ibn khaldun: the last greek and the first annaliste historian (2006)

8/10/2019 Ibn Khaldun: the Last Greek and the First Annaliste Historian (2006)

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Int. J. Middle East Stud. 38 (2006), 431451.Printed in the United States of America

DOI: 10.1017/S0020743806383055

Stephen Frederic Dale

I B N K H A L D U N : T H E L A S T G R E E K A N D T H E

F I R S T ANN AL I STE H I S T O R I A N

Despite the attention that scholars have lavished on Ibn KhaldunsMuqaddima, the histo-riographical significance of that remarkable work is still not well understood.1 Scholars

continue to discuss theMuqaddimalargely within the context of Islamic historiography,even though most of them regard it as an anomaly that differs fundamentally from theworks of other Muslim historians.2 In certain respects, the Muqaddima belongs to anIslamic historical tradition, that of al-Tabari and al-Masudi. Yet, its dominant intellectual

lineage is the rationalist thought that stretches from the Peripatetic philosophers, and

especially from Aristotle (384322 BCE), through such GrecoIslamic thinkers as al-

Farabi (870950 CE), Ibn Sina (9801037 CE), and Ibn Rushd (11261198 CE) onward to

European philosophical historians and sociologists of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.

It is precisely because Ibn Khaldun (13321406 CE) used the logical apparatus and

materialist assumptions of this rationalist tradition as the conceptual basis for his new

historical science that he can be characterized as the last Greek historian. He can be

considered the first Annalistehistorian because the same Greek philosophical heritageinfluenced both the sociologist Emile Durkheim, who wrote his Latin dissertation on

Montesquieu (16891755CE), and also Durkheims student, Marc Bloch, the cofounder

of the Annales School. This heritage is also visible in an attenuated form in FernandBraudels distinction between the longue dur ee and the history of events. Indeed, IbnKhaldun developed what modern scholars would identify as a structuralist methodology,

using classical logic to identify enduring socioeconomic realities underlying cultural

phenomena and ephemeral events, what he describes as the general conditions of

regions, races and periods that constitute the historians foundation.3

Many 20th century scholars in both the Middle East and Europe have alluded to Ibn

Khalduns rationalist inheritance when they observed that he used what seems to be

a preternaturally modern approach to the study of history and society. Sociologists in

particular frequently have claimed him as the precursor, if not the founding father, of their

discipline.4 Yet, their perception, while valid, constitutes only an imperfectly expressed

intuition rather than an explanation for the similarity in their approaches to the study of

human society. The primary reason why scholars have not parsed out the Muqaddimasrationalist structure seems to be their preoccupation with the cyclical theory Ibn Khaldun

Stephen Frederic Dale is Professor in the Department of History at Ohio State University, 230 West 17thAvenue, Columbus, Ohio 43210-1367, USA; e-mail: [email protected].

2006 C b d 0020 438/06 $12 00


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432 Stephen Frederic Dale

proposed to explain the chaotic history of 14th century Spain and North Africa. This

compelling dialectical model is the subject of nearly all writing on theMuqaddimafromOttoman times to the present.5 Largely overlooked in this understandable fascination

with the theory are the concepts and mode of argument Ibn Khaldun used to generate

the model. Yet, when Ibn Khaldun claimed to be founding a new historical science, hereferred to amethodology that he designed to be universally applicable for all periodsand regions and not one that could only be used to explain the history of his homeland

and era.

Muhsin Mahdi, the author of the seminal intellectual biography of Ibn Khaldun, is

the only scholar who offered at least a partial explanation of Ibn Khalduns approach,

when he said that it was based on the mant.iq, the logic of Aristotle and noted, interalia, that Ibn Khaldun used logical terminology for subtitles of his text.6 Mahdi argued

more particularly that Ibn Khaldun relied uponburhan, demonstration or proof, thepremier form of deductive logic that is based upon absolute propositions. However, after

making this crucial observation, Mahdi turned away from a systematic analysis of IbnKhalduns methodology to summarize his theory of historical change. Consequently,

his vital insight has made little lasting impression on subsequent discussions of the

Muqaddima, because it is impossible to understand Ibn Khalduns assumptions andmethodology simply by knowing that he believed in the explanatory power ofburhan.Although he used syllogistic logic, Ibn Khaldun also employed an extensive arsenal of

philosophical concepts and logical procedures that were known in the western Islamic

world of the 14th century. These concepts included not only burhan but istiqr a, inductivereasoning; a whole range of Aristotelian ideas about the intellect, the physical world, and

human society; and Ptolemys and Galens assumptions about the determining influence

of environment and diet.7

In using these ideas to forge the template of his methodology,Ibn Khaldun did invent a new science, as he claimed, or a new subject within science,

by introducing a philosophical approach to historical writing that was absent in the work

of Herodotus (484c. 425 BCE) and Thucydides (c. 360c. 395BCE). Aristotle would not

have said of theMuqaddimawhat he pointedly remarked about Greek historical writing,that it was not a science because it dealt only with particulars.8

Ibn Khaldun was heir to Greek philosophical thought that encompassed the

works of Plato, Aristotle, Euclid, the neo-Platonists, Ptolemy, and Galen (c. 129c.

