Abu Zayd Abdul Raḥman ibn Muḥammad ibn Khaldun al-Ḥaḍrami (1332-1406), also known only as Ibn Khaldun, was a great Arab-muslim polymath. Ibn Khaldun was a social scientist and historian, also studying the modern fields of sociology, economics and demography, being a great scholar of these areas before they came up with these nomenclatures.

The life of this great name in Islamic history is abundantly documented, due to the fact that ibn Khaldun wrote an autobiography called “at-Tarif bi-ibn Khaldun wa-Riḥlatih Gharban wa-Sharqan”, which means “Presenting Ibn Khaldun and his Journey West and East ”.

Ibn Khaldun was born in Tunis (Tunisia) in 1332, or 732 according to the Islamic calendar. Coming from an upper-class Andalusian family, he was descended from one of the Prophet’s direct disciples, Hujr ibn Adi. Ibn Khaldun’s family had moved from Al-Andalus to Tunis almost a century before his birth, after the fall of Seville in the Reconquista of 1248.

Ibn Khaldun would later receive a traditional education, typical for people of his class, learning mainly from his father, also a learned person. He memorized the Quran, learned grammar, Islamic jurisprudence, the hadiths, rhetoric, poetry and even philology. Ibn Khaldun achieved a certain proficiency in each of these areas to the point of receiving authorization to teach them (ijazah), even mentioning the names of the sages with whom he studied in his autobiography. Ibn Khaldun would continue his studies, coming to study mathematics, philosophy and logic with his teacher Ali-Abili of Tlemcen. He studied mainly the works of Averroes, Avicenna, al-Razi and al-Tusi.

At 17 he would lose his parents due to the Black Death, which hit Tunis around 1347-1348. By the age of 20 he would follow the family tradition, going on to a political career, mainly in the position of Katib al-Alamah, which consisted of writing in good calligraphy the introductory notes of official government documents.

It was around this time, perhaps a little earlier, that Ibn Khaldun wrote his first work called Lubahu I-Muhassal, a commentary on the theology of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi, under the supervision of his teacher al-Abili.

However, Ibn Khaldun was unhappy with his profession as Katib al-Alamah, that despite of being a respected post, was irrelevant politically. So he moved to Fez together with his teacher al-Abili, where he would be appointed by Sultan Abu Inas Fares I to be the writer of the royal proclamations, but Ibn Khaldun conspired against the ruler, which resulted for him nearly 2 years of prison in 1357. However, Abu Inas died, and the vizier al-Hasan ibn Umar released Ibn Khaldun, restoring him to his post before being imprisoned. Once again, he would conspire against the ruler, this time against Abu Inas’ successor, Abu Salem Ibrahim III, but with the help of the uncle of the new ruler, also named Abu Salem, who had been exiled.

Ibn Khaldun received a ministerial position after Abu Salem’s rise to power, but he was not happy yet, and that was when he decided to move to Granada. He knew he might have a chance in Granada, since he had previously helped the sultan, Muhammad V of the Nasrid Dynasty, to regain his power at court after being exiled1. Once there, Muhammad entrusted him with a diplomatic mission, having to go to the king of Castile, Pedro, the Cruel, to sign a peace treaty between Granada and Castile. Ibn Khaldun was successful in the mission he was given, to the point that even the King of Castile offered him a stay at his court, promising to return the possessions that belonged to Ibn Khaldun’s family before the Reconquista of Seville, but all this was refused.

Still in Granada, Ibn Khaldun would have problems with Muhammad V’s vizier, Ibn al-Khatib. The disagreement seems to have arisen due to ibn Khaldun’s proximity to the sultan, including the fact that Khaldun tried to turn him into an intellectual, a wise ruler, something that al-Khatib saw as foolish and also dangerous for the peace of the kingdom. It is curious to note that al-Khatib was somewhat right, since Muhammad V accused al-Khatib of having unorthodox views on philosophy, ordering him to be killed. Despite ibn Khaldun’s intercession for his rival, Ibn al-Khatib was still convicted by the sultan.

According to Mohammad A. Enan (2007), ibn Khaldun would receive an invitation from his friend Abu Abdallah, who had recovered his throne at Bougie in Algeria. So ibn Khaldun asked permission from the sultan of Granada and left for North Africa.

Ibn Khaldun arrived in Bougie when he was 32 years old, being given an important position, a kind of chamberlain (hajib). However, his career would be short-lived there, as the Emir for whom he provided services was deposed and killed in a coup. After that, Ibn Khaldun moved to Biskra (Algeria), where he would continue to offer his services to any emir or sultan who asked regarding the local tribes. Changing loyalty as needed, ibn Khaldun finally went to Constantine (Algeria), where he would begin to write his famous work “al-Muqqadimah” or “the Introduction”.

However, Ibn Khaldun needed works in order to reference his Muqqadimah, as they were not available in the place where he lived. As a result, he took the opportunity of Sultan Abu i-Abbas’s conquest of Tunisia to travel to Tunis, a city he had not visited in 27 years.

Later he would fall of the graces of Abu i-Abbas, as he had not included the traditional panegyric to the sultan in his work. Therefore, under the pretext of performing the Hajj2, Ibn Khaldun fled to Egypt. There, in 1384 he would become a teacher in the Qamhiyyah Madrasah, as well as the great Qadi of the Maliki school of jurisprudence, prominent in this region of North Africa. Due to his attempts at reform, he ended up having to resign the post a year later.

