Ibn Khaldoun
Civilisations rise and fall with the strength of their solidarity.
Ibn Khaldoun (1332 – 1406, The Maghreb, al-Andalus and Egypt: Tunis, Fez, Granada, Bougie (Béjaïa), Qal'at Ibn Salama (Algeria), Cairo) : philosophy of history. Historians copy impossible reports: armies of 600,000 men, cities made of copper. To sort true from false, checking who tells the story is not enough: one must know the nature of human society, by comparing the past with what we observe today. On AskPhilosophy: 4 reconstructed arguments, 5 quotes checked word for word against the original texts, and 4 common beliefs examined; every text carries an authenticity badge (written by the author, posthumous, student notes, reported, apocryphal).
Why he matters
He is one of the first to look for laws in the history of societies: how states are born and die, why the vanquished imitate the victors, how taxes, labour and prices keep a city alive. Little read in the Arab world after his death, he was rediscovered by Ottoman historians in the 17th century, then in Europe in the 19th (French translation by de Slane, 1863-1868). In the 20th century the historian Arnold Toynbee admired him, and researchers such as the anthropologist Ernest Gellner or the historical modeller Peter Turchin took up his idea of asabiyya.
His times
Born in Tunis to a family from Seville, he lost his parents and many of his teachers to the Black Death of 1348-1349. He spent his life serving the princes of the Maghreb and al-Andalus: secretary, ambassador to the king of Castile, chamberlain, at times in prison or on the run, often sent to negotiate with Bedouin tribes. Weary, he withdrew in 1375 to the castle of Qal'at Ibn Salama (in present-day Algeria) and wrote the Muqaddima there in five months. Settled in Cairo from 1382, he was several times appointed chief Maliki judge. He lost his wife and children in a shipwreck (1384) and met Tamerlane outside besieged Damascus (1401). He died in Cairo in 1406.
Reading his texts
Ibn Khaldun corrected and enlarged the Muqaddima until his death: several stages of the text exist. We quote the Arabic of the vulgate printed at Būlāq (1857), de Slane's French translation (1863-1868), made from an earlier stage of the text, and Rosenthal's English translation (1958), which follows the last stage revised by the author. Our references follow Rosenthal's numbering (Book One, chapter, section); Būlāq's is often two sections off. A passage may be missing from one of the three versions: we say so. The English comes from a digitised text that has not been proofread.
His positions
click a row to see the evidenceA Sunni Muslim and a judge of religious law. He opens his chapter on theology with a short proof: the chain of causes goes back to "the Causer of causes", the one God. For him reason is a correct scale, but it should not be used to weigh God's oneness or the other world: on these subjects one must follow what the Prophet prescribed to believe.
Our general ideas are drawn by abstraction from what the senses perceive. For worldly things, what proves a theory true is observation, not reasoning alone. His historian's method rests on comparison with what we see.
Reason yields "certain" results within its domain, and knowing the nature of society makes it possible, he says, to sort reports "admitting of no doubts". But about what lies beyond the senses (God, the soul, the hereafter), metaphysics provides only conjectures.
Man is made of two parts, one corporeal, the other spiritual. It is the spiritual part that perceives: it perceives bodily things through the brain and the senses, and certain things by itself, without an intermediary.
Man is "a child of his customs", not of his nature: his character is shaped by his way of life (desert or city). And dynasties follow a course almost fixed in advance. But he does not deny that each person answers for his acts before the law, and scholars debate how much freedom he leaves to individuals.
God put good and evil into human nature. Religious law forbids injustice, and Ibn Khaldun shows it has a reason we can understand: injustice ruins civilisation. So the good has a real foundation, both divine and observable.
Reason is sound but limited: it must not weigh questions of faith. He refutes the philosophers' metaphysics, and recommends logic only to someone who already knows religious law well.
True happiness is the one the Prophet promised to those who obey the law. It lies beyond anything our perceptions can grasp, and is not obtained by the philosophers' demonstrations.
At birth the soul is ready to receive good as well as evil; habits shape it. But evil is "the quality closest" to man when neither good habits nor religion correct him: a power is needed to keep people from attacking one another.
Man is "political by nature": alone, he can neither feed nor defend himself. Every society needs a power that restrains people from attacking one another, and that power rests on the solidarity of a group. But good rule is mild, and respects the subjects' property.
Divine law first. But he shows that its great prohibitions have a reason: to preserve religion, life, intellect, offspring and property, without which civilisation dies. An ethics of the law, explained by its effects.