216 CE).9 Although his initial education by his father was a traditional Islamic one that

included Quranic studies, hadith, jurisprudence, and Arabic poetry, as a young man in

his teens in Tunis, he studied with Muhammad b. Ibrahim al-Abili, a scholar who hadbeen profoundly influenced by the thought of Fakhr al-Din al-Razi (850925 CE) and

Ibn Sina.10 With al-Abili, he studied mathematics, logic, and possibly metaphysics and,

based upon the knowledge of al-Abilis methods, probably encountered many of these

subjects in the works of al-Razi, Ibn Sina, and Ibn Rushd. At least it is known that

Ibn Khaldun studied al-Razi during these years, for his abridgment of the philosophers

work,Lubab al-muhassal fi usul al-din, survives in an autograph copy dated 1351 CE,when Ibn Khaldun was nineteen years old.11 His commentary reveals his youthful

attachment to philosophy, because in it he adopts Nasir al-Din Tusis critique of al-

Razis interpretation of Ibn Sina. Apart from this one text, it is impossible to identify

precisely the works he studied with al-Abili. However, based upon his references in the

Muqaddima, it is clear that, before he wrote that work in 1377, he had studied Aristotles


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The Last Greek and the FirstAnnalisteHistorian 433

thought, quite likely in the epitomes meticulously prepared by Ibn Rushd and Platos

Republic, either through Ibn Rushds commentaries or those of al-Farabi. It is importantto understand that in his Long Commentaries, Ibn Rushd reproduced every word of

Aristotles texts.12 Ibn Khaldun, in turn, wrote epitomes of Ibn Rushds works. He was

also familiar with al-Farabis logical works and the writings of Ibn Sina. His knowledgeof neo-Platonism may derive from either man. It is also important to recognize that Ibn

Khaldun derived his rationalism more immediately from, as Muhsin Mahdi puts it, the

purer Aristotelianism of al-Farabi . . . and Averroes [than that of Ibn Sina].13 He also

was familiar with PtolemysAlmagestand GalensDe Usu Partium.14

T H E M E T H O D O L O G Y

When at the beginning of theMuqaddimaIbn Khaldun asserts that history isor shouldberooted in wisdom or philosophy (h. ikma), he is not merely telling his readers thathistorians ought to be learned and thoughtful individuals. He means they must analyze

the past rather than just reporting events and asserts they should do so rationally by usingGrecoIslamic logical methodologies. Ibn Khalduns model was the Muslim rationalists

First Teacher, Aristotle, who said that philosophers should ground the science of any

particular subject, be it biology or physics, in the identification of fundamental truths.

As Aristotle wrote in thePhysics:

When the objects of an inquiry . . . have principles, causes or elements, it is through acquaintance

with these that knowledge and understanding is attained. For we do not think we know a thing

until we are acquainted with its primary causes or first principles.15

Such first principles were the special truths or the universals of each discipline.Once they were known, Aristotle said, philosophers could move from universals to

particulars, for it is a whole that is more knowable to sense-perception.16 These

principles or axioms were established through induction, and as Aristotle remarked in

theNicomachean Ethics, Now induction is of first principles and of the universal anddeductionproceedsfrom universals.17

Ibn Khaldun advocates exactly this procedure for his newly defined science of civiliza-

tion or human society. He indicates his intent to create a new science or discipline within

the broader field of philosophical inquiry when, in his opening line, he identifies his

history as afann, signifying here a new branch or subset of philosophical knowledge.18

He then applies Aristotelian logic to construct his dialectical model that explains theunderlying realitythe structureof North African and Iberian history. However, his

methodology is not as clear as it might be because neither Middle Eastern commentators

nor European translators systematically explain the philosophical significance of his vo-

cabulary. Just as his opening statement may be understood to mean merely that historians

should be thoughtful individuals, so much of the rest of the text makes sense without

understanding GrecoIslamic philosophical terminology. The Muqaddima, therefore,must be read with a philosophical glossary such as al-Farabis Lexicon, for many ofIbn Khalduns terms do have multiple meanings, and the philosophical import of his

vocabulary cannot easily be decoded with a common dictionary.19 This problem is

exemplified by an abbreviated version of the overall title of the work, the Kitab al-ibar, although in this particular case, Muhsin Mahdi analyzed the wordibars multiple,


