Abstract

A historian as well as a sociologist and anthropologist avant la lettre, Ibn Khaldun was one of the most original figures of the medieval Arab culture. His political experience in various courts of the Maghreb and Muslim Spain during the first half of his life, as well as his many travels to the Middle East, provided him with a concrete understanding of the social and political realities of his time. His education was first and foremost religious, legal, and literary, but he also had strong foundations in the Graeco-Arabic philosophical tradition. In his works he raises a new question, namely, how does one write true history exceeding the limits of formal critique of historical information as it was practiced in the Arabic historiographical tradition. The answer he developed involves knowledge of society as well as taking into account all available knowledge as a condition for historical knowledge. He thus felt obliged to invent a ‘‘science of the society’’ in the narrow sense of the word, in which the social and political realities of the Maghreb and the Arab world in medieval times obviously occupy an important place. From this point of view, he deserves the title of ‘‘sociologist.’’ However, his global approach to the civilizations of his time, despite the limited information he had at his disposal, equally makes him a careful ‘‘anthropologist,’’ whose ideas even to this day retain attention. He was foremost a historian, however, and as such he contributed more than an innovative approach. He had a vision of history based on the internal dynamics of societies and on their universal struggles for dominance, on the scale of the great empires of his time.

Abu Zayd ‘Abdarrahiman ibn Khaldun was born in Tunis in 1332. According to the information in his Autobiography, his family, of Arab Yemeni origin, settled in Spain in the eighth century and emigrated in the thirteenth century to Tunis after a short stay in the Moroccan city, Ceuta. Destined by his aristocratic origins to occupy a high position in state administration, Ibn Khaldun felt torn, until the age of 36, between his political ambitions and his profound attraction to science. After an eventful first half of his life when he was called to hold high political positions in various courts of the Maghreb and in Muslim Spain, he made a crucial decision to withdraw into the castle of Qal‘at ibn Salama (near Frenda, in Algeria) to write. During the four years he spent in this deserted place, away from the bustle of cities, he wrote the first draft of the most important work of his life, The Book of Examples, which includes the famous Muqaddima (Introduction) as the first volume. Finally, having fallen seriously ill, and being obliged to leave his retreat to find the documentation he needed for his research, he returned for a few years to his native city, Tunis, before finally leaving for Alexandria, and thereafter for Cairo, where he spent the last 24 years of his life. Shortly before leaving Tunis, he had offered the first version of The Book of Examples to the library of the Hafi? id Sultan Abu l-‘Abbas. Once in Cairo, the support of the Mamluk king Zahir al-Barquq enabled him to obtain a position as a teacher and judge. But he kept these positions a relatively short time, because of jealousy and hatred that aroused against him due to his severity as a judge, his haughty attitude, and commitment to his country of origin, the Maghreb. Also, he led a precarious existence almost entirely dependent on his royal patron, but he could nevertheless dedicate himself to completing his work, of which he presented a near-final version to his benefactor in 1397. Toward the end of his life, he met the famous conqueror Tamerlane at the gates of Damascus and had many conversations with him that he recounts in his Autobiography. He died in Cairo on March 17, 1406.

Ibn Khaldun proposes two conceptions of history, one focused on society, social activities, and laws determining its evolution, which is the subject of the first volume of The Book of Examples, and another, the subject of two other volumes, that covers world history from creation to the time of the author. However, the first, while constituting an autonomous part, is considered a prerequisite for the second to the extent that, in explaining the work and the various mechanisms of society, it allows the reader to better judge the veracity of the historical accounts described therein. This is why Ibn Khaldun presents this as an introduction - in Arabic, Muqaddima. This distinction is important, and by insisting upon a global knowledge of society, it reveals a methodological concern very close to that of the modern social sciences, as well as a philosophy of history, which

Places the social functioning itself at the core of the historical movements and historical developments.

Ibn Khaldun’s Science of Society though presupposing creation, has a materialistic basis. On the one hand, it relies on the examination of the physical environment, namely the geography and climate in which humans live; on the other, it attempts to explain the social functions through purely human and material factors. The research and analysis it proposes revolve around four main axes, namely (1) the forms of sociability and the social relationships they give rise to; (2) the political life including its forces of domination, and formation of power and state; (3) the economic life including livelihoods, the acquisition of wealth and production; and finally (4) the intellectual and spiritual life, the formation and history of sciences, education and its methods, language and literary creations. At least in their content, these axes cover largely those found in what is known today as cultural anthropology.

Ibn Khaldun shows that society is divided between two poles, the badawa, or rural lifestyle, which includes that which is necessary for life, and hadara, or urban lifestyle, which seeks the superfluous and luxury. These two poles are both opposed and complementary, and society constantly oscillates from one to the other following a cyclical evolution. The formation of political power pivoting on the ‘asabiyya, the social solidarity based on either blood ties or on the links of patronage, is largely responsible for this oscillation that causes great social, political, economic, and cultural upheavals. History is therefore designed as the study of the appearance, development, and disappearance of states and empires that have been able to capture and instrumentalize to their advantage the ‘asabiyya in order to establish their power.

See also: > Ethics, Arabic > Political Philosophy, Arabic

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