Ibn Khaldun

Ibn Khaldūn (27 May 1332 – 17 March 1406, 732–808 AH) was an Arab Tunisian scholar, historian, philosopher, and sociologist. He is widely acknowledged to be one of the greatest social scientists of the Middle Ages, and is considered by a number of scholars to be a major forerunner of historiography, sociology, economics, and demography studies.

His best-known book is the Muqaddimah or Prolegomena ("Introduction"), which he wrote in six months as he states in his autobiography. It later influenced 17th-century and 19th-century Ottoman historians such as Kâtip Çelebi, Mustafa Naima and Ahmed Cevdet Pasha, who used its theories to analyze the growth and decline of the Ottoman Empire. Ibn Khaldun interacted with Tamerlane, the founder of the Timurid Empire.

He has been called one of the most prominent Muslim and Arab scholars and historians. Recently, Ibn Khaldun's works have been compared with those of influential European philosophers such as Niccolò Machiavelli, Giambattista Vico, David Hume, G. W. F. Hegel, Karl Marx, and Auguste Comte as well as the economists David Ricardo and Adam Smith, suggesting that their ideas found precedent (although not direct influence) in his. He has also been influential on certain modern Islamic thinkers (e.g. those of the traditionalist school).

Ibn Khaldun's life is well-documented as a result of his biography. However, despite it being described by the historian Allen Fromherz as "the most detailed autobiography in Medieval Muslim literature", it lacked many personal details.

Both the scholars Walter Joseph Fischel and Syed Farid Alatas divided Ibn Khaldun's life into phases with the former dividing it into two and the latter into three. Fischel divides his life into the period he lived in the Maghreb (birth to fifty years) and the period he lived in Egypt. Alatas divides it into the first twenty years covering his education, the next twenty years in political office and the final twenty where he served as a scholar, teacher and magistrate.

ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Khaldūn was born in Tunis on 26 May 1332 (1 Ramadan 732 AH) into an upper-class Andalusian family of Yemeni Arab descent, the Banū Khaldūn. He traced family's ancestry to Ḥaḍramawt with his lineage specifically going back to Wāʾil Ibn Hujr a companion of the Islamic prophet Muhammad and a prominent chief:

Our ancestry goes back to Ḥaḍramawt, [we belong to the] Arabs of the Yemen, and descend from Wāʾil Ibn Hujr. He was one of the leaders of the Arabs, was known, and had a following.

Ibn Khaldun's first and most influential teacher was his father. Under his father's tutelage, he studied both the Islamic and the rational sciences with his father also shaping his independent thinking and appreciation for Sufism. Coming from an erudite and socially prominent family, he studied a standard curriculum which qualified him for either scholarly or administrative professions.

He also benefitted from a number of other teachers which encompassed locally prominent Moroccan and Tunisian scholars along with Andalusian exiles who had settled in Tunis and other North African cities. Ibn Khaldun learnt a number of Islamic sciences including Quranic recitation and its different styles, Quranic orthography, Maliki law, the hadiths and poetry. Under his father and several grammarians and literary scholars he studied Arabic. With the Andalusian scholar Abu ʿAbdallah Muhammad al- Ansari, he studied the Quran and fiqh. At a young age, he became a hafiz. The specific style of recitation he learnt was the Yaʿqub recitation. He would also go on to memorise volumes of poetry, literature, and hadith. He received an ijāza to transmit teachings in language and law from the leading hadith scholar in Tunis, Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad ibn Jābir ibn Sulṭān al-Qaysī al-Wādīyāshī. He also received an ijaza from a number of other scholars. Ibn Khaldun studied Maliki law under a number of scholars with Ibn ʿAbd Allāh al-Jayyānī teaching him the entire Kitāb al-Muwaṭṭaʾ the basis of Maliki law.

During the Marinid occupation of Ifriqya under the ruler Abu al-Hasan, Ibn Khaldun was able to access a number of scholars from the western Maghrib. This included who would become his most prominent teacher, Muḥammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ābilī, described by Ibn Khaldun as "the grand master of the rational sciences". Under al-Ābilī, he studied philosophy, logic and mathematics. al-Ābilī was a rationalist and was highly influenced by Greco-Islamic thought namely that of al-Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd and Fakhr al-Din al-Razi. At the age of 19, under al-Ābilī, Ibn Khaldun completed an abridgement of al-Razi's Lubab al-Muhassal. Through al-Ābilī, Ibn Khaldun developed his opposition to madrasas which were typically used by the state to disseminate their own views. Not being restricted to specific institutions and having access to many teachers allowed Ibn Khaldun to have a very diverse education giving him freedom to study under any teacher who would take him.