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and accessories or annexes (lawah. iq) for chapter 4 and questions or problems(masail) for chapter 5. In the heading for chapter 6, Ibn Khaldun uses muqaddimaonce again, which here is ambiguous, as his initial explanation of mans ability to

think might be seen as just an introduction to the following discussion of disciplines

such as jurisprudence, speculative theology, mathematics, and poetryand alchemy andsorcery. On the contrary, he might intend it to be the proposition or axiom that is the

necessary basis for these skills. He undoubtedly alludes to them in the second term he

appends to this chapter heading,law ah. iq, meaning here as it evidently did in chapter 4,accessories or annexes.

In the same opening passage in which Ibn Khaldun states that history should be a

philosophical science, he also indicates how his readers could identifymuqaddimat, thefundamental axioms of the world and the bases of further historical analysis. In that

passage, he says that history conducted philosophically involves inquiry or specula-

tion (naz. ar ), another word that has an everyday meaning as seeing or vision but

which in some contexts means insight or reflection.25 Ibn Khaldun uses the wordin a technical sense to mean philosophical speculation. Naz. ar is thus a manifestationof the speculative or theoretical intellect, the third and most sophisticated level of

thought that Ibn Khaldun explains in the sections of chapter 6 titled Mans ability

to think and The science of logic.26 In these sections, he describes this intellect,

the aql al-naz. ar , as the uniquely human ability to acquire true knowledge, that isthe knowledge of Aristotelian universals, (al-amm) and the essence, (al-dhat) orsubstance (jauhar) of those particular things. One of the critical, logical steps in thisprocess is the unceasing comparison of things to determine whether they are species of

the same genus, that is, particular aspects of a universal.27 This process finally results in

the conceptualization of existence (tas. awwur al-wuj ud) as a whole or, in the case ofliving things, the subject of Ibn Khalduns science of human society, an understanding

of the natures of existent beings ( t.abai al-k ainat).28 These natures represent the

Greekphysis, for Aristotle the essence of some living thing, which also has a telos

or form.29 The fundamental difference between this type of philosophical research and

the methods of narrative historians is that, when the latter reported political news or

stories of events, they described, Ibn Khaldun says, using another GrecoIslamic or

Aristotelian concept, forms denuded of their substance.30

Having established or perceived the nature of things, philosophical historians could

then move logically to the next step and identify the secondary attributes of any particular

human society. Ibn Khaldun characterizes these attributes, again in Aristotelian terms, asessential accidents (arad. dhat ). Thus, in his Foreword to Book 1, Ibn Khaldun tellshis readers that he has commented on civilization and its essential accidents.31 Franz

Rosenthal translates the phrase essential accidents as essential characteristics, a

meaningful phrase by itself but another instance in which the philosophical significance

of Ibn Khalduns language has been lost. These accidents are attributes of essences

we know by nature, and for Aristotle and his Muslim acolytes, there were two kinds

of accidents: essential and nonessential. Ibn Rushd illustrated this basic Aristotelian

concept with a geometrical example, the axiomatic science par excellence for the Greeks.

He explained that, although humans perceive instantly or axiomatically, that is induc-

tively, that a triangle is a three-sided figure, they have to learn or reason that its essential

(or proximate) accident is that all its angles add up to 180 degrees. 32 The Iranian


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mathematician, Umar Khayyam, explicitly cites Aristotle as his authority when he

discusses this idea. He writes: And it is known from the work On Demonstration[Aristotles Posterior Analytics] belonging to the science of logic, that every demonstra-tive art has a subject of which the essential accidents and so on are studied.33 Nonessen-

tial accidents are adventitious attributes, characteristics not necessarily connected with athings essencesuch as color. In geometry, an essential accident is a theorem, but for Ibn

Khaldun, the essential accidents comprised royal authority, government, occupations,

crafts, and sciences. Laws for him were also necessary accidents, reflecting as they do,

the peculiarity or nature of a particular human society or civilization. They are, in

effect, what Europeans later termed natural laws.

