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The selected fragment is from Ibn Khaldûn's The Muqaddimah. He wrote it between 1375 and 1377 in a secluded village called Qal'at ibn Salâmah while under the protection of the Awlad ‘Arif tribe. The village is near Frenda, a city in northern Algeria. If Stephen Dale (Reference Dale2006) is correct in stating that Ibn Khaldûn is the first theorist of human organization, Qal'at ibn Salâmah will be heralded one day as the birth place of the social sciences.
This might strike one as an exaggeration. For one thing, the style of The Muqaddimah is very distant from the works of contemporary social scientists. The style is typical of Islamic historiography and scholarship at the time. However, the substance of The Muqaddimah is no less than a comprehensive scientific theory of human organization and its development. Ibn Khaldûn called his theory ‘‘ilm al-’umrân’ – i.e., ‘science of civilization’, which is arguably the first social science theory.
1. The life of Ibn Khaldûn
Ibn Khaldûn's full name was Abū Zayd Abdu al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldûn al-Hadrami. The Khaldûn family is believed to have migrated from Yemen to Spain with the Muslim conquest in the eighth century. However, his family, which was prominent in political and intellectual life in Muslim Spain, moved to Tunis around 1248, after the fall of Seville as a result of the Reconquista. Ibn Khaldûn was born in Tunis in 1332. Given his family's history of high learning and political prominence, and his father's interest in scholarship, he received an excellent education in Islamic studies, philosophy, literature, natural sciences, and the Arabic language. Ibn Khaldûn was ambitious and sought high political offices, giving his loyalty to diverse and competing rulers in Fez, Granada, wider North Africa, and back to his native Tunis in 1378. In the next five years in Tunis he finished his seven-book history of the world, Kitab al-‘Ibar (‘Book of Lessons’), of which The Muqaddimah is the first book.
Ibn Khaldûn experienced personal tragedy, imprisonment, and insurmountable political intrigues during his life time. He lost both of his parents at age 17 to the Great Plague that swept Europe and North Africa. He lost all of the rest of his family in a shipwreck near Alexandria on their trip from Tunis to join him in Cairo. The diverse masters he served failed to rise to the demands of their turbulent times and challenges. Nonetheless, he seemed to have been irresistibly drawn to the uncertain life of a political operator. He served as a diplomat charged with making peace with King Pedro I of Castile, known as ‘Pedro the Cruel’, in Seville, where Pedro offered to return his family's possession if he joined Pedro's court. Later, he also served as a diplomat for different rulers to woo the support of diverse Berber tribes in North Africa. When he was 50 years old, he fled from the political turmoil of Tunis to live the rest of his life in the more stable Cairo, where he died in 1406. Cairo at the time was the Mecca of Arabic/Islamic learning and scholarship and was experiencing economic prosperity under the Mameluke dynasty. Nonetheless, he continued to live a precarious life, being promoted and demoted constantly, depending on palace intrigues.
Ibn Khaldûn achieved great fame in his life not only as a scholar, but also as a political advisor, statesman, administrator of colleges, and the Chief Maliki Judge of Egypt.Footnote 1 He was so renowned that Tamerlane demanded to meet him while besieging Damascus in early 1401. Tamerlane wanted to negotiate with him the surrender of the city, but he also wanted to recruit him to Tamerlane's court in preparation for carrying out his ambition of invading North Africa. Thus, Ibn Khaldûn, almost 70 years old, was lowered by ropes in the middle of the night along the citadel walls of Damascus to begin an encounter with Tamerlane that lasted for about seven weeks. Ibn Khaldûn recorded this encounter in vivid detail in his autobiography (Ibn Khaldûn, Reference Khaldûn and Walter1952).
2. Ibn Khaldûn: the first social scientist
The English translation of Ibn Khaldûn's The Muqaddimah, literally ‘Prolegomena’ (Ibn Khaldûn, Reference Khaldûn and Rosenthal1967), consists of three volumes. All three volumes make up the first book of the seven-book-long Kitab al-‘Ibar. The Muqaddimah is the most famous of the seven books in which Ibn Khaldûn expounds his methodology of studying history and his theory of human cooperation and development.
It is unfortunate that The Muqaddimah is most cited and most known for Ibn Khaldûn's particular theory of historical change, namely, the cyclical theory of rise and decline of dynasties.Footnote 2 It is unfortunate because, as Dale (Reference Dale2006) shows, The Muqaddimah actually advocates a new methodology, viz. the scientific study of human organization, which had never been attempted before, or at least had never been attempted with the same systematic rigor.
