest and most opulent city in the Arab world. Its impact on him was profound: "I saw the metropolis of the ear, the garden of the world, the gathering place of the nations . . . the palace of Islam, the seat of dominion . . . ." His curiosity about Cairo was evidently of long duration, for he quotes the replies several eminent North Africans had made to his enquiries on their return from that city, including: "He who has not seen it does not know the power of Islam."

Within a few days "scholars thronged on me, seeking profit in spite of the scarcity of merchandise [!] and would not accept my excuses, so I started teaching at al-Azhar," the famous Islamic university. Shortly afterward, the new Mamluk ruler of Egypt, Barquq, with whom he was to remain on good terms except for one or two brief periods of misunderstanding, appointed him to a professorship of jurisprudence at the Quamhiyah college and, within five months, made him chief judge of the Maliki rite, one of the four recognized rites of Sunni Islam. Barquq also successfully interceded with the ruler of Tunis to allow Ibn Khaldun's family to rejoin him, but the ship carrying them foundered in the port of Alexandria, drowning all on board.

Later years.

Ibn Khaldun took his judicial duties quite seriously; he claimed to have been guided in his judgments solely by the merits of each case and attempted to reform the numerous abuses that had developed in the administration of justice. He must have struck the tolerant and easy-going Egyptians as somewhat dour and puritanical, and his own opinion is recorded by one of his students: "These Egyptians behave as though the Day of Judgement would never come!" At any rate, "trouble gathered against me from every quarter and darkened the atmosphere between me and the rulers"; he was dismissed and served again as chief judge only for one year, toward the end of his life. But he was given another professorship--he pointed out that endowed chairs were plentiful in Cairo--and spent his time teaching, writing, and revising his Muqaddimah. He was also able to perform the pilgrimage to Mecca, sailing from at-Tawr, near Suez, and returning by way of Upper Egypt. Some years later he went to Damascus and the Holy Cities of Palestine, thus further widening his knowledge of the eastern Arab world. It is interesting to note that he visited the tomb of Abraham in Hebron and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, both Abraham and Jesus being honoured prophets, but he refused to enter the Holy Sepulchre, "the site of what they claim to be the Crucifixion," an event that Muslims deny occurred.

Ibn Khaldun was forced to play a minor part in the palace revolt of 1389, but he apparently did so under duress, and Barquq seems to have borne him no grudge. Otherwise, one gets the impression of a ripe, wise, and respected scholar, surrounded by admirers, sought out by visitors, peacefully enjoying the calm pleasures of old age. He had every reason to expect this state of affairs to continue, but fate had reserved for him one more encounter, the most dramatic of all.

Rescue by Timur.

In 1400 Timur and his victorious Tatar horde invaded Syria, and the new sultan of Egypt, Faraj, went out to meet them, taking Ibn Khaldun and other notables with him. Shortly thereafter, the Mamluk army returned to Egypt, leaving Ibn Khaldun in besieged Damascus. The situation soon becoming hopeless, the civilian notables of the city started negotiations with Timur, during the course of which he asked to meet Ibn Khaldun. The latter was thereupon lowered over the city wall by ropes and spent some seven weeks in the Tatar camp, of which he has given a detailed description in his autobiography.

Timur treated him with respect, and the historian used all his accumulated worldly wisdom and courtly flattery to charm the ferocious world conqueror. Probably dreaming of further conquests, Timur asked for a detailed description of North Africa and got not only a short lecture on that subject, on the caliphate, and on 'asabiyah but also an extensive written report. Ibn Khaldun took advantage of Timur's good mood to secure a safe-conduct for the civilian employees left in Damascus and permission for himself to return to Egypt but not before he witnessed the sack of the city and the burning of its great mosque.

After an exchange of gifts with Timur, he headed southward but was robbed and stripped by a band of Bedouins and only with difficulty made his way to the coast. There a "ship belonging to Ibn Osman, the sultan of Rum, stopped, carrying an ambassador to the sultan of Egypt" and took him to Gaza, establishing his only contact with what was soon to become the dominant power in the Middle East--the Ottoman dynasty. The rest of his journey to Cairo was uneventful, as indeed were the remaining years of his life. He died in 1406 and was buried in the cemetery outside Bab an-Nasr, one of Cairo's main gates.

Significance.

Just as Ibn Khaldun had no known predecessors in the history of Muslim thought, so he had no worthy successors. But he did make an impact on his students in Cairo, one of whom, al- Maqrizi, showed an insight worthy of his master in analyzing the inflation that was rampant in his time and was the author of several voluminous works that cast much light on contemporary social conditions. Indeed, it is perhaps not too fanciful to attribute to Ibn Khaldun's influence the remarkable revival of historical writing in 15th-century Egypt. Later, several distinguished 16th- and 17th-century Ottoman scholars and statesmen took a keen interest in Ibn Khaldun's work, and a partial translation of the Muqaddimah into Turkish was made in the 18th century. But it was only after the 1860s, when a complete French translation of the Muqaddimah appeared, that Ibn Khaldun found the worldwide audience his incomparable genius deserved. (C.I.)

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

An autobiography was published by Muhammad al-Tanji, At-ta'rîf bi-Ibn Khaldûn (1951); an excellent translation of the introduction is Franz Rosenthal, Ibn Khaldun: The Muqaddimah, 3 vol. (1958); a translation of passages dealing with the social sciences is provided by Charles Issawi in An Arab Philosophy of History (1950). The best comprehensive study is Muhsin Madhi, Ibn Khaldun's Philosophy of History (1957; reprinted 1964); the encounter with Timur is described in Walter Fischel, Ibn Khaldun and Tamerlane (1952).