These are the first two things that historians had to understand: human societies

had particular natures and these natures or essences each had necessary secondary

characteristics, the essential accidents that reflected or manifested their fundamental

natures. If historians knew the nature or essence of a civilization and its necessary

accidents, Ibn Khaldun argues, then they had a basic rule or guide, a qanun, for evaluatinghistorical information connected with these essences and accidents.34 Some of these

judgments were a matter of deductive reasoning, most particularlyburhan, syllogismsthat possessed primary true, certain universal premises.35 However, Ibn Khaldun also

cautioned against using logic for proof in the manner of religious scholars. He pointedly

remarked that the process ofqiy asor analogical reasoning was subject to error.36

Ulama in particular, Ibn Khaldun believed, were prone to error, perhaps drawing on

his own considerable knowledge of Malakite law. He pejoratively characterizes their

reasoning asal-qiyas al-fiqhand goes on to explain that, although the ulama too usedspeculation to formulate universals, due to their preference for scholarship and their

limited knowledge of politics,

alims sought to make the outside world conform totheir ideas rather than the reverse.37 If, he suggests from comments elsewhere, that

ulama became familiar with the differences in places and periods and made use of

comparison, ormuh.ak a, to judge historical reports against such knowledge, they wouldhave been better historians. Overall then, Ibn Khaldun advocated a methodology that

was a complex interactive dynamic of inductive and deductive reasoning informed at all

times by personal experience and an encyclopedic knowledge of the differences in time

and place in world history.

Methodology and Theory in North Africa

It is not the purpose here to reiterate all the details of Ibn Khalduns cyclical theory.

However, it is useful to understand the outlines of how he applied his methodology to

his particular subject, the human societies or civilizations of North Africa and Spain, for

the implications of his cyclical theory cannot be fully grasped without this knowledge.

It is worth citing Franz Rosenthals prescient observation, derived from his grammatical

analysis of Ibn Khalduns full title, that The grammatical connection is conceived by Ibn

Khaldun as a logical connection, suggesting a causal nexus between early beginnings

and subsequent history. 38 Although Rosenthal here is referring to the entire three-

volume history, he offers a critical insight into the theory Ibn Khaldun outlines in Book

1, which indeed has a sequential logical structure that explains or is the context for hiscyclical model of 14th century North African and Iberian history.


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Returning first to themuqaddimatof chapter 1, the first propositions or axioms thatIbn Khaldun used to develop his theory were the deterministic effects of environment and

diet upon human character. Ibn Khaldun derived these from the Greeks, either indirectly

through al-Idrisi, whom he quotes extensively, or, in the case of diet, directly from Galen.

In terms of climate, it was in the middle or temperate zones that civilization flourished.This effect, Ibn Khaldun explains, philosophers attributed to the angle of the sun, which,

he, Ibn Khaldun, then describes and claims to have proved through burhan.39 However,more important than that well-known feature of Muslim geographical knowledge are

themuqaddimatthat are rarely considered in discussions of Ibn Khalduns theory. Theseare his assumptions about the determining influence of local environment and the food

available there that varied with type and relative abundance or scarcity.40

In brief, Ibn Khaldun argues, desert inhabitants who lack grain and seasonings but

who live on meat and milk and who just eat less are healthier, better looking, superior

in character, and more intelligent than people who eat agricultural products, seasonings,

and fruits. The reason, he hypothesizes, is that excess food produces moisture that causesobesity and, as the moisture rises to the brain, stupidity. Animals of the desert such as

the gazelle have superior physiques, health, and, yes, intellects, than do those who live

on the plains, such as the goat, where food is plentiful. The same is true of human

beings. People who eat meat and milk, abstain from pleasure and live like ascetics, are

also more religious than people accustomed to luxury. The reason or cause,sabab, forthis is habit (ada) or custom that becomes part of a persons character or nature,his/herjinsort.ab

a.41 This assumption, that each environment and its diet determinephysical, mental, and spiritual qualities of the inhabitants, is the propositional basis for

and chronological first phase in his dynamic, dialectical model.

The determining effects of local environment and an environments characteristic dietgave rise in the 14th century Maghrib to two natural groups, groups with distinctjinsort.ab

a. These were the bedouins and the sedentary and urban dwellers, the ahl had. ar .Ibn Khaldun evidently means these natural groups to be theusul, fundamental principlesor axioms that he alludes to in the heading for chapter 2. These natural groups constitute

universal or certain muqaddimat, those derived from sense data, which are publiclyaccepted and need no evidence by witnesses.42 Ibn Khalduns theory is grounded in the

contrasting and inherently antagonistic quality of these two natural groups. However,

it is important to note that he also says that bedouins are older than sedentary society

and prior to it, another phrase that has both a conventional and philosophical meaning.43

