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Ibn Khaldun
(1332–1406)
MOHAMAD ABDALLA
Grith University, Australia
Wali al-Din Abd al-Rahman Ibn Muhammad
Ibn Khaldun al-Tunisi al-Hadrami, better
known as Ibn Khaldun, is generally regarded
asthegreatestMuslimhistorianandthe
father of modern social science and cultural
history. Born in Tunisia in the fourteenth
century,IbnKhaldunwasraisedinanintel-
lectuallyandpoliticallyactivefamilyand
was educated with the best Muslim Spanish
and North African scholars. His educa-
tion was in the traditional sacred sciences
including the Quran and Hadith (tradition of
Prophet Muhammad), Islamic jurisprudence,
mysticism or Susm, and the rational or
philosophical sciences such as astronomy,
metaphysics, logic, mathematics, history,
and the “art of writing scholarly works.” His
philosophical thought was aligned with the
tradition of Farabi, Avicenna, and Averroes,
rejecting the dialectical use of philosophy
by theology and regarding it useful only
in defending the faith against philosoph-
ical doubts (Alatas 2006). Ibn Khaldun’s
early training in the philosophical sciences
instilled in him the spirit of inquiry and led
him to believe that a proper understanding
of history requires the same inquiry as any
other rational eld of knowledge. He there-
fore deduced that “external” historical data
should be collected and classied and their
causes and nature ascertained.
Ibn Khaldun authored a number of books
and manuscripts but is best known for his
Muqaddimah (1377), a prolegomena or
e Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism, First Edition.
Edited by John Stone, Rutledge M. Dennis, Polly S. Rizova, Anthony D. Smith, and Xiaoshuo Hou.
© 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2016 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781118663202.wberen420
introduction to the scientic study of history
(Alatas 2006). Ibn Khaldun realized that to
understand the causes and nature of his-
torical narratives it is imperative to have
the “correct” information and to be able to
validate the accuracy of such information.
Upon investigation he found that, outside the
discipline of historiography, others treated
thesubjectin“anaccidentalfashion,”failing
to subject their historical data to empirical
methods. erefore, he sought to create a new
science to solve this problem and to “dene its
principles, method, subject matter, and end.”
Ibn Khaldun spent two years thinking about
thenewdiscipline,whichheaptlycalledthe
“science of culture” (Mahdi 2006: 50).
Ibn Khaldun completed the Muqaddimah
in 1378. It served as an introduction to his
larger empirical work on history, which he
called “e Book of the ibar,theRecordof
the Origins and Events of the Days of the
Arabs, Persians and Berbers, and of those of
their Contemporaries who were Possessors
of Great Power” (Mahdi 2006: 63). e key
word in his title is not “history” but “ibar,”
which denotes a multitude of meanings to
describe the subject matter and the manifold
aspects of the method employed, intending
to cover the whole compass of universal
history, learn from it, and interpret it (Mahdi
2006).
e signicance of Ibn Khaldun’s work can
be found in his “successful attempt to study
and understand human society by using
scientic methods of enquiry” (Abdullahi
and Salawu 2012: 24). Ibn Khaldun claimed
to have discovered a new science called ilm
al-umran al-bashari (the science of human
social organization) and ilm al-ijtimaa al-
insani (the science of human society) (Alatas
2IBN KHALDUN (1332–1406)
2006). is science was meant to allow the
scholar to determine the truth behind his-
torical claims, and to learn from history.
He sought to achieve this comprehension
of history through “comparison, theoret-
ical comprehension, and the analysis of
the nature and causes of historical events”
(Mahdi 2006: 70–71). Ibn Khaldun’s study of
history was deemed as rational and analyti-
cal, representing a departure from traditional
historiography.
In his examination of societies Ibn Khal-
dun was cognisant of a division between
humans and animals and distinguished
between them. He wanted to understand the
totality of the human experience rather than
asinglefacet.Heemphasizedtheinuence
of the environment, climate, vegetation, and
the fertility of the land on the character and
development of social institutions, and the
ways in which people earned their living.
Based on his understanding of human needs,
he emphasized the importance of the divi-
sion of labor in the production process, a
division postulated four hundred years later
by Adam Smith in his InquiryintotheNature
and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (see
Abdullahi and Salawu 2012).
Ibn Khaldun addressed racial issues in “the
principles of general sociology,” where he
discussed the sociological and philosophical
interpretation of human nature and society.
He argued that there are psychosocial or eco-
nomic factors that inuence human existence
and nature (Alatas 2006). He further argued
that intelligence and progress of nations do
not depend on racial factors but are “envi-
ronmentally and socially conditioned.” is
was a fundamental departure from the oen
biased and degrading racial causes attributed
to nonwestern nations.
e signicance of Ibn Khaldun’s work
continues to be investigated; however, a num-
ber of contemporary scholars have argued
that his sociological ideas predate those of the
nineteenth-century thinkers Auguste Comte,
Karl Marx, Ferdinand Tonnies, and Emile
Durkheim, all of whom contributed tremen-
dously to the growth of sociology in the west
and elsewhere (Abdullahi and Salawu 2012).
Ibn Khaldun’s ideas in explaining actual
events and their relationships and trends, and
in analyzing their regularity, with restraint
and objectivity, resemble those of many a
modern thinker, although the philosophical
foundations of his science are argued to
beincomparabletothoseofmodernsocial
science (Mahdi 2006).
SEE ALSO: Berbers (Amazigh); Islam; Middle
East and North Africa; Solidarity; Tribalism
REFERENCES
Abdullahi, Ali Arazeem and Bashir Salawu. 2012.
“Ibn Khaldun: A Forgotten Sociologist?” South
African Review of Sociology 43(3): 24–40.
Alatas, Syed Farid. 2006. “Ibn Khaldun and Con-
temporary Sociology.” International Sociology
21: 782–95.
Mahdi, Muhsin. 2006. Ibn Khaldun’s Philosophy of
History: A Study of the Philosophical Foundation
of the Science of Culture. Kuala Lumpur: Other
Press.
FURTHER READING
Akbar, Ahmed. 2002. “Ibn Khaldun’s Understand-
ing of Civilisations and the Dilemmas of Islam
and the West Today.” Middle East Journal 56(1):
20–45.
Caksu, Ali. 2007. “Ibn Khaldun and Hegel on
Causality in History: Aristotelian Legac y Recon-
sidered.” Asian Journal of Social Sciences 35(1):
47–83.
Dhaouadi, Mahmoud. 2005. “e Ibar: Lessons
of Ibn Khaldun’s Umran Mind.” Contemporary
Sociology 34(6): 585–91.
Rosen, Lawrence. 2005. “eorizing from Within:
Ibn Khaldun and His Political Culture.” Con-
temporary Sociology 34(6): 596–99.
Weiss, Dieter. 1995. “Ibn Khaldun on Economic
Transformation.” International Journal of Mid-
dle East Studies 27(1): 29–37.
