PhilosophersIbn Khaldoun

Ibn Khaldoun

Civilisations rise and fall with the strength of their solidarity.

Philosophy of history1332 – 1406 TunisiaHistorianThinker of society and historyMaliki judge (qadi)Statesman
Muqaddima, I, 2, 7-17 and I, 3, 1-22

Asabiyya: solidarity makes power, luxury and harshness unmake it

What it claims

A power lasts only by keeping the solidarity of those who carry it, which harshness destroys; and since kingship naturally slides towards luxury and one-man rule, every dynasty ends by falling: as a rule within three generations, about a hundred and twenty years.

Why

Power rests on the solidarity of a tight-knit group; luxury and harshness destroy it, and a more united group takes over.

Valid with an implicit premise

Why do tribes from the desert overthrow rich, well-armed empires? And why do these new masters fall in turn a few generations later? Ibn Khaldun answers with one word: asabiyya, the solidarity of a group whose members are ready to fight and die for one another. It gives power; but power leads to luxury, to the rule of one man and sometimes to harshness, which destroy it. This is not a theory of contract or of rights: it describes what holds a power together, and draws from it a lesson for governing well, mildness rather than fear. Machiavelli, more than a century later and without having read him, would also describe heirs who lose themselves in luxury.

P1Power is won and defended only through asabiyya: a group united by blood or alliance, each of whose members is ready to risk his life for the others.
P2Once in power, the ruler naturally tends to keep all the glory for himself alone, and the group settles into luxury and rest.
P3Luxury breaks solidarity and courage, generation after generation: the more a group lives in ease, the closer it is to its ruin.
P4The ruler's harshness also destroys solidarity: subjects who are punished and spied on become liars, abandon him in battle or plot against him. Good government means mildness.
P5A dynasty that has lost its solidarity can no longer repel a group more united than itself: that group overthrows it and takes its place.
P6 · implicit premiseSooner or later, such a more united group comes along.
Therefore a power lasts only by keeping the solidarity of those who carry it, which harshness destroys; and since kingship naturally slides towards luxury and one-man rule, every dynasty ends by falling: as a rule within three generations, about a hundred and twenty years.

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.
Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P6, the computer finds a case where the dynasty has lost its solidarity and can no longer defend itself, but where no one comes to attack it: it does not fall. This is the case Ibn Khaldun mentions himself ("when, by chance, no one appears to attack").
With P6, the argument is valid: luxury (P2, P3) or harshness (P4) destroy solidarity, a dynasty without solidarity can no longer defend itself (P1), and if someone attacks, it falls (P5, P6). P4 is not needed to conclude that the dynasty falls: it opens a second road to ruin, and it is the source of the lesson of mildness. P6 is implicit, and Ibn Khaldun himself qualifies it: if no one attacks, a worn-out dynasty may last longer, but it remains unable to defend itself. The figures (three generations, a hundred and twenty years) are not deduced from the premises: they are averages drawn from his observation of the dynasties of the Maghreb and the Middle East.
Analogy. A family business. The grandfather built it with his own hands, with a few friends ready for anything. The son watched him: he keeps part of his energy. The grandson inherits a prosperous firm without knowing how it was built; he lives well, distrusts his staff, and does not see coming the hungry competitor who buys him out. Ibn Khaldun calls these four figures the builder, the one who knew him, the imitator and the destroyer.

Objections

4

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

H
Historical counterexamples attacks the conclusion

Many dynasties lasted far longer than a hundred and twenty years: the Hafsids of Tunis, his own city, from 1229 to 1574; the Ottomans for six centuries; the Byzantine Empire for a thousand years. The three-generation rule does not hold.

Ibn Khaldoun replies
summary: their text is not yet in our corpus
Ibn Khaldoun
A well-established dynasty, whose power has been handed down for several generations, no longer needs strong solidarity: obedience has become like a book revealed by God, which no one thinks of contesting. It then relies on its clients, freedmen and foreign troops.
The debate goes on (our summary) So Ibn Khaldun had foreseen the case of lasting dynasties. But his answer weakens the rule: if the habit of obedience and paid soldiers can replace solidarity, sometimes for centuries, the fall "in three generations" is only a tendency, hard to put to the test. His defenders answer that he is speaking of the birth and vigour of dynasties, not only of their length. (Our summary.)
Where the debate stands (our summary)Core disagreement: is the three-generation rule a law or a tendency? Ibn Khaldun admits lasting dynasties that rest on something other than solidarity; it remains to be seen what is left of the rule then. Open point.
Machiavelli 1531 · attacks the conclusion

Simple regimes do go round in a circle: monarchy turns into tyranny, aristocracy into oligarchy, democracy into licence. But good institutions can stop the circle. By mixing the powers of the king, the nobles and the people, Lycurgus gave Sparta a regime that lasted more than eight hundred years.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1531, after the author's death (1406).
The debate goes on (our summary) Machiavelli too describes heirs who "degenerate" and think only of outdoing others in luxury: on the cycle, the two thinkers meet without having read each other. Their difference lies here: Ibn Khaldun reasons about dynasties founded by tribes and does not look for institutions able to break the cycle; Machiavelli, thinking of republics, believes a mixed regime can. (Our summary.)
Where the debate stands (our summary)Open point: no widely accepted answer. Core disagreement: can good institutions stop the cycle, or do they only delay it? Ibn Khaldun does not treat this point.
Hegel 1837 · attacks the conclusion

Seeing history as empires that rise and die without end is the oriental image of the phoenix reborn from its ashes, always the same. But spirit is not merely reborn rejuvenated: it comes out of each ruin higher. World history is not a circle, it is the progress of the consciousness of freedom.

no reply
No reply possible: objection raised in 1837, after the author's death (1406).
The debate goes on (our summary) Ibn Khaldun does not speak of a progress of humanity: for him, sciences and crafts grow with cities and vanish with them. But his cycles concern dynasties, not the whole of history, and Hegel had not read him. The debate between cyclical history and history that progresses remains open: many historians today reject both schemes. (Our summary.)
Where the debate stands (our summary)Open point: no widely accepted answer. The core disagreement sets a cyclical history against a history that progresses; Hegel does not discuss Ibn Khaldun.
M
Modern readers attacks the conclusion

The figures come from somewhere other than observation: a generation lasts forty years because the Qur'an speaks of maturity at forty, and man's natural life lasts a hundred and twenty years "in the opinion of physicians and astrologers". Yet Ibn Khaldun himself refutes astrology in the same book.

Ibn Khaldoun replies
Ibn Khaldoun
The four generations can be explained as the builder, the one who knew him personally, the one who merely imitates, and the destroyer. There could not be fewer.
The debate goes on (our summary) The core of his thesis does not rest on the stars: he bases it on what is handed down, or lost, from one generation to the next. But the figure of a hundred and twenty years does come from that tradition, and he presents it as an average "as a rule", not as an exact law. In the very passage on the four generations, he also supports this number with a hadith and with the Torah. (Our summary.)
Where the debate stands (our summary)Core disagreement: does the thesis stand without the figures drawn from tradition? Ibn Khaldun gives them as averages; his critics see in them a remnant of traditions he criticises elsewhere. Open point.