In fact, it has several possible philosophical meanings, including the two that fit here:prior in nature, and prior in cause to something else.44 That is, one thing cannot exist

without another or is the cause connecting the two thingsand the first word in this

phrase is, suggestively,aqdam, a derivative from the same root as muqaddimaand thatalso has this technical, philosophical, meaning. Bedouin, that is, are prior in nature

to urban society; they have atelos, an ultimate object or goal that leads to or causesurban society.45

In the remainder of Book 2, Ibn Khaldun elaborates on his earliermuqaddimataswell as cataloguing the many accidents orar ad. associated with them. Thus, he analyzesbedouin and sedentary differences in courage, reliance on laws, and other traits that are

the necessary accidents of each group. However, he also argues that some of these traits

are themselves natural characteristics or axioms, the most fundamental of which is


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as. abyya, family or group feeling, whose intensity varies with environment. After citingunnamed philosophical works that teach that man is political by naturean apparent

paraphrase of Aristotles famous axiom, Ibn Khaldun then writes that By his [mans]

very nature[authors italics] he needs the cooperation of others to satisfy his needs. 46

This observation is thus the third axiom or fundamental truth that fuels Ibn Khaldunshistorical cycles. These three axioms are environment determines character, man is

naturally political (read social), and therefore different environments inevitably or

naturally generate distinct social groups.47 However, the telos of human society is toevolve from the simpler and more pure bedouin nature to complex and progressively

more decadent sedentary and urban life.

As part of this inevitable development determined by human beings own nature

kingship or royal authority (mulk) develops, which is the natural end or naturaltermination point of as. abyya.

48 Kingship itself is natural for human beings.49

However, that does not mean that human agency is involved, rather kingship arises

because of the necessity of existence, d. ar ura al-wuj ud.50 These are the propositionsor more precisely the bases (qawaid) that inform chapter 3. These are not certain oruniversal truths or axioms we know innately. Indeed Ibn Khaldun has said previously

that royal authority is an essential accident and remarks in chapter 4 that kingship or

royal authority is to civilization as form is to matter.51 As form cannot exist without

matter, when civilization disintegrates its form, the dynasty inevitably decays as well. 52

The stages through which a dynasty evolves are also natural, reflecting, as they do,

shifting environmental and social conditions experienced by a bedouin community as

it moves from a rural to an urban homeland. Ibn Khaldun identifies the prestige of

a given ruler as an accidental quality, by implication a necessary accident that evolves

with each natural stage of the dynasty. He also makes it clear in this chapter that heis constructing a model rather than trying to offer a comprehensive portrait of a culture.

He, thus, remarks in an illuminating aside on government offices that he will discuss

these positions, not to examine their legal status in Islamic law, but only to illustrate how

they are generatedas accidentsby the nature of civilization and human existence

(t.abat al-umr an wa-wuj ud al-bashar).53

Having established these principles Ibn Khaldun devotes chapter 4 to a discussion

of sedentary culture, the culture determined by the nature of this particular type of

civilization, and most of chapter 5 to identifying the accidents of sedentary culture

such as, for example, craftsarchitecture, carpentry, weaving, calligraphy, singing, book

making, and so forth. The last two of these crafts he discusses are particularly impor-tant for reasons connected with the speculative intellect that he explains in chapter 6.

These are writing and calculation or arithmetic and their broader significance is due to

the fact that each involves abstraction. The process of writing triggers an instantaneous

mental process in which the mind shifts from the letter to the idea being conveyed,

what Ibn Khaldun here characterizes as intellectual speculation (al-naz. ar al-aql),

producing through repetition, an analytical habit or, what he says is an actual increase

in intelligence. Repeated calculation produces a similar mental effect, inducing habits

of reasoning or deduction, istidlal, and speculation, naz. ar, that stimulates the mentalprocesses collectively known as intelligence.54 These discussions conclude chapter 5

and seamlessly connect it to chapter 6, which Ibn Khaldun begins with an explanation

of human thought, which distinguishes mankind from animals. This explanation is


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the chapters muqaddima, perhaps simply an introduction but certainly a generallyaccepted truththat mans ability to think is a unique trait in the animal kingdom.

