Ibn Khaldūn, in full Walī al-Dīn ʿAbd al-Raḥmān ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Abī Bakr Muḥammad ibn al-Ḥasan Ibn Khaldūn (born May 27, 1332, Tunis [Tunisia]—died March 17, 1406, Cairo, Egypt), the greatest Arab historian, who developed one of the earliest nonreligious philosophies of history, contained in his masterpiece, the Muqaddimah (“Introduction”). He also wrote a definitive history of Muslim North Africa.
Background and early life
Ibn Khaldūn was born in Tunis in 1332; the Khaldūniyyah quarter in Tunis still stands almost unchanged and, in it, the house where he is believed to have been born.
As Ibn Khaldūn relates in his autobiography (Al-taʿrīf bi Ibn Khaldūn), the family claimed descent from Khaldūn, who was of South Arabian stock, and had come to Spain in the early years of the Arab conquest and settled in Carmona. The family subsequently moved to Sevilla (Seville), played an important part in the civil wars of the 9th century, and was long reckoned among the three leading houses of that city. In the course of the next four centuries, the Ibn Khaldūns successively held high administrative and political posts under the Umayyad, Almoravid, and Almohad dynasties; other members of the family served in the army, and several were killed at the Battle of Al-Zallāqah (1086), which temporarily halted the Christian reconquest of Spain. But the respite thus won proved short, and in 1248, just before the fall of Sevilla and Córdoba, the Ibn Khaldūns and many of their countrymen judged it prudent to cross the Straits of Gibraltar and landed at Sabtah (now Ceuta, a Spanish exclave), on the northern coast of Morocco.
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historiography: Ibn Khaldūn
The sophistication of Islamic historical thought was dramatically illustrated by the Muqaddimah (“Introduction”) of the Arab historian Ibn Khaldūn (1332–1406). This introductory volume of a universal history reveals Khaldūn’s ideas about history—something chroniclers hardly ever did. The subjects Khaldūn considered in his work...
There the refugees from Spain were of a much higher level of socio-economic status than the local North Africans, and the family was soon called to occupy the leading administrative posts in Tunis. The historian’s father also became an administrator and soldier but soon abandoned his career to devote himself to the study of theology, law, and letters. In Ibn Khaldūn’s words:
He was outstanding in his knowledge of Arabic and had an understanding of poetry in its different forms and I can well remember how the men of letters sought his opinion in matters of dispute and submitted their works to him.
In 1349, however, the Black Death struck Tunis and took away both his father and his mother.
Education and diplomatic career
Ibn Khaldūn 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 Qurʾān, 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. Striking by their absence are books on philosophy, history, geography, or other social sciences; this does not mean that he did not study these subjects—scholars know that he wrote summaries of several books by the 12th-century Arab philosopher Averroës—but it is to be presumed that Ibn Khaldūn acquired most of his very impressive knowledge in these fields after he had completed his formal education.
This came at age 20, when he was given a post at the court of Tunis, followed three years later by a secretaryship to the sultan of Morocco in Fez (Fès). By then he was married. After two years of service, however, he was suspected of participation in a rebellion and was imprisoned. Released after nearly two years and promoted by a new ruler, he again fell into disfavour, decided to leave Morocco, and crossed over to Granada, for whose Muslim ruler he had done some service in Fez and whose prime minister, the brilliant writer Ibn al-Khaṭīb, was a good friend. Ibn Khaldūn was then 32 years old.
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The following year Ibn Khaldūn was sent to Sevilla to conclude a peace treaty with Pedro I of Castile. There he saw “the monuments of my ancestors.” Pedro “treated me with the utmost generosity, expressed his satisfaction at my presence and showed awareness of the preeminence of our ancestors in Sevilla.” Pedro even offered him a post in his service, promising to restore his ancestral estates, but Ibn Khaldūn politely declined. He gladly accepted the village that the sultan of Granada bestowed on him, however, and, feeling once more secure, brought over his family, whom he had left in safety in Constantine. But, to quote him once more, “enemies and intriguers” turned the all-powerful prime minister, Ibn al-Khaṭīb, against him and raised suspicions regarding his loyalty; it can be conjectured that the task of these enemies must have been greatly facilitated by the apparent jealousy between the two most brilliant Arab intellectuals of the age. Once more, Ibn Khaldūn found it necessary to take his leave, and he returned to Africa. The following 10 years saw him change employers and employment with disconcerting rapidity and move from Bejaïa (Bougie) to Tilimsān (Tlemcen), Biskra, Fez, and once more to Granada, where he made an unsuccessful effort to save his old rival and friend, Ibn al-Khaṭīb, from being killed by order of its ruler.
During this period Ibn Khaldūn served as prime minister and in several other administrative capacities, led a punitive expedition, was robbed and stripped by nomads, and spent some time “studying and teaching.” This extreme mobility is partly explained by the instability of the times. The Almohad Empire, which had embraced the whole of North Africa and Muslim Spain, had broken down in the middle of the 13th century, and the convulsive process from which Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia were subsequently to emerge was under way; wars, rebellions, and intrigues were endemic, and no man’s life or employment was secure. But in Ibn Khaldūn’s case two additional factors might be suspected—a certain restlessness and a capacity to make enemies, which may account for his constant complaints about the “intriguers” who turned his employers against him.
The Muqaddimah: Ibn Khaldūn’s philosophy of history
In 1375, craving solitude from the exhausting business of politics, Ibn Khaldūn took the most momentous step of his life: he sought refuge with the tribe of Awlād ʿArīf, who lodged him and his family in the safety of a castle, Qalʿat ibn Salāmah, near what is now the town of Frenda, Algeria. 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:
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 Khaldūn 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 ʿilm al-ʿumrān (“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, Sāṭiʿ al-Ḥuṣrī, that in Book I of the Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldūn 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 ʿaṣabiyyah, 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 Khaldūn 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 Khaldūn’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 Khaldūn, 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 Qalʿat ibn Salāmah, Ibn Khaldūn not only completed the first draft of the Muqaddimah but he also wrote part of his massive history, Kitāb al-ʿIbār, 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 age 50, he received permission to sail to Egypt, ostensibly for the purpose of performing the pilgrimage to Mecca.
After 40 days Ibn Khaldūn 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 Mamlūk ruler of Egypt, Barqūq, 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 Quamḥiyyah college and, within five months, made him chief judge of the Mālikī rite, one of the four recognized rites of Sunnite Islam. Barqūq also successfully interceded with the ruler of Tunis to allow Ibn Khaldūn’s family to rejoin him, but the ship carrying them foundered in the port of Alexandria, drowning all on board.
Ibn Khaldūn 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 easygoing 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 Al-Ṭawr, 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 Khaldūn was forced to play a minor part in the palace revolt of 1389, but he apparently did so under duress, and Barqūq 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 forces invaded Syria, and the new sultan of Egypt, Faraj, went out to meet them, taking Ibn Khaldūn and other notables with him. Shortly thereafter, the Mamlūk army returned to Egypt, leaving Ibn Khaldūn 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 Khaldūn. The latter was thereupon lowered over the city wall by ropes and spent some seven weeks in the enemy 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 ʿasabiyyah but also an extensive written report. Ibn Khaldūn 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 Bedouin 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 Empire. 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 Bāb al-Naṣr, one of Cairo’s main gates.
Just as Ibn Khaldūn 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-Maqrīzī, 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 Khaldūn’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 Khaldūn’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 Khaldūn found the worldwide audience his incomparable genius deserved.