The plague would kill many of his teachers. It also killed many of Abu al-Hasan's retinue and army with his remaining followers retreating back towards Fes. Eventually, al-Ābilī would also return to Fes.

At the age of 20, he began his political career in the chancellery of the Tunisian ruler Ibn Tafrakin with the position of Kātib al-'Alāmah (seal-bearer), which consisted of writing in fine calligraphy the typical introductory notes of official documents. In 1352, Abū Ziad, the sultan of Constantine, marched on Tunis and defeated it. Ibn Khaldūn, in any case unhappy with his respected but politically meaningless position, followed his teacher Abili to Fez. There, the Marinid sultan, Abū Inan Fares I, appointed him as a writer of royal proclamations, but Ibn Khaldūn still schemed against his employer, which, in 1357, got the 25-year-old a 22-month prison sentence. Upon the death of Abū Inan in 1358, Vizier al-Hasān ibn-Umar granted him freedom and reinstated him to his rank and offices. Ibn Khaldūn then schemed against Abū Inan's successor, Abū Salem Ibrahim III, with Abū Salem's exiled uncle, Abū Salem. When Abū Salem came to power, he gave Ibn Khaldūn a ministerial position, the first position to correspond with Ibn Khaldūn's ambitions.

Al-Sakhāwī summarizes his career as including travel through major western Islamic centers such as Fez, Granada, and Tlemcen, alongside repeated shifts between political roles. The same entry notes that he later arrived in Cairo in Shaʿbān 782 AH/1380 CE.

The treatment that Ibn Khaldun received after the fall of Abū Salem through Ibn-Amar ʻAbdullah, a friend of Ibn Khaldūn's, was not to his liking, as he received no significant official position. At the same time, Amar successfully prevented Ibn Khaldūn, whose political skills he knew well, from allying with the Abd al-Wadids in Tlemcen. Ibn Khaldūn, therefore, decided to move to Granada. He could be sure of a positive welcome there since at Fez, he had helped the Sultan of Granada, the Nasrid Muhammad V, regain power from his temporary exile. In 1364, Muhammad entrusted him with a diplomatic mission to the king of Castile, Pedro the Cruel, to endorse a peace treaty. Ibn Khaldūn successfully carried out this mission and politely declined Pedro's offer to remain at his court and have his family's Spanish possessions returned to him.

In Granada, Ibn Khaldūn quickly came into competition with Muhammad's vizier, Ibn al-Khatib, who viewed the close relationship between Muhammad and Ibn Khaldūn with increasing mistrust. Ibn Khaldūn tried to shape the young Muhammad into his ideal of a wise ruler, an enterprise that Ibn al-Khatib thought foolish and a danger to peace in the country. As a result of al-Khatib's influence, Ibn Khaldūn was eventually sent back to North Africa. Al-Khatib himself was later accused by Muhammad of having unorthodox philosophical views and murdered despite an attempt by Ibn Khaldūn to intercede on behalf of his old rival.

In his autobiography, Ibn Khaldūn tells little about his conflict with Ibn al-Khatib and the reasons for his departure. Twentieth century Orientalist Muhsin Mahdi interprets that as showing that Ibn Khaldūn later realised that he had completely misjudged Muhammad V.

Ibn Khaldun said of Egypt, "He who has not seen it does not know the power of Islam." While other Islamic regions had to cope with border wars and inner strife, Mamluk Egypt enjoyed prosperity and high culture. In 1384, the Egyptian Sultan, al-Malik udh-Dhahir Barquq, made Khaldun professor of the Qamhiyyah Madrasah and appointed him as the Grand qadi of the Maliki school of fiqh (one of four schools, the Maliki school was widespread primarily in Western Africa). Al-Sakhāwī similarly states that Ibn Khaldūn taught at al-Azhar and was appointed to the Mālikī judgeship in Cairo more than once.

Ibn Khaldūn's view on the administration of justice in Egypt was less than favorable, and he had resolved to do his best to reform what he believed to be abuses of the system. He also insisted that the Egyptians were far too easy-going and did not have any sense of urgency for the Day of Judgment. His efforts at reform encountered resistance, however, and within a year, he had to resign his judgeship. Also in 1384, a ship carrying Khaldun's wife and children sank off of Alexandria.

After his return from a pilgrimage to Mecca in May 1388, Ibn Khaldūn concentrated on teaching at various Cairo madrasas. At the Mamluk court he fell from favor because during revolts against Barquq, he had, apparently under duress, with other Cairo jurists, issued a fatwa against Barquq. Later relations with Barquq returned to normal, and he was once again named the Maliki qadi. Altogether, he was called six times to that high office, which, for various reasons, he never held long.