Aristotle, Greek Historiography, and the Annales

By developing a philosophical methodology for historical research, Ibn Khaldun both

distinguished himself within the GrecoIslamic rationalist tradition and also anticipated

the scientific methodology ofEmile Durkheim and, in somewhat more diffuse ways,

that of later historians of theAnnales school. Viewed first from the perspective of classicaland postclassical Greek historians, Herodotus, Thucydides, and Polybius, Ibn Khaldun

represented the apex of Greek historical thought by insisting that history should be what

Aristotle termed a theoretical science, a search for truth conducted as a logical enquiry

based on axiomatic truths, logic, and an understanding of regional and chronological

peculiarities. Polybius, a man usually seen as the last major Greek historian, may have

refined the critical research methodology of his predecessors, but he was not influenced

by Greek philosophy nor did he fundamentally alter the nature of historical writing. By

characterizing his work as pragmatika historia, political and military history, and byemphasizing that historians should be practical men who write history informed by their

own experience and personal enquiry, Polybius essentially reiterated the ideas of Thucy-

dides. He improved on his illustrious predecessor in one fundamental way, by insisting

that explanation was the principal task of the historian.55 And while Thucydides may

have surpassed Herodotus because of his narrative structure, attention to significant

detail, and emotional sweep, he was essentially following Herodotusbut writing

more carefully about a bigger Greek war.56 He was not interested in ultimate causes.57

The classical and postclassical Greek historians were most of all historians of Greek

politics; they rarely deviated from this quintessential Greek preoccupation. Consistent

with this preoccupation was their lack of intrinsic interest in other societies, which is

not surprising, given their contempt for foreign languages. Nonetheless, Polybius was

scrupulous about accurately relating the past, whether it was flattering to the Greeks or

not.58 Greek historians were primarily concerned with accurately chronicling past events.

They may have seen varying patterns in human historyexemplified by Thucydides

belief in the constancy of human naturebut they usually shied away from metaphysical

explanations.59 Only the constitutional researches in Aristotles school raised broader

issues, but in the name of philosophy, not history.60 To the Greeks, therefore, history

was not one of the sciences with clear methods which create a body of undisputedknowledge.61

As far as Aristotles influence on Greek historiography in the classical and postclassi-

cal periods is concerned, the classical scholar, Simon Hornblower, wrote the following:

Aristotles own contribution to Greek historiography was indirect, but nevertheless profound. It

took two forms. First, methodological. He defined what history was; it concerned itself with the

particular. . . , by contrast with poetry, which deals with . . . the universal.

Aristotles second contribution was practical. He wrote nothing which is normally (i.e., by Aris-

totelian criteria!) categorized as history; that is no diachronic account of a war or expedition or

of the deeds of an individual. But by the more hospitable standards of a modern structuralistsapproach thePoliticsof Aristotle should certainly count as history.62


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Hornblower does not show that Aristotle had any influence whatsoever on Greek histo-

riography, but he does suggest that Aristotle might be seen as a pivotal figure in what

might be called structuralist historiography, whose first known practitioner was Ibn

Khaldun and whose later devotees were philosophically influenced European scholars

of the 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries.The French geographer Yves Lacoste tentatively identified Ibn Khalduns signifi-

cance within a broader historiographical tradition. Writing as a Marxist in a delightfully

provocative, iconoclastic tone, Lacoste perceptively remarks of Ibn Khaldun that Until

the nineteenth century only Ibn Khaldun had improved upon Thucydides. Thucydides

invented history, but Ibn Khaldun turned it into a science. 63 Lacoste is correct; Ibn

Khaldun conceived of and practiced history as a science, that is, as an object of philo-

sophical inquiry. Yet, Lacoste, for all of his unusual insights into Ibn Khalduns brilliant

innovations, does not describe his work as scientific because he was a GrecoIslamic

intellectual and most of all an Aristotelian. He only alludes to the possibility of a

connection between Ibn Khalduns methodology and Aristotle.64 Lacoste considers theMuqaddima to be the first scientific history because Ibn Khaldun . . . can be legitimatelyconsidered the first theoretician which of course he wasbut because of his philosoph-

ical inheritance.65 Of course it was just the use of theory that Emile Durkheim later

considered to be the attribute that made sociology scientific.66

Lacoste is exceptional in that, unlike most scholars who have commented on Ibn

Khaldun, he is not interested in the Muqaddima primarily because of the model itproposes to explain North African and Islamic history. Rather, he is intrigued by the

work because, in a limited way, Ibn Khaldun has anticipated historical materialism and

has offered certain clues to underdevelopment in North Africaand more generally in

the Third World. Even though he does not exactly say so, it is possible to believe thatLacoste considers Ibn Khaldun to be scientific because he sees him as a precursor

to Marx, who has indeed been identified as a scientific structuralist.67 Moreover,

anyone who has even skimmed the abridged version of the Muqaddimacan see that IbnKhalduns theory is both dialectical and materialistic. It is dialectical in the Hegelian

sense that the historical progression of a particular bedouin lineage into an urban

dynasty inevitably results in its decay and destruction. It is materialistic in that Ibn

Khaldun attributes the fundamental differences between the umr an badawand umr anhad. ar to their respective physical and economic circumstances. Another obvious parallelin the two mens thought is each mans notion of culture as a reflection of some more

substantial reality: Marxs concept of a cultural superstructure reflecting and/or echoingthe socioeconomic substructure; in Ibn Khalduns terms the essential accidents of the

true nature of things. However, Ibn Khaldun and Marx obviously differed first, in that

their societies were so distinct, and because Ibn Khalduns dialectic was cyclical whereas

Marxs was millenarian.

