The Islamic world · 1332–1406
Ibn Khaldūn
North African historian and judge, founder of a science of society
Dynasties rise and fall in cycles driven by ʿaṣabiyya, group solidarity, which is strong among hardy desert peoples and decays in luxurious cities. History needs a science of human society to judge which reports are even possible.
Life and thought
Ibn Khaldūn was born in Tunis in 1332 into a family of Andalusian origin. He spent his youth and middle years in the dangerous politics of North African and Granadan courts, as secretary, envoy and minister, several times imprisoned or forced to flee. In 1375 he withdrew to a castle in present-day Algeria and wrote the Muqaddimah, the “Introduction” to his universal history. He spent his last decades in Cairo as a judge and teacher, met the conqueror Timur outside Damascus in 1401, and died in 1406.
He began from a historian’s problem: chronicles repeat impossible reports because their authors do not know how societies work. So he proposed a science of human society. Its key is ʿaṣabiyya, group solidarity. Hardy nomadic peoples have it strongly; it lets them conquer and found dynasties. But in the cities, wealth and luxury dissolve it, and after about three generations the dynasty falls to a group with fresher solidarity. Modern sociologists and economists have read him as a forerunner.