Asabiyya (group solidarity)

Asabiyya is the bond of descent and blood around which the members of a tribe gather, so that they support one another. Al-Rahiq al-Makhtum states that it was the foundation of the social order among the Arabs of the Jahiliyya, for whom they lived and died. ² Ibn Khaldun later made it the key to understanding the rise and fall of states. ³

The book states that the people of the Jahiliyya lived and died for tribal solidarity, and that the foundation of the social order was blood kinship and the womb. They followed the proverb "help your brother, whether he is an oppressor or oppressed", in its literal sense, without the qualification Islam introduced, that helping the oppressor means restraining him from oppression. ² It notes that the tribe was a miniature government, whose political existence rested on the unity of solidarity and on mutual interests in protecting the land and repelling aggression. ⁴ See the social condition and the political condition.

The book does not elaborate Ibn Khaldun's theory of asabiyya, nor the development of the term after Islam. These need other sources.