Ibn Khaldun was hardly a Marxist, and Lacoste does not claim that he was. Lacoste

occasionally uses Marxist terminology to oversimplify and even misrepresent some of

Ibn Khalduns ideas, as when he observes that Ibn Khaldun believed that the mode of

production determines broadly similar structures and developments in societies widely

separated by space and time. Among other things Ibn Khaldun believed that the nu-

tritional, psychological, and social consequences of surplus wealthhowever, derived,

from trade or craft productioncontributed to the decay and ultimate collapse of urban


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realities, and that religion, law, morality, trade, and so forth can only be understood in

connection with the nature of a particular society. Like Millar and Ibn Khaldun, Mon-

tesquieu dismissed the importance of episodic history, and very much like Ibn Khaldun,

he concentrated on determining causal relationships by identifying the conditions that

give rise to institutions. Laws, he wrote, are necessary connections which follow fromthe nature of things. They are, in other words, Ibn Khalduns necessary accidents.

Thus, Montesquieu laid the basis for the new science that Emile Durkheim consciously

espoused, unaware of Ibn Khalduns achievement.

Montesquieu (16891755) was the subject of Durkheims Latin thesis and a

formidable influence in the evolution of what has come to be classified as social

scientific thinking.74 It is difficult to determine which ideas Durkheim derived from

Montesquieu and which directly from Aristotle. As a student of philosophy Durkheim

was intimately familiar with most of Aristotles works.75 Indeed, Durkheim himself

reported that his teacher, Emile Boutroux, had told him of Aristotles assertion that

each science had to have its own special subject of investigation, the argument IbnKhaldun cites when justifying his new historical science.76 There is, as Donald Nielsen

has remarked:

Little doubt that Durkheim was thoroughly familiar with Aristotles writings, including the

Nichomachian Ethics, Metaphysics, and Politics. There is clear evidence from his lectures on

the evolution of educational thought that Durkheim was quite familiar with the Organon, that is,

Aristotles logical writings, which includedCategories,Topics, and so forth.77

He referred in his 1888 lecture on sociology to The illustrious example of Aristotle,

who was the first to see society as a natural fact, [and] remained almost without imi-

tators, but also went on to say, In the eighteenth century the same idea was indeedreborn with Montesquieu and Condorcet.78

Durkheims familiarity with Aristotle and Montesquieu explains why his approach to

the study of social life was similar to Ibn Khalduns analysis of human society. Both

men were pursuing the same goal with the same philosophical training. That is, both

Ibn Khaldun and Durkheim wanted to establish a science of society using Greek and

predominantly Aristotelian logical methodology. Indeed, Durkheim wrote in his 1909

essay the Sociology and the Social Sciences that the ultimate goal of sociology was the

philosophical part of the science.79 In that essay, he outlines the Principal Divisions

of Sociology and says that the principal goal of his first category, Social Morphology,

is the study of the geographic base of various peoples in terms of its relationships withtheir social organizations.80 Durkheims social morphology is not formally expressed

in axiomatic terms, but his formulation is remarkably close to Ibn Khalduns when he

remarks that whether rural or urban:

This territory, its dimensions, its configuration, and the composition of the population which

moves upon its surface are naturally important factors of social life; they are its substratum and,

just as psychic life in the individual varies with the anatomical composition of the brain which

supports it, collective phenomena vary with the constitution of the social substratum.81

Elsewhere, Durkheim says that the goal of sociology is to explain social phenomenon in

terms of their hidden essences, and that societies, like the rest of the world, are subjectto laws that derive necessarily from their nature and that express it, an argument that


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is a virtual paraphrase of Montesquieus observation that laws express the nature of

things.82

Durkheims emphasis on hidden essences and the nature of societies also virtually

reproduces Ibn Khalduns ideasor those of Aristotleand when he discusses col-

lective phenomena or what he also calls social facts he is talking about necessaryaccidents. These phenomena are Durkheims principal concern; they are the subjects of

sociology. He identifies them as life itself, or more particularly, as the various aspects

of what he terms social physiology: religion, morality, law, economics, linguistics, es-

thetics, and so forth. Durkheim coined this term because he believed that these collective

phenomena were to geography or social morphology as physiology was to biology, and

his explanation uses the idea of structure in a physical sense that anticipates its later use

in history and the social sciences. In biology, he writes, while anatomy (also called

morphology) analyzes the structure of living beings and the mode of composition of

their tissues and organs, physiology studies the functions of these tissues and organs. 83

