Ibn Khaldun and the science of human society

This lesson asks you to explain what a theorist contributed to sociology and why it matters. The Ministry's own examples name Ibn Khaldun; the museum serves his part only, through records of the man and of two terms from his book, and the class brings the other theorists and the schools of thought. ¹

Name what the theorist set out to explain, the word they chose for it, and what later readers did with it. Then ask whose view is being reported here: the theorist's own, or a later reader's.

Read what the new science is said to be about. In the record of Ibn Khaldun, he opens his introduction by saying that the art of history is a noble discipline with many benefits, which makes known the conditions of past nations, prophets and kings, and he takes as the subject of his new science al-'Umran, the necessary human association ². The record of umran gives his first argument for it. Man must associate, because the power of the individual falls short of obtaining his sustenance alone: wheat needs grinding, kneading and cooking, and tools from the smith, the carpenter and the potter, so cooperation is necessary ³. He also mentions people's need to defend themselves, and to have a restraining authority (wazi') that holds some of them back from others, because of the aggression in their natures ³. Notice that his example comes from daily work, and ask what kind of argument that is.

The records give Ibn Khaldun's own opening words, above, and the Encyclopaedia of Islam's account of what led him to the science. The article says that, starting from questions of method, he was led to what he called a new science ⁴. In his preface, it says, he criticises predecessors for lack of method and bases criticism on conformity with reality, meaning the probability of reported facts, which leads to the need to find the laws of historical change, and these he assigns to the science of umran ⁴. The article places the writing at the castle of Ibn Salama, where, it says, he worked out the Muqaddima on an original plan that came to him in retirement ⁵. These are the article's readings, and on his political career it adds that his Autobiography gives no way to know his real intentions ⁶.

Where does he stand in the history of social thought? The Mawsu'at A'lam al-Ulama' wa-l-Adaba' calls him the author of the first book on the philosophy of history and human society among the scholars of Arab-Islamic civilisation ⁷, and Yeomans counts him the first historian to develop a sociological explanation of history ⁸. The Encyclopaedia of Islam reports Brunschvig's view that he had no forerunners or successors in Arabic until the contemporary period, and that in his native Barbary he met incomprehension and hostility ^{9 10}. The record gives the positions and no verdict.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam reports that Ibn Khaldun saw differences between generations as expressions of different economic ways of life, a sentence often compared with Marx. It judges it difficult to regard him as a forerunner of materialism, because his explanations are also psychological ⁹. It adds that his well-known cyclical scheme, not original in itself, should be read inside his wider view ⁹.

Four witnesses speak in these records. Ibn Khaldun speaks in the Muqaddima, whose conclusion says he finished it in five months, in the middle of 779 AH ¹¹. The Encyclopaedia of Islam is a modern reader, and it notes that no truly critical edition of either work yet existed ⁴. Al-Sakhawi quotes al-Maqrizi's judgement that nothing like the Muqaddima had been made, together with views critical of his judgeship and his history, which he gives as others' reports ^{12 13 14}. Yeomans mentions him in a book on the buildings of Cairo ⁸.

The Encyclopaedia of Islam calls his new science essentially a system of sociology ⁹, yet he gave it another name, umran ². Does a thinker deserve the name sociologist when his own word for his science was different, and what is the strongest objection to your answer?

• Ibn Khaldun: his life from Tunis to Cairo, the judgements on it, and what he says in his own words.
• Umran: human association as the subject of his science, and his account of why people must live together.
• Asabiyya: the bond of kinship that the record says he later made the key to the rise and fall of states.

Read the records on Ibn Khaldun, umran and asabiyya. Write one sentence for each saying what it names, then one sentence on what a sociologist could do with it.