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Ed West

The Islamic historian who canexplain why some states fail andothers succeed

3 August 2015 12:06 PM

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I have a new Kindle Single out, an essay on the 14th century Islamic historian IbnKhaldun, who can rightly claim to be called the ‘father of social science’.

Ibn Khaldun is underrated in the west, compared to the other great philosophers andhistorians of the ages, but he enjoys a cult following because his central theory of

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human society seems ever more relevant today – that is, asabiyyah, or ‘groupfeeling’. Group feeling explains why the individual­centred western worldview hasproved so inadequate in explaining things since the fall of Communism, especially inthe Middle East.

Born in Tunis on May 27, 1332, Ibn Khaldun pioneered the fields of sociology andhistory, as well as touching on economics and science, during his long life spentserving as an ambassador and supreme justice across the Islamic Mediterranean. Hishistory book the Muqaddimah puts him up with Herodotus and Thucydides as one ofthe fathers of that discipline, while the Scottish theologian Robert Flint once said that‘Plato, Aristotle and Augustine were not his peers, and all others were unworthy ofbeing even mentioned along with him’. Jonathan Sacks, the former chief rabbi, said ofhim that ‘he has every claim to be called the world’s first sociologist. Not for another300 years would the West produce a figure of comparable originality.’

Ibn Khaldun was very much a product of the pan­Islamic world, which was thencoming to the end of its golden age. His family had originated in southern Arabia in the9th century before moving to Spain, although they may have originally been Berberswho adopted an Arab identity in order to acquire status. They had fled from Sevillefollowing its capture by the Christians in 1248 and his family held office under theBerber Hafsid dynasty that had come to power in North Africa in 1229, but his fatherand grandfather had retired from public life – and Ibn Khaldun’s turbulent life wouldsuggest their decision to be wise.

As a boy, Ibn Khaldun was taught by some of the best scholars in the Maghreb,learning the Koran as well as Islamic law, grammar, rhetoric, mathematics andphilosophy. Among the Muslim thinkers he studied were Avicenna, the eleventh­century author of the Book of Healing who produced hundreds of works during thepeak of Islamic intellectual flourishing; Averroes, the great philosopher of medievalCordoba, who promoted the work of Aristotle; and the Iranian Fakhruddin Razi, whofirst posited the multiverse hypothesis in the 12th century. Ibn Khaldun would alsohave read much Greek philosophy, which had been translated into Arabic inMesopotamia by Syriac­speaking Christians fluent in both languages.

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The Hafsids were the latest in a series of Arab and Berber dynasties that had come topower in North Africa as the strength of previous rulers had faded, until their energyeventually burned out in turn, a cycle that would influence Ibn Khaldun’s thinking. Hesaw that empires rise when their peoples have strong asabiyyah, but once establishedslowly begin to lose what might now be called social solidarity or social capital, andare then in turn overthrown by newcomers.

Ibn Khaldun would late travel across the Maghreb, Spain, Egypt and Syria, where henegotiated with the monstrous Mongol leader Timur (who killed an estimated 5 percent of humanity, a record that makes Hitler and Stalin look like bumbling amateurs).However his most productive period came in 1375 when the Sultan of Tlemecen senthim out to meet with the Awlad Arif tribe in the west of modern­day Algeria; theygave the Arab and his young family refuge in a castle near to modern­day Oran, wherehe spent three years, mainly to escape court intrigue. It was here that he wrote hisgreat book of history the Muqaddimah over five months in the year 1377, ‘withwords and ideas pouring into my head like cream into a churn’.

A great traveler, Ibn Khaldun was taken even further by his imagination; the historianArnold Toynbee described the Muqaddimah (literally ‘The Introduction’ – it wassupposed to be part of a larger volume, the Kitab al­Ibar, or ‘Book of Lessons’) as‘undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been created by any mindin any time or place’.

Ibn Khaldun charted the story of the world from creation, which began with ‘theminerals and progressed, in an ingenious, gradual manner, to plants and animals’ andonto human history. Anticipating Darwin, he wrote: ‘The animal world then widens,its species become numerous, and, in a gradual process of creation, it finally leads toman, who is able to think and reflect. The higher stage of man is reached from theworld of monkeys, in which both sagacity and perception are found, but which hasnot reached the stage of actual reflection and thinking. At this point we come to the

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first stage of man.’

Human society, he argued, has laws like with any other science and for that reasonIbn Khaldun is widely considered the father of sociology, or as he called it ‘ilmal­’umran, ‘the science of culture’. He wrote: ‘Human society is necessary since theindividual acting alone could acquire neither the necessary food nor security. Only thedivision of labour, in and through society, makes this possible. The state arisesthrough the need of a restraining force to curb the natural aggression of humanity. Astate is inconceivable without a society, while a society is well­nigh impossible withouta state. Social phenomena seem to obey laws which, while not as absolute as thosegoverning natural phenomena, are sufficiently constant to cause social events to followregular and well­defined patterns and sequences.’

He also covered the sphere of economics, among his most famous quotes being that‘it should be known that at the beginning of the dynasty, taxation yields a largerevenue from small assessments. At the end of the dynasty, taxation yields a smallrevenue from large assessments.’ This formed part of his essentially cyclical view ofhistory and society, and would inspire the Laffer Curve, as coined by the economistArthur Laffer in the 1970s, who later credited Ibn Khaldun with the idea.

But it is his concept of asabiyyah which remains most lasting. In the Muqaddimah IbnKhaldun described asabiyyah as the basic force of history, responsible for the rise andfall of kingdoms and dynasties and the reason why civilisations eventually collapsed.

Asabiyyah is hugely relevant today because the nature of group feeling within a statedictates the nature of its government and institutions. Iraq is home to civilisation itselfbut as nation­building goes it was an impossible task because the country is beset notjust by divisions between Sunni, Shia and Kurd, but also numerous tribes and clans. Itis because asabiyyah is concentrated at a local level that Iraq came 170th out of 175in Transparency International’s latest corruption index. And yet, focusing on religion,ideology or economics, most analysis before the invasion and since ignored asabiyyah.

As a result much of the country lies in the hands of religious extremists who havemuch stronger asabiyyah and were able to take Mosul despite being outnumbered 40to 1 by Iraq’s well­equipped army. For as the great Arab historian observed: ‘Religiouscolouring does away with mutual jealousy and envy among people who share in agroup feeling, and causes concentration upon the truth… They are willing to die fortheir objectives.’ (Much of this has been backed up by modern evolutionarypsychology.)

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Asabiyyah is the key to understanding why some states fail and others succeed, whydemocracy works sometimes but often not, and why the nation­state will remain thefoundation of successful human societies. Whatever happens from now on, theoutcome of the 21st century will be dependent on asabiyyah, which remains thefundamental reality of human existence.

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