In the case of society Durkheims view . . . was largely shaped by Montesquieus ideathat society is a structural system [authors italics] composed of individuals or subgroupsbehaving in certain kinds of ways.84 Durkheims ultimate goal was to see in species

of various classes of social facts the unity of the genus, that is the particular in

the universal, and he wanted to establish general laws of which the very diverse laws

established by the special sciences are only particular forms.85

It is not surprising, given Durkheims philosophical training, that he like Ibn Khaldun,

invokes comparison, a form of inductive reasoning, as a fundamental part of the logical

method that scholars must use to determine the truth about societiesand in the 20th

century, sociology is the comparative discipline par excellence. Durkheim believed

that only through comparison, more particularly through comparative history, couldsociologists study the various institutions that concerned them. We have only one

way, he wrote:

To demonstrate that a logical relationship (for example a causal relationship) exists between two

facts; we would have to compare cases in which they are simultaneously present and absent to see

if the variations which they present in these different combinations of circumstances.

Experiment, he concludes, is fundamentally just a form of comparison; it consists in

making fact vary, of producing it in various forms which are subsequently methodically

compared.86

It is not the purpose here also to point out the many differences in the situations

and theories of Ibn Khaldun and Durkheim, men so widely separated by centuries and

such revolutionary natural philosophers as Isaac Newton. It might be noticed that rural

Frenchmen of the late 19th century were not empowered by the cavalry of pastoral

nomads to threaten or even overwhelm Bordeaux, Paris, and other cities, so Durkheims

perception of theparticularproblems of social solidarity in his era was inevitably differ-ent from Ibn Khalduns insight into the social relations of his day. These particularities

wouldhave to be different, because the social essences and, therefore, the necessaryaccidents in each case were quite distinct. Indeed, it is not clear whether Durkheim

believed, as Ibn Khaldun did, in a kind of complex cyclical teleology, that is, a dialectic.He accepted that primitive societies evolved into more complex ones, but it is not obvious


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that he thought, as did Ibn Khaldun, that the two coexisted, as for example, in the rural

and urban France of the late 19th century.87

In view of Durkheims philosophical training and preoccupation with social solidarity,

it is to be expected that the program of theAnnales school, especially that of Marc Bloch,

seems like a recent if only partial reprise of Ibn Khalduns goal for a new historicalscience. TheAnnales School has, in fact, been characterized in a peculiar formulationas the most scientistic historical school, often without authors specifying exactly what

scientistic means.88 Perhaps it means, as it meant for Ibn Khaldun, the combination of a

rigorous critical methodology with sophisticated conceptualization born of philosophical

training. Neither Marc Bloch nor Lucien Febvreespecially Febvrewas as explicitly

scientific as Ibn Khaldun or Durkheim in the sense of consciously establishing a new

field of study on Aristotelian scientific that is philosophical principles.89 Moreover,

Bloch is well known for emphasizing the study of individuals and their motivations.

However, Bloch in particular, and especially in his later work, was strongly influenced

by Durkheimian sociology and has been characterized by some scholars as a historicalsociologist.90 In 1939, he said that he was among the historians who were accustomed

to a greater or lesser degree to expressing ourselves in sociological terms, even though

in later life he also criticized Durkheims attempt to fashion a human science.91 The

influence of sociology and also historical geography on Bloch and later members of

the ambiguously defined Annales school may be the reason why some 20th-centuryhistorians have found both Ibn Khaldun and also someAnnalistes antihumanistic becauseof their attachment to the explanatory power of structure, the hallmark of philosophical

history and its intellectual offspring, sociology.92 Structure seems to mean for these

critics exactly what essence meant for Aristotle and Ibn Khaldun, an idea that reduced

social attributes such as law, not to speak of daily human activities, to the status ofnecessary accidents.

In any case, Marc BlochsFeudal Societyis a book Ibn Khaldun might have writtenhad he lived in Europe of the 14th or the 19th century. Exhibiting Blochs Durkheimian

concern for social facts, the books central concern, as its title suggests, is social

cohesion.93 In this quite distinct environment Ibn Khaldun, like Bloch, might have

largely ignored towns when discussing the evolution of