According to the new methodology that Ibn Khaldûn calls the ‘science of civilization’, he weaves the roles of geography, resources, human psychology, division of labor, and the nature of political organization into a unified and coherent framework for the study of any human organization. As such, Ibn Khaldûn's method would meet the criterion of Aristotle of what is ‘science’. Namely, for a theory to be scientific it must expound universal truths, and not merely particular truths limited to a particular society, and such truths must not be the result of intervening supernatural forces or designs.
In this regard, Ibn Khaldûn, who closely studied the rationalist tradition in Islamic philosophy that extends back to Aristotle and the neo-Platonists, has applied the scientific method to the study of human organization. So, Ibn Khaldûn broke away from traditional Islamic and non-Islamic historiographies, including the Greek ones. Concerning Islamic historiography, insofar as it was an application of the scientific-rationalist tradition in Islamic scholarship, it emphasized that the individual needs to live as a part of society. So, human organization, to be effective, must be regulated by institutions. However, Islamic historiography generally used this line of rationalist thinking to establish the necessity of prophecy. Namely, prophecy is essential in order to account for the origin of the needed institutions.
Ibn Khaldûn broke away from the last thesis of traditional Islamic historiography. He established that human reason can arrive at such institutions. Actual historical societies can employ the required institutions and function without revelation from supernatural sources. To be clear, Ibn Khaldûn still believed in God and supernatural forces – as the translator, Franz Rosenthal, argues (Ibn Khaldûn, Reference Khaldûn and Rosenthal1967, vol. 1, pp. lxxii–lxxiii). But Ibn Khaldûn relegated the influence of the supernatural to non-systematic events that lie outside the major thrust of human history. That is, the interventions by the supernatural are infrequent and, hence, inconsequential to the processes and regularities of the development of civilization. So, the subject matter, i.e., human organization, can be analysed according to principles that are the product of human action – and such principles are universal enough to establish a science of civilization.
In the sense of being the first social scientist, Dale also calls him ‘the first Annalist historian’, following the French Annales school of historiography (Burke, Reference Peter1991), of which Fernand Braudel is the most prominent representative. In their scientific study of history, the followers of the Annales school de-emphasized events, such as wars and palace intrigues, in favour of the analysis of the material basis of everyday life, such as technology, resources, geography, division of labour, world outlook (‘mentality’), and customs. Such a methodology presents all human histories as subject to the same structure or universal truths.
Ibn Khaldûn seems to have advanced a similar structuralist theory of history, where the key concept is ‘civilization’, or what Ibn Khaldûn calls ‘umrân (literally, ‘building up’ and ‘cultivation’). Ibn Khaldûn was ever fascinated with the rise of large sedentary settlements from much smaller bands of human organization. While he lamented the loss of the virtues of nomadic and tribal human organization, he recognized cities as the inevitable development of human organization. He observed that the prosperity of a settlement is proportional to the population it contains insofar as they cooperate for the common good. And such a common good is maintained insofar as group solidarity, ‘asabiyah, is effective. The greater the number of people, the more elaborate is the civilization, and thus the more prosperous is the settlement. As numbers decrease, it ushers the decline of civilization.Footnote 3
If Ibn Khaldûn is the first Annalist, he anticipated Giambattista Vico (Reference Giambattista, Bergin and Fisch1968), who advocated the application of the scientific method to the study of history. Vico's thesis influenced, among others, the French Enlightenment thinkers surrounding the Encyclopédie, such as Montesquieu, Rousseau, and Voltaire. These thinkers wanted to expunge superstitions from the course of study of human events. Vico's thesis also echoes the major thrust of the Scottish Enlightenment, of whom among its ranks counted Francis Hutcheson and Adam Smith. These thinkers wanted to apply the anthropological method for the study of the individual, human organization, and social order (Broadie, Reference Alexander2003).Footnote 4
Once the supernatural was relegated to the sidelines of the flow of human history, one has to use reason for the analysis of historical change. So, Ibn Khaldûn is ‘the last Greek’ in the metaphoric sense of the upholder of rationalist analysis applied to the study of human organization. Such an Aristotelian streak runs deep in Arabic/Islamic philosophers such as al-Farabi, Ibn Rush (latinized Averroès), and Ibn Sina (latinized Avicenna), and even historians who can be see as forerunners of Ibn Khaldûn, such as the prominent al-Mas'ûdî (see Muhsin, Reference Mahdi, Allen and 1957).