In 1401, under Barquq's successor, his son Faraj, Ibn Khaldūn took part in a military campaign against the Mongol conqueror, Timur, who besieged Damascus in 1400. Ibn Khaldūn cast doubt upon the viability of the venture and really wanted to stay in Egypt. His doubts were vindicated, as the young and inexperienced Faraj, concerned about a revolt in Egypt, left his army to its own devices in Syria and hurried home. Ibn Khaldūn remained at the besieged city for seven weeks, being lowered over the city wall by ropes to negotiate with Timur, in a historic series of meetings that he reported extensively in his autobiography. Timur questioned him in detail about conditions in the lands of the Maghreb. At his request, Ibn Khaldūn even wrote a long report about it. As he recognized Timur's intentions, he did not hesitate, on his return to Egypt, to compose an equally-extensive report on the history of the Tatars, together with a character study of Timur, sending them to the Merinid rulers in Fez.

Ibn Khaldūn spent the next five years in Cairo completing his autobiography and his history of the world and acting as teacher and judge. Meanwhile, he was alleged to have joined an underground party, Rijal Hawa Rijal, whose reform-oriented ideals attracted the attention of local political authorities. The elderly Ibn Khaldun was placed under arrest. He died on 17 March 1406, one month after his sixth selection for the office of the Maliki qadi (Judge).

Kitāb al-ʻIbar, (full title: Kitāb al-ʻIbar wa-Dīwān al-Mubtadaʼ wa-l-Khabar fī Taʼrīkh al-ʻArab wa-l-Barbar wa-Man ʻĀṣarahum min Dhawī ash-Shaʼn al-Akbār: "Book of Lessons, Record of Beginnings and Events in the History of the Arabs and the Berbers and Their Powerful Contemporaries"); begun as a history of the Berbers and expanded to a universal history in seven books.

Book 1; Al-Muqaddima ('The Introduction'), a socio-economic-geographical universal history of empires, and the best known of his works.

Books 2–5; World History up to the author's own time.

Books 6–7; Historiography of the Berbers and the Maghreb. Khaldun departs from the classical style of Arab historians by synthesising multiple, sometimes contradictory, sources without citations. He reproduces some errors originating probably from his 14th-century Fez source, the work Rawḍ al-Qirṭās by Ibn Abi Zar, yet Al-'Ibar remains an invaluable source of Berber history.

Concerning the discipline of sociology, he described the dichotomy of sedentary life versus nomadic life as well as the inevitable loss of power that occurs when warriors conquer a city. Al-Sakhāwī describes Kitāb al-ʿIbar as Ibn Khaldūn’s major historical work and notes that it was prefaced with a lengthy introduction addressing civilization (ʿumrān), kingship, livelihood, and the sciences. Encyclopaedia Britannica likewise highlights the Muqaddimah as his best-known work and a landmark statement of his philosophy of history. According to the Arab scholar Sati' al-Husri, the Muqaddimah may be read as a sociological work. The work is based around Ibn Khaldun's central concept of aṣabiyyah, translated as "group cohesiveness" or "solidarity". This social cohesion arises spontaneously in tribes and other small kinship groups; it can be intensified and enlarged by a religious ideology. Ibn Khaldun's analysis looks at how this cohesion carries groups to power but contains within itself the seeds – psychological, sociological, economic, political – of the group's downfall, to be replaced by a new group, dynasty or empire bound by a stronger (or at least younger and more vigorous) cohesion. Some of Ibn Khaldun's views, particularly those concerning the Zanj people of sub-Saharan Africa, have been cited as racist. According to the scholar Abdelmajid Hannoum, Ibn Khaldun's description of the distinctions between Berbers and Arabs were misinterpreted by the translator William McGuckin de Slane, who wrongly inserted a "racial ideology that sets Arabs and Berbers apart and in opposition" into his translation of part of`Ibar translated under the title Histoire des Berbères.

Ibn Khaldun's epistemology attempted to reconcile mysticism with theology by dividing science into two different categories, the religious science that regards the sciences of the Qur'an and the non-religious science. He further classified the non-religious sciences into intellectual sciences such as logic, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, etc. and auxiliary sciences such as language, literature, poetry, etc. He also suggested that possibly more divisions will appear in the future with different societies. He tried to adapt to all possible societies' cultural behavior and influence in education, economics and politics. Nonetheless, he didn't think that laws were chosen by just one leader or a small group of individual but mostly by the majority of the individuals of a society.

