IBN KHALDUN'S CONTRIBUTION TO SOCIAL THOUGHT
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INTRODUCTION:
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Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is one of the greatest thinkers of all times. He enjoys universal fame in modern times as an original thinker, and is held to be the precursor or founder of a number of the human sciences, including the philosophy of history, sociology, psychology, politics, geography, anthropology, and economics. His original ideas and thoughts are presented in his famous Muqaddimah. Conceived as an introduction to his Universal History, it is considered today to be one of the primary works in the history of human social thought in general and one of six important monographs in sociology in particular. It is therefore, not surprising that Ibn Khaldun has been compared to such diverse authors, both ancient and modern, as for instance: Machiavelli (1469-1527), Descates (1596-1650), Montesqieu (1687-1775), Adam Smith (1723-1790), Hegel (1770-1813), Comte (1798-1857), Marx (1818-1883), and Durkheim (1858-1917).
The purpose of this wep-page is to assess the contribution of Ibn Khaldun to one of the social science disciplines, i.e., sociology. In fact, Ibn Khaldun has been called by some the "father of sociology", "the founder of sociology", and a "sociologist." These characterizations of Ibn Khaldun and his work were most the time without tangible efforts to examine in detail his original writings, hence the goal of this paper is to provide such supportive evidence. In addition, the paper will attempt to compare and contrast Ibn Khaldun ideas with those of other social thinkers. On reading Ibn Khaldun one should remember that he was living in the fourteenth century and he did not have the privilege of witnessing the social dislocation created by industrial revolution. The English citations used in this web-page are taken from the translation of the Muqaddimah by F. Rosenthal, 1958 (3 volumes), which will be referred to as: [Muq,].
Ibn Khaldun's life and century:
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The best way to introduce Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is to start with a short historical background of his life, century, work. Ibn khaldun's colorful and well-traveled life has been described in many sources (e.g., in his complete autobiography, edited by Muhammad at-Tanji, 1951; by his translator, Franz Rosenthal, in Ibn Khaldun, 1958; and most extensively in Enan, 1941). Following is a brief summary.
TO BE CONTINUED......
Ibn Khaldun's work: Muqaddimah:
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Ibn Khadun is known for his history of the world (kitab al-'Ibar) written in 1377-1383, and most particular for his long Introduction or Prolegomenon (al-Muqaddimah in Arabic). The Muqaddinah has become more famous than the rest of the other parts of his history. As Chambliss (1954) put it: "The reputation of Ibn Khaldun rests almost entirely on a single work- the Prolegomena to his Universal History" (p.293).
The entire work of Ibn Khaldun is entitled: "Book of Lessons and Archives of Early and Subsequent History, Dealing with the Political events Concerning the Arabs, Non-Arabs, Barbers and the Supreme Rulers who Were Contemporary with Them." The work is shortly referred to as "Kitab al-'Ibar" (means: book of lessons). In its final form, this huge book is divided into a Preface, an Introduction, and Books 1, 2, and 3. The Preface (Introduction) deals with the problem of history in general. Book 1 contains the new science; it was written in 1377 but underwent numerous revision and changes throughout the rest of Ibn Khaldun's life. The Preface, the Introduction, and book 1 came to be known as the"Introduction or Prolegomenon," (Muqaddimah). Book 2 contains a universal history down to Ibn Khaldun's own time; a skeleton of this book was written in Tunis between 1377 and 1382 and then extensively expanded and rewritten in Egypt (1377-1383). Book 3, the original planned history of Western Islam, was written in Tunis between 1377-1383, with some additions made in Egypt. The whole book (Kitab al-'Ibar) was published in seven volumes in Arabic (Bulaq,1867), of which the Muqaddimah constitutes volume I in 534 pages. The last two volumes are still of special values to historians as the best source for the history of northwest Africa and Berber history (Rosenthal 1958). However, the original introduction and the first book became an independent work known under the title of Muqaddimah. To all later ages, Muqaddimah was the title almost universally used (Rosenthal, 1958). And because of its focus on principles and patterns, the Muqaddimah has become more famous than the rest of the book of history and treated as an independent book.
The motive behind writing such work came from Ibn Khaldun's desire to write history and find answers to the changing that society passes through. That was strongly conditioned by his reading of historical works available in his time. He found them to be fainted with deficiencies and faults. The most significant cause of error is the "ignorance of the nature and modes of society and culture." In a carefully structured dialectical argument and through the examination of carefully chosen historical examples, Ibn Khaldun showed the need for a systematically organized body of rational knowledge about the nature and causes of historical events in general and about human society and culture-the sum of all conventionalized social habits, institutions, and art (Mahdi 1972). On other words, he felt that no one else had ever really asked, "What can we learn from history?" and he believed that he was equal to the task of finding the answer to that question. Accordingly, he began the task with high hope wishing to give a comprehensive account of his age which might serve as a model for future scholars scholars (Cheddadi, 1990), and that is how the Muqaddimah was born.
In later times his works influenced the study of politics and history by scholars in Morocco, Egypt, and Turkey. In the nineteenth century he was discovered by Western Orientalist and, through them, by a wider public that saw in him the father, or one of the fathers, of modern cultural history and social science. Rosenthal (1958) stats:
At beginning of the nineteenth century, European scholars joined with the Turks in studying Ibn Khaldun. Many ideas, discussed in the European West long after Ibn Khaldun's time, were found, amazingly enough, not to be as new as had been thought, but to have been known, in their rudiments at least, to the northwest African of the fourteenth century who founded a ‘new science' in his Muqaddimah ( p.1xvii).
TO BE CONTINUED..........!!!
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