Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) is a historian and senior Arab official of the Middle Ages, author of the first method in historiography as well as the first universal history in the Arabic language. Less known than Avicenna and Averroes, his personality, as well as his eventful life and his monumental work, perhaps deserve even more interest. Historian, geographer, politician, and even sociologist before his time, Ibn Khaldûn quite simply places himself as one of the greatest men of knowledge of the Middle Ages...and beyond.
Ibn Khaldoun in his time:a “romantic” life
Full name 'Abd-ar-Rahmân ibn Khaldûn Al-Hadramî, he was born in Tunis in 1332 and died in Cairo in 1406. He is therefore contemporary in the world Muslim from the Merinids of Morocco (1269-1420), the Tunisian Hafsids (1228-1574), the Nasrids of Granada (until 1492), the Egyptian Mamluks (1250-1517) or the Mongol Empire of Tamerlane (1331- 1405) which is said to have met him in Damascus in 1401. In the West, it was the Valois (1328-1498) and the beginnings of the Hundred Years War (1337-1453)…
At the cultural level, we are at the time in France of Jean Froissart, of Petrarch and Boccaccio in Italy or of Chaucer in England. In the Muslim world, it is that of the Iranian poet Hâfez de Shiraz (1320-1389), Ibn Battûta (1304-1377), the geographer Al Umarî (died in 1349) but especially the Andalusian Ibn al-Khatîb (1313- 1374), vizier of the Nasrids, who wrote a biography of Ibn Khaldoun.
The life of the historian was not easy, but served his work. We know her in part through her autobiography. Ibn Khaldoun was therefore born in Tunis to an Andalusian family of South Arabian origin, who had emigrated for several generations. He considered himself primarily Arab, but considered Andalusian civilization to be superior, even if he remained attached to Ifriqiya. He was cradled in an environment of great culture:his great-grandfather was minister of the Hafsids, his father was a scholar who educated him as such before dying of the Great Plague in 1349.
Orphaned at eighteen, he nevertheless benefited from his family network and became "Keeper of the Seal" in 1350; he was in Bougie in 1353 and spent nine years with the Mérinides in Fez (1354-1363). His life began to be agitated by political turmoil, which made him spend two years in prison (1357-1358), then an "exile" in Granada (1363-1365), which did not prevent him from continuing to train with the greatest scholars, in particular Moroccans. He nevertheless continued to be at the heart of North African rivalries, after having been chamberlain to the Sultan of Bougie in 1365; he returned to Fez between 1372 and 1374 before his great "retreat".
Indeed, like many Muslim scholars, he feels the need for an almost mystical withdrawal (khalwa ), period during which he will write most of his work. From 1374 to 1378 he was in Algeria, where he wrote his Muqqadima in a few months. , then between 1378 and 1382 he completed his work with bibliographical references and began to present it to the Hafsid sultan in 1382. Ibn Khaldoun then entered the last period of his life:he was in Egypt until his death, where he became professor of Malikite law, holds the post of qadi several times (judge) and was even sent to Tamerlane in 1401. However, despite his reputation, he still had so many problems and provoked jealousy and rivalry...He was buried in Cairo in the Sufi cemetery, reserved for scholars and men of letters .
The masterful work of Ibn Khaldoun
His major work is therefore the Muqqadima , begun in 1377 and really completed in 1402. Ibn Khaldoun says:“it is a complete universal history which gives the cause of events. In short, it encapsulates the philosophy of history…It clearly brings out the lessons to be drawn from the causes of events, as well as from the facts themselves […]”. The Muqqadima is more specifically an “introduction” to this universal history. But it was above all from the point of view of method that Ibn Khaldoun was "revolutionary" for his time:he called himself a historian, but he was also the precursor of sociology five centuries before Auguste Comte:"our present subject is a independent science, the specific object of which is human civilization and human society. The scholar also uses important sources such as Al Tabari or Al Idrîsî; he studied the Bible himself, informed himself directly and was inspired by his personal experience. His very rigorous method tries to avoid the pitfalls of historical work, of which he is perfectly aware:“lies naturally introduce themselves into historical information”.
Thus it rejects tales and legends, criticizes fanciful figures (on the number of fighters in certain battles for example), even if it does not always apply this principle to itself… In religious matters, Ibn Khaldoun is of his time, but about the fitna between Sunnis and Shiites he puts everyone back to back for an effort of objectivity, whereas he is a Sunni Malikite. On the other hand, he is much less tolerant towards non-Muslims, believing that "God is Arab", and demonstrates violent racism against blacks:"it is an inferior humanity, closer to stupid animals than to Man " ! But, on this point too, it is out of time...
Sa Muqqadima ultimately wants to be a contribution to human thought, centered around the problem of man. It places the notion of asabiyya at the center of human relations. , or esprit de corps, and opposes Bedouin civilization and urban civilization. He also affirms that monarchy is the natural system for man, and that it takes three generations for a State or a dynasty to wither away, in a cycle of nomadic tribe-sedentarisation-other tribe, etc. In his conception of a social organization controlled by a moderator, he prolongs the thought of Avicenna (11th century) or Ibn al-Athîr (13th century).
A man ahead of his time
But Ibn Khaldun was ahead of his time, first by the scope of his work, and also by "modern" ideas:thus, he speaks of evolution before Darwin, and does not hesitate to point out the relationship between humans and monkeys! He writes:"the human plane is reached from the world of the monkeys, where sagacity and perception meet, but which has not yet arrived at the stage of reflection and thought [...], the first human level comes after the world of monkeys. Moreover, like any good sociologist, Ibn Khaldoun attaches great importance to the "environment":"man is the child of his habits", and he studies social phenomena such as detribalization or tax evasion!
The work and character of Ibn Khaldoun are therefore exceptional, for their time and for ours. He is in the tradition of Averroes or Avicenna, but goes even further by the angle he chooses, the extent of his work and his rigorous method that can be described as modern. For Yves Lacoste (1966), "the work of Ibn Khaldun marks the appearance of History as a science". He announces the Renaissance that will begin in Europe a century after his death. His main contribution is ultimately his pragmatism, his practical approach to problems and his lack of dogmatism.
Read
- Ibn Khaldûn, Discourse on Universal History. Al-Muqaddima, translated by Vincent Monteil, Thesaurus, 1997 (reed.).
- Ibn Khaldûn, History of the Berbers and Muslim Dynasties of Northern Africa.
Biographies
- G. Martinez-Gros, Ibn Khaldûn and the seven lives of Islam, Actes Sud, 2006.
- A. Cheddadi, Ibn Khaldûn. The man and the theorist of civilization, Gallimard, 2006.