To Ibn Khaldun, the state was a necessity of human society to restrain injustice within the society, but the state means is force, thus itself an injustice. All societies must have a state governing them in order to establish a society. He attempted to standardize the history of societies by identifying ubiquitous phenomena present in all societies. To him, civilization was a phenomenon that will be present as long as humans exist. He characterized the fulfillment of basic needs as the beginning of civilization. At the beginning, people will look for different ways of increasing productivity of basic needs and expansion will occur. Later the society starts becoming more sedentary and focuses more on crafting, arts and the more refined characteristics. By the end of a society, it will weaken, allowing another small group of individuals to come into control. The conquering group is described as an unsatisfied group within the society itself or a group of desert bandits that constantly attack other weaker or weakened societies.

In the Muqaddimah, his most important work, he discusses an introduction of philosophy to history in a general manner, based on observable patterns within a theoretical framework of known historical events of his time. He described the beginnings, development, cultural trends and the fall of all societies, leading to the rise of a new society which would then follow the same trends in a continuous cycle. Also, he recommended the best political approaches to develop a society according to his knowledge of history. He heavily emphasized that a good society would be one in which a tradition of education is deeply rooted in its culture.

Ibn Khaldun introduced the word asabiya (solidarity, group feeling, or group consciousness), to explain tribalism. The concept of asabiya has been translated as "social cohesion", "group solidarity", or "tribalism". This social cohesion arises spontaneously in tribes and other small kinship groups.

Ibn Khaldun believed that too much bureaucracy, such as taxes and legislations, would lead to the decline of a society, since it would constrain the development of more specialized labor (increase in scholars and development of different services). He believed that bureaucrats cannot understand the world of commerce and do not possess the same motivation as a businessman.

Ibn Khaldun believes that communication between the tangible and intangible world is the basis of every religion, and the credit for its occurrence is the human spirit, as it is the mediator between God and humans. It is immortal by nature and does not perish, and has characteristics that enable it to communicate with God. However, most souls have lost their hidden ability and are connected to the sensory world only. A small number of them still maintain their full ability to communicate with God. These are the ones God chose and they became prophets, so their souls leave the sensory world to receive from God. Their souls abandon the sensory world in order to receive from God what they should convey to humans. Religions arise only from this connection. He believes that religions that rely on institutions of prediction and reconnaissance are false, but they partly contain some truth. A person's concentration on a specific thing for a long period makes him forget everything and become attached to what he focused on. Only, this focus makes him see the non-sensory world very quickly and in a very imperfect way, and these are pagan religions.

Ibn Khaldun agrees with Sufism and believes that if a person maintains his good faith and is stripped of the desire to create a new religion and strives to separate himself from the sensory world, he will be able to approach the divine essence and the ideas of scholars will appear to him clearly. But if he strives in this detachment and mysticism out of a desire to excel over others, he will not communicate with God, but with demons. Also, the human spirit is able to see some things of the future through vision, but on the condition that this spirit be completely upright and very pious and pure, otherwise the vision will come from the devils.

From other sources we know of several other works, primarily composed during the time he spent in North Africa and Al-Andalus. His first book, Lubābu l-Muhassal, a commentary on the Islamic theology of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, was written at the age of 19 under the supervision of his teacher Al-Abili in Tunis. A work on Sufism, Shifā'u l-Sā'il, was composed around 1373 in Fes, Morocco. Whilst at the court of Muhammed V, Sultan of Granada, Ibn Khaldūn composed a work on logic, ʻallaqa li-s-Sulṭān.

Ibn Khaldun's historical method had very few precedents or followers in his time. While Ibn Khaldun is known to have been a successful lecturer on jurisprudence within religious sciences, only very few of his students were aware of, and influenced by, his Muqaddimah. One such student, Al-Maqrizi, praised the Muqaddimah, although some scholars have found his praise, and that of others, to be generally empty and lacking understanding of Ibn Khaldun's methods.

Ibn Khaldun also faced primarily criticism from his contemporaries, particularly Ibn Hajar al-`Asqalani. These criticisms included accusations of inadequate historical knowledge, an inaccurate title, disorganization, and a style resembling that of the prolific Arab literature writer, Al-Jahiz. Al-Asqalani also noted that Ibn Khaldun was not well-liked in Egypt because he opposed many respected traditions, including the traditional judicial dress, and suggested that this may have contributed to the reception of Ibn Khaldun's historical works. The notable exception to this consensus was Ibn al-Azraq, a jurist who lived shortly after Ibn Khaldun and quoted heavily from the first and fourth books of the Kitab al-‘Ibar, in developing a work of mirrors for princes.

