The Appraised Gem

A primitive society ( umran badawi ) is the simplest of societies. It is characterized by groups of people of the same extended family, living off the land in nomadic or simple agricultural existence. They typically work hard using the simplest of resources and tools to just survive. Their economy is simple and restricted, often based on barter. Their food is plain. Their characters are strong, upright, and well-rounded. Their skills are broad, deep, and practical, allowing them to survive in the toughest of environments.  There is less possibility for them to be engaged in vice as vice is often detrimental to their subsistent existence. Even if they wish to engage in vices, they usually do not get the opportunities to do so. In contrast, they are more likely to be guided to good moral living if someone preaches that to them as it directly benefits their way of life.  Social cohesion in primitive societies is primarily through natural kinship and affinity to one's relations. T...

For Ibn Khaldun, culture was the interplay between the nature of man and his social development. In biology, a "culture" is often referred to as the growth of some microorganism in a petri dish. Thus culture is developed when land is populated and cultivated. As society develops its culture grows. Ibn Khaldun believed that the need to be social is a natural physical need of people as only with the cooperation of others can they survive. With others, they can secure their food supply and can defend themselves. Such primitive societies are formed with the instinct to survive. Members are wary of not doing anything wrong as their survival depends on doing the right thing.  As the primitive society grows, it becomes opulent and its members move from survival mode to being complacent, developing negative characteristics like greed and violence. Soon, they start to wrongfully acquire the property of others violently leading to anarchy. A powerful leader emerges to establish law and...

According to Ibn Khaldun, history has two forms, external and internal. For the most part, history before him was narrated as an external history in the form of a chronology of reports. There were important exceptions to this, most notably the accounts in the Quran, which always have parables and analysis for our guidance narrated with the history. Such internal history, in which there is an analytical study of events, was what Ibn Khaldun was interested in. Thus, he undertook the task of writing the Book of Ibaar (wise lessons from history). He writes in his preface about his theory of history or historiography.  He describes how he developed the solution to the problem of scrutinizing the historical accounts based on their veracity. The traditional method that Islamic historical narrations used was to study the authority of the chain of narrators of a historical report critically which Ibn Khaldun supplemented with a new science he developed -- the Science of Culture -- to valida...

Ibn Khaldun was the first major Muslim philosopher after Ibn Rushd. After Ibn Rushd's refutation by Al Ghazali, philosophy suffered a big setback in the Muslim World. The audience of Ibn Khaldun's writing is people from all walks of life who can benefit from his history and its interpretation. At the risk of being labeled as a philosopher, Ibn Khaldun wrote for both the masses ( aam ) who followed Islam without developing an understanding of it, as well as the initiated ( khaas ) who followed Islam while trying to understand it through reasoning. This is reflected in the writing style of Al Muqaddimmah as well as Kitaab Al Abaar. As Ibn Khaldun explained the narrative to the two groups, he writes for them in parallel, transmitting the knowledge simultaneously to the masses and the selected few. Whereas the masses got exoteric information that was useful for them. Those who were able to understand were delivered with esoteric insights into his philosophy which made sense to them...

Ibn Khaldun believed that the Islamic community was divided between the few ( khaas ) and the many ( aam ) among the believers. The aam made up the general Muslim population who followed the religious law without using their reason. Whereas the khaas were those in the minority who followed the religious law unquestioning, but also used their reasoning to understand it.  The use of reasoning is limited in the religious sciences, where most of it is accepted directly from divine sources to be intrinsically the truth. Nevertheless, with the development of jurisprudence limited reasoning became part of the religious sciences, e.g. Hanafi jurisprudence makes heavy use of reason, as does the process of analogical reasoning and dialectical reasoning which are part of the Islamic sciences. It is important to keep the role of reasoning limited to its purpose and not give free reign when it comes to Islamic sciences. Ibn Khaldun calls the khaas members of the community philosophers as they u...

Ibn Khaldun was interested in understanding the nature of prophethood, since it was essential to understand Muslim society as the Prophet (SWAS) played a major role in its formation. Furthermore, he wanted to examine the essential meaning of how prophets are different from other humans. In order to do so, he investigated the nature and source of prophetic knowledge as well as the nature and source of the powers which allow them to perform miracles, influence the masses to believe and follow them.  He believed that prophethood is a human phenomenon. In fact, prophets are extremely rare humans of the highest form who live upright lives prior to and during their mission. They are extremely rare individuals who possess special, rarely attainable powers from birth. Yet, their knowledge, purpose, actions, and powers are human despite the fact that ordinary humans cannot learn to become a prophet. According to Ibn Khaldun, there are four avenues of knowledge in humans. The first is the or...

An important distinction among the sciences in Ibn Khaldun's time was that between the natural (tabbiyya) sciences and the transmitted (naqaliyya) sciences. The former were also known as the philosophic sciences which were those that man progressed in through imagination, induction and deduction. They involved creating a mental model of reality to explain phenomena in the real world. In his era, logic, mathematics, physics and metaphysics were considered part of these rational sciences.  In the philosophy or history that Ibn Khaldun created, he used observation of historical events to create insights through which he induced broad generalizations, i.e. about how many generations it takes for a nation to rise and fall. He also used deductive logic for predicting the course of history, Thus, the sociology that he introduced was strictly a tabbiyya / philosophic science. In contrast, the other main branch of knowledge, naqqaliyya was the sacred knowledge of the deen. It covered inform...