However, Ibn Khaldûn was the first to make the bold move of applying the rationalist tradition in Greek–Islamic philosophy to the study of human organization and its development. He expunged fairy tales and supernatural designs from the investigation of the laws that govern polities and their development. He made humans the subjects of scientific theory, and thus not different from other subjects such as stars, rocks, plants, and nonhuman animals. And he offered a comprehensive account that combines many elements recognized today as separate disciplines of the social sciences. So, Qal'at ibn Salâmah will also be heralded one day as the birth place of a unified, trans-disciplinary theory of human organization.Footnote 5
3. The selected fragment
The selected fragment comes from the second of three translated volumes of Ibn Khaldûn's The Muqaddimah. In the selected fragment, Ibn Khaldûn discusses the necessary condition of civilization, viz., the protection of property rights.Footnote 6
Ibn Khaldûn's account of property rights seems to resemble the stationary bandit theory of Mancur Olson (Reference Mancur and Zeckhauser1991, Reference Mancur1993; see also McGuire and Olson, Reference McGuire and Mancur1996). Olson views efficient institutions as the outcome of the will of a rational dictator or, what I call, ‘political entrepreneur’. Olson starts his theory with a story about a roving bandit who makes a living by raiding and robbing other agents. However, the roving bandit might find it more beneficial to settle and become stationary. Once we have a stationary bandit, he or she must by definition have established a monopoly power to tax over a given jurisdiction. Out of self-interest, the stationary bandit is most interested in assuring the prosperity of the subjects in his or her jurisdiction. The prosperity of the subjects entails the ruler's prosperity.
So, according to what seems like a ‘political invisible hand’, the political entrepreneur imposes on him or herself a constitution that respects the property rights of the subjects within his or her realm. Such a constitution encourages the subjects to invest capital and improve land, leading to economic growth. The political entrepreneur can then tax the productive agents – according to a rate which was previously announced – and increase his or her income above and beyond what he or she would have attained through capricious raids.
Put differently, the best way for the rational political entrepreneur to maximize his or her revenue is through the protection of the property rights of the subjects. For the political entrepreneur to prosper, the subjects must be assured justice.Footnote 7 This is basically the argument of Ibn Khaldûn.
[41] Injustice brings about the ruin of civilization.Footnote 8
It should be known that attacks on people's property remove the incentive to acquire and gain property. People, then, become of the opinion that the purpose and ultimate destiny of (acquiring property) is to have it taken away from them. When the incentive to acquire and obtain property is gone, people no longer make efforts to acquire any. The extent and degree to which property rights are infringed upon determines the extent and degree to which the efforts of the subjects to acquire property slacken. When attacks (on [103/104] property) are extensive and general, extending to all means of making a livelihood, business inactivity, too, becomes (general), because the general extent of (such attacks upon property) means a general destruction of the incentive (to do business). If the attacks upon property are but light, the stoppage of gainful activity is correspondingly slight. Civilization and its well-being as well as business prosperity depend on productivity and people's efforts in all directions in their own interest and profit. When people no longer do business in order to make a living, and when they cease all gainful activity, the business of civilization slumps, and everything decays. People scatter everywhere in search of sustenance, to places outside the jurisdiction of their present government. The population of the particular region becomes light. The settlements there become empty. The cities lie in ruins. The disintegration of (civilization) causes the disintegration of the status of dynasty and ruler, because (their peculiar status) constitutes the form of civilization and the form necessarily decays when its matter (in this case, civilization) decays.
One may compare (here) the story which al-Mas'ûdî tells in connection with the history of the Persians. In the days of King Bahrâm b. Bahrâm, the Môbedhân, the chief religious dignitary among the Persians, expressed to the King his disapproval of the latter's injustice and neglect for the consequences that his injustice must bring upon the dynasty. He did this through a parable, which he placed in the mouth of an owl. The King, hearing the cry of (an owl), asked (the Môbedhân) whether he understood what it was saying. (The Môbedhân) replied: ‘A male owl wanted to marry a female owl. The female owl, as a condition prior to consent, asked the male owl for the gift of twenty villages ruined in the days of Bahrâm, that she might hoot in them [104/105]. (The male owl) accepted her condition and said to her: ‘If the King continues to rule, I shall give you a thousand ruined villages. This is of all wishes the easiest to fulfill.’’