Ibn Khaldun's work found some recognition with Ottoman intellectuals in the 17th century. The first references to Ibn Khaldun in Ottoman writings appeared in the middle of the 17th century, with historians such as Kâtip Çelebi naming him as a great influence, while another Turkish Ottoman historian, Mustafa Naima, attempted to use Ibn Khaldun's cyclical theory of the rise and fall of empires to describe the Ottoman Empire. Increasing perceptions of the decline of the Ottoman Empire also caused similar ideas to appear independently of Ibn Khaldun in the 16th century, and may explain some of the influence of his works.

In Europe, Ibn Khaldun was first brought to the attention of the Western world in 1697, when a biography of him appeared in Barthélemy d'Herbelot de Molainville's Bibliothèque Orientale. However, some scholars believe that Ibn Khaldun's work may have first been introduced to Europe via Ibn Arabshah's biography of Tamerlane, translated to Latin, which covers a meeting between Ibn Khaldun and Tamerlane. According to Ibn Arabshah, during this meeting, Ibn Khaldun and Tamerlane discussed the Maghrib in depth, as well as Tamerlane's genealogy and place in history. Ibn Khaldun began gaining more attention from 1806, when Silvestre de Sacy's Chrestomathie Arabe included his biography together with a translation of parts of the Muqaddimah as the Prolegomena. In 1816, de Sacy again published a biography with a more detailed description on the Prolegomena. More details on and partial translations of the Prolegomena emerged over the years until the complete Arabic edition was published in 1858. Since then, the work of Ibn Khaldun has been extensively studied in the Western world with special interest. Reynold A. Nicholson praised Ibn Khaldun as a uniquely brilliant Muslim sociologist, but discounted Khaldun's influence. Spanish Philosopher José Ortega y Gasset viewed the conflicts of North Africa as a problem that stemmed from a lack of African thought, and praised Ibn Khaldun for making sense of the conflict by simplifying it to the relationship between the nomadic and sedentary modes of life.

British historian Arnold J. Toynbee has called Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddimah "the greatest work of its kind". Ernest Gellner, once a professor of philosophy and logic at the London School of Economics, considered Khaldun's definition of government the best in the history of political theory.

More moderate views on the scope of Ibn Khaldun's contributions have also emerged.

Arthur Laffer, for whom the Laffer curve is named, acknowledged that Ibn Khaldun's ideas, as well as others, precede his own work on that curve.

Economist Paul Krugman described Ibn Khaldun as "a 14th-century Islamic philosopher who basically invented what we would now call the social sciences".

19th century Scottish theologian and philosopher Robert Flint praised him strongly, "as a theorist of 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, and all others were unworthy of being even mentioned along with him". Ibn Khaldun's work on evolution of societies also influenced Egon Orowan, who introduced the concept of socionomy. While Ibn Khaldun's record-keeping is usually passed over in favor of recognizing his contributions to the science of history, Abderrahmane Lakhsassi wrote "No historian of the Maghreb since and particularly of the Berbers can do without his historical contribution."

Public recognition of Ibn Khaldun has increased in recent years.

In 2004, the Tunisian Community Center launched the first Ibn Khaldun Award to recognize a Tunisian/American high achiever whose work reflects Ibn Khaldun's ideas of kinship and solidarity. The Award was named after Ibn Khaldun for the convergence of his ideas with the organization's objectives and programs. In 2006, the Atlas Economic Research Foundation launched an annual essay contest for students named in Ibn Khaldun's honor. The theme of the contest is "how individuals, think tanks, universities and entrepreneurs can influence government policies to allow the free market to flourish and improve the lives of its citizens based on Islamic teachings and traditions."

In 2006, Spain commemorated the 600th anniversary of the death of Ibn Khaldun by orchestrating an exhibit titled "Encounter of Civilizations: Ibn Khaldun".

In 2007, İbn Haldun Üniversitesi has opened in Istanbul, Turkey, to commemorate his name. The university promotes a policy of trilingualism. The languages in question are English, Modern Turkish, and Arabic and its emphasis is on teaching social sciences.

In 1981 U.S. President Ronald Reagan cited Ibn Khaldun as an influence on his supply-side economic policies, also known as Reaganomics. He paraphrased Ibn Khaldun, who said that "in the beginning of the dynasty, great tax revenues were gained from small assessments," and that "at the end of the dynasty, small tax revenues were gained from large assessments." Reagan said his goal is "trying to get down to the small assessments and the great revenues."