Still in 1384, he had to face a great tragedy in his life, as the ship carrying his wife and children had sunk off the coast of Alexandria. Therefore, he decided that he should now make the pilgrimage to Mecca. After his return he would spend mainly exercising intellectual functions, spending his last 5 years in Cairo finishing his autobiography and his work on world history, also serving as a teacher and judge.

It is interesting to note that a few years before his death (1406), Ibn Khaldun ended up interacting with the legendary figure of Timur. In 1400, Ibn Khaldun was convinced by the Mamluk sultan al-Nasir to travel to Damascus, where he would negotiate with the conqueror of Central Asia, Timur ibn Taragay Barlas, known in the West as Tamerlane. Khaldun’s mission was to convince the conqueror to spare Damascus, but unfortunately it was a unsuccessful: Timur sacked the city and then went to Baghdad. The following year he defeated the Ottomans in Ankara, even capturing Sultan Beyazid and taking him as a prisoner.

HIS WORKS

Ibn Khaldun was a great scholar, and as a result he ended up writing remarkable works, not only for the Islamic history.

His magnum opus is undoubtedly his al-Muqqadimah. In this book, he records the vision of the time he lived about what is called “universal history“. The Muqqadimah is considered by some experts to be the first to deal with philosophy of history3, social sciences4, sociology5, demography6, historiography7, cultural history8 and economics. Not only, but Khaldun’s work also dealt with Islamic theology, political theory and even natural sciences, such as biology and chemistry. Sometimes his work is also seen as a precursor to what became known as “social Darwinism” and also Darwinism itself.10

Going further, ibn Khaldun comes to criticize the mistakes usually made by historians of his time, as well as the difficulties that a historian faces when exercising his work. Thus, Khaldun lists seven main points:

“All records, by their very nature, are liable to errors…

  1. …Partisanship towards a creed or opinion…
  2. …Over-confidence in one’s sources…
  3. …The failure to understand what is intended…
  4. …A mistaken belief in the truth…
  5. …The inability to place an event in its real context
  6. …The common desire to gain favor of those of high ranks, by praising them, by spreading their fame…
  7. …The most important is the ignorance of the laws governing the transformation of human society.”

Ibn Khaldun’s work goes much further, also introducing the scientific method to the social sciences, as he was critical of what he called “idle superstition and uncritical acceptance of historical data”.

Muqaddimah is much more extensive than has been exposed here, but it certainly gives a basis for the genius of ibn Khaldun with the writings above. In addition, Khaldun also wrote other small works, such as the aforementioned Lubahu I-Muhassal commenting on al-Razi’s theology, also writing a work on Sufism called Shifau I-Sail.

Ibn Khaldun would die in 1406, leaving an immense legacy behind, being considered one of the most important precursors of science today, to the point that his economic theory is even compared to that of John Maynard Keynes, one of the most influential economists of all time.

NOTES

[1] The Nasrid Dynasty was the last one to rule Islamic Spain, ruling it from 1230 to 1492, when Granada was conquered by the Catholic Monarchs, Ferdinand II of Aragon and Isabella II of Castile in the famous Reconquista;

[2] Annual Islamic pilgrimage to Mecca;

[3] AKHTAR (1997);

[4] AHMED (2002);

[5] MOWLANA (2001) and ALATAS (2006);

[6] Ibid. MOWLANA (2001);

[7] GATES (1967);

[8] ABDALLA (2007);

[9] OWEISS (1988) and BOULAKIA (1971);

BIBLIOGRAPHY

STONE, Caroline. Ibn Khaldun and the Rise and Fall of Empires. AramCo World. 2006.

HOZIEN, Muhammad. Ibn Khaldun: His Life and Work. Muslim Heritage. 2010.

MOSS, Laurence S. Joseph A. Schumpeter: Historian of Economics: Perspectives on the History of Economic Thought. Routledge. 1996.

SPENGLER, Joseph J. Spengler (1964). “Economic Thought of Islam: Ibn Khaldun“, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 6(3), pp. 268-306. 1964.

BOULAKIA, Jean David C. “Ibn Khaldûn: A Fourteenth-Century Economist“. Journal of Political Economy. 1971.

AKHTAR, S. W. “The Islamic Concept of Knowledge“, Al-Tawhid: A Quarterly Journal of Islamic Thought & Culture. 1997.

AHMED, Akbar. “Ibn Khaldun’s Understanding of Civilizations and the Dilemmas of Islam and the West Today“. Middle East Journal 56 (1). 2002.

MOWLANA, Hamid. “Information in the Arab World“. Cooperation South Journal 1. 2001.

GATES, Warren E. “The Spread of Ibn Khaldun’s Ideas on Climate and Culture”. University of Pennsylvania Press, Journal of the History of Ideas, 28 (3). 1967.

ABDALLA, Mohamad. “Ibn Khaldun on the Fate of Islamic Science after the 11th Century”. Islam & Science 5 (1), p. 61-70. 2007.

OWEISS, I. M. Oweiss. “Ibn Khaldun, the Father of Economics“. Arab Civilization: Challenges and Responses. New York University Press. 1988.