The King was stirred out of his negligence by that story. He had a private (talk) with the Môbedhân and asked him what he had in mind. (The Môbedhân) replied: ‘O King, the might of royal authority materializes only through the religious law, obedience toward God, and compliance with His commands and prohibitions. The religious law persists only through royal authority. Mighty royal authority is achieved only through men. Men persist only with the help of property. The only way to property is through cultivation. The only way to cultivation is through justice. Justice is a balance set up among mankind. The Lord set it up and appointed an overseer of it, and that is the ruler. You, O King, went after the farms and took them away from their owners and cultivators. They are the people who pay the land tax and from whom one gets money. You gave their farms as fiefs to (your) entourage and servants and to sluggards. They did not cultivate (the farms) and did not heed the consequences. (They did not look for the things) that would be good for the farms. They were leniently treated with regard to the land tax (and were not asked to pay it), because they were close to the king. The remaining landowners who did pay the land tax and cultivated their farms had to carry an unjust burden. Therefore, they left their farms and abandoned their settlements. They took refuge in farms that were far away or difficult (of access), and lived on them. Thus, cultivation slackened, and the farms were ruined. There was little money, and soldiers and subjects perished. Neighboring rulers coveted the Persian realm, because they were aware of the fact that the basic materials that alone maintain the foundation of a realm had been cut off.’
When the King heard that, he proceeded to look into (the affairs of) his realm. The farms were taken away from the intimates of the ruler and restored to their owners. They were again treated, as they had formerly been treated. They [105/106] began again to cultivate (their farms). Those who had been weak gained in strength. The land was cultivated, and the country became prosperous. There was much money for the collectors of the land tax. The army was strengthened. The enemies’ sources of (strength) were cut off. The frontier garrisons were manned. The ruler proceeded to take personal charge of his affairs. His days were prosperous, and his realm was well organized.
The lesson this (story) teaches is that injustice ruins civilization. The ruin (of civilization) has as its consequence the complete destruction of the dynasty. In this connection, one should disregard the fact that dynasties (centered) in great cities often infringe upon justice and still are not ruined. It should be known that this is the result of a relationship that exists between such infringements and the situation of the urban population. When a city is large and densely populated and unlimited in the variety of its conditions, the loss it suffers from hostile acts and injustice is small, because such losses take place gradually. Because of the great variety of conditions and the manifold productivity of a particular city, any loss may remain concealed. Its consequences will become visible only after some time. Thus, the dynasty which committed the infringements (of justice) may be replaced before the city is ruined. Another dynasty may make its appearance and restore the city with the help of its wealth. Thus, the (previous) loss which had remained concealed, is made up and is scarcely noticed. This, however, happens only rarely. The proven fact is that civilization inevitably suffers losses through injustice and hostile acts, as we have mentioned, and it is the dynasty that suffers therefrom.
Injustice should not be understood to imply only the confiscation of money or other property from the owners, without compensation and without cause. It is commonly understood in that way, but it is something more general than that. Whoever takes someone's property, or uses him [106/107] for forced labor, or presses an unjustified claim against him, or imposes upon him a duty not required by the religious law, does an injustice to that particular person. People who collect unjustified taxes commit an injustice. Those who infringe upon property (rights) commit an injustice. Those who take away property commit an injustice. Those who deny people their rights commit an injustice. Those who, in general, take property by force, commit an injustice. It is the dynasty that suffers from all these acts, in as much as civilization, which is the substance of the dynasty, is ruined when people have lost all incentive.
It should be known that this is what the Lawgiver (Muhammad) actually had in mind when he forbade injustice. He meant the resulting destruction and ruin of civilization, which ultimately permits the eradication of the human species. This is what the religious law quite generally and wisely aims at in emphasizing five things as necessary: the preservation of (1) the religion, (2) the soul (life), (3) the intellect, (4) progeny, and (5) property.
Since, as we have seen, injustice calls for the eradication of the (human) species by leading to the ruin of civilization, it contains in itself a good reason for being prohibited. Consequently, it is important that it be forbidden. There is ample evidence for that in the Qur'ân and the Sunnah. It is much too ample to have it accurately or fully presented here.
If injustice were to be committed by every individual, the list of deterring punishments that would then have been given for it (in the religious law) would be as large as that given for the other (crimes) which lead to the destruction of the human species and which everybody is capable of committing, such as adultery, murder, and drunkenness. However, injustice can be committed only by persons who cannot be touched, only by persons who have power and authority. Therefore, injustice has been very much censured, and repeated [107/108] threats against it have been expressed in the hope that perhaps the persons who are able to commit injustice will find a restraining influence in themselves.
‘Your Lord does not do injustice to His servants.’