It is interesting that Ibn Khaldun does not call his book of history Kitaab at Tareekh, rather he calls it Kitaab al Ibar. Ibar is the plural of ibra (or ibrat in Urdu), which roughly translates as "admonition", "lesson", "inference" or "wisdom". This reflects Ibn Khaldun's perspective of history. Rather than considering history just as annals of chronological records as was done previously, he adopted a Quranic perspective with respect to historical events. The Quran is full of ibar, which the believers are supposed to recognize and learn form. Everything in the Quran is a ayat (sign) of Allah that requires to be noticed, pondered on and teach us something important. Thus, Ibn Khaldun naturally extrapolated the concept of ibar and applied it to all of history so that wisdom might be inferred from recorded events of the past. With this mindset, Ibn Khaldun laid the foundation of the philosophy of history and developed a new historiography - t...

Ibn Khaldun would have become famous for writing the world history which was his life mission had he not written its introduction, Al Muqaddimah. Instead, the world celebrates him today for the original ideas he put forward in Al Muqaddimah. Ibn Khaldun saw history more than a chronological description of past events. Rather, he developed a philosophy of history, in which he studied the socio-economic context to analyze the historical narrative to draw conclusions from them. He was thus able to develop principles from past events and form educated postulations about the future. He gave the world the idea of Al Umran which can roughly be translated as “civilization”, "culture" or “social community”. The European social scientists who rediscovered his work in the mid 19th century have called him the first sociologist. According to him, savage tribes organize themselves based on tribal/ethnic affinity. This motivation he calls Al Assabiyya (nationalism) which propels the people ...

At 52 years of age, Ibn Khaldun was dazzled by the magnitude, population, hustle and bustle of Cairo. It was nothing like the small towns he had witnessed in North Africa. It was the center of the Arab world and a magnet for scholars and students. His fame had preceded him as the intellectual and scholarly circles rated his Al Muqaddimah highly for its eloquently expressed original thought on social philosophy. He was appointed as a Professor of Maliki Fiqh in an institution of Islamic learning. Students used to flock around him to learn as teaching came naturally to him. They were impressed by his knowledge, research, style, logic and fluency. He was paid well and lived in relative luxury doing what he loved to do.  Eventually, the Sultan appointed him as a Maliki Chief Judge, even though he did not  want the position. Throughout the rest of his life, he was appointed and dismissed many times to the powerful position of Chief Judge of Egypt. As a foreigner many Egyp...

With time, Ibn Khaldun's political maneuverings as a Minister resulted in him constantly changing patronage of rulers in Tunis, Fez, Algiers and Grenada. As his career advanced, he attracted much jealousy, intrigue and enmity. For 25 years, he was constantly on the move, always dodging danger, starting one adventure after another. At age 42, he felt weary to continue his political career. He longed for quiet solitude to study and research at leisure. Nevertheless, he found this excessively elusive as he was dragged into conflict time and again. He decided to retire near Tunis, his birthplace in a remote rural location. He was extremely productive in his solitude and wrote the first edition of his magnus opus - the Prolegomenon (Al Muqaddimah) in just 5 months. It was an introduction to his work which in itself become his claim to fame. Ibn Khaldun initially wanted to write about the history of the Maghreb and its peoples and then he expanded the scope to write a general history cov...

As an opportunist, Ibn Khaldun believed that the ends justified the means. He quickly learnt to navigate the real politic of the fourteenth century Maghreb. As Secretary, Chamberlain and later Chief Justice he moved from court to court and kingdom to kingdom.  Ambition made Ibn Khaldun ride the vicissitudes of North African power struggles, so much so that he spent a lifetime discovering the dynamics of the rise and fall of nations. To do this, he personally underwent a roller coaster ride experiencing success and failure in his attempt to always side with the victorious North African monarchs. As a man of letters he wrote extensively throughout his life. He was well versed in both poetry and prose so much so that as Secretary he introduced a new form of correspondence. The ease of rhetoric with which he could explain almost anything in writing facilitated the preservation and transmission of his ideas to our times. His writings are influenced by his Islamic scholarship. At times, ...

Ibn Khaldun has contributed tremendously in the seminal ideas which form the foundations of the theory of history, sociology and economics. Although, the East has largely forgotten his contributions, the West is actively learning from his profound insights. He was born in a noble Andalusian family of Hadramawt (Yemeni) genealogy, with a family tradition in Islamic scholarship. His ancestors fled to Tunis before the Castilian Christians overran Banu Khaldun’s ancestral Seville.  The fall of Almohades left North Africa divided into petty states which constantly tried to overrun each other with political intrigue and rivalry. Some of these rulers were patrons of Islamic scholarship. Thus erudite Banu Khaldun moved to Tunis under the patronage of its benevolent rulers. Ibn Khaldun benefited from classical Islamic education in Tunis, memorizing the Quran and excelling in other religious/linguistic sciences with the help of many Andalusian scholars who had also settled in Tunis. The Grea...