It should not be objected that punishment for highway robbery is provided for in the religious law, and that (highway robbery) is an injustice that can be committed only by someone who has the ability to commit it, in as much as the highway robber, when he commits the robbery, must have the ability to do it. The reply to that would be twofold:
First, it may be said that the punishment laid down for (highway robbery) is for crimes against life or property that (the highway robber) commits. This is an opinion held by many. The (punishment applies) only after one has gained power over him and brought him to account for his crime. Highway robbery itself has no fixed legal punishment.
Second, it may be said that the highway robber cannot be described as having the ability (to commit injustice), because we understand by ability to commit injustice that the person has a free hand and there is no rival power, which means that he has (a power to) bring about (complete) ruin. The ability of the highway robber is merely an ability to cause fear. (This fear) then enables the highway robber to take away the property of others. Everyone may defend himself against it, according to both the religious and the political law. It is not, then, an ability that could bring about (complete) ruin.
God has power to do what He wishes.
One of the greatest injustices and one which contributes most to the destruction of civilization is the unjustified imposition [108/109] of tasks and the use of the subjects for forced labor. This is so because labor belongs to the things that constitute capital, as we shall explain in the chapter on sustenance. Gain and sustenance represent the value realized from labor among civilized people. All their efforts and all their labors are (means) for them (to acquire) capital and (to make a) profit. They have no other way to make a profit except (through labor). Subjects employed in cultural enterprises gain their livelihood and profit from such activities. Now, if they are obliged to work outside their own field and are used for forced labor unrelated to their (ordinary ways of) making a living, they no longer have any profit and are thus deprived of the price of their labor, which is their capital (asset). They suffer, and a good deal of their livelihood is gone, or even all of it. If this occurs repeatedly, all incentive to cultural enterprise is destroyed, and they cease utterly to make an effort. This leads to the destruction and ruin of civilization.
‘God gives sustenance to whomever He wishes to give it, without accounting.’
An injustice even greater and more destructive of civilization and the dynasty than (the one just mentioned) is the appropriation of people's property by buying their possessions as cheaply as possible and then reselling the merchandise to them at the highest possible prices by means of forced sales and purchases. Often, people have to accept (high) prices with the privilege of later payment. They console (themselves) for the loss they suffer (at the moment) with the hope that the market will fluctuate in favor of the merchandise that had been sold to them at such a high price, and that their loss will be canceled later on. But then, they are required to make payment at once, and they are forced to sell the merchandise at the lowest possible price. The loss involved in the two transactions affects their capital [109/110].
This (situation) affects all kinds of merchants, those resident in town and those who import merchandise from elsewhere. (It also affects) the peddlers and shopkeepers who deal in food and fruit, as well as the craftsmen who deal in the instruments and implements that are in general use. The loss affects all professions and classes quite generally. This goes on from hour to hour. It causes (all) capital funds to dwindle. The only possibility that remains is for the merchants to go out of business, because their capital is gone, as it can no longer be restored by the profits. Merchants who come from elsewhere for the purchase and sale of merchandise are slow to come, because of that situation. Business declines, and the subjects lose their livelihood, which, generally, comes from trading. Therefore, if no (trading) is being done in the markets, they have no livelihood, and the tax revenue of the ruler decreases or deteriorates, since, in the middle (period) of a dynasty and later on, most of the tax revenue comes from customs duties on commerce, as we have stated before. This leads to the dissolution of the dynasty and the decay of urban civilization. The disintegration comes about gradually and imperceptibly.
This happens whenever the ways and means of seizing property described above are used. On the other hand, if (the property) is taken outright and if the hostile acts are extended to affect the property, the wives, the lives, the skins, and the honor of people, it will lead to sudden disintegration and decay and the quick destruction of the dynasty. It will result in disturbances leading to complete destruction.
On account of these evil (consequences), all such (unfair activities) are prohibited by the religious law. The religious law legalizes the use of cunning in trading, but forbids depriving people of their property illegally. The purpose is to [110/111] prevent such evil (consequences), which would lead to the destruction of civilization through disturbances or the lack of opportunity to make a living.
It should be known that all these (practices) are caused by the need for more money on the part of dynasty and ruler, because they have become accustomed to luxurious living. Their expenditures increase, and much spending is done. The ordinary income does not meet (the expenditures). Therefore, the ruler invents new sorts and kinds of taxes, in order to increase the revenues and to be able to balance the budget. But luxury continues to grow, and spending increases on account of it. The need for (appropriating) people's property becomes stronger and stronger. In this way, the authority of the dynasty shrinks until its influence is wiped out and its identity lost and it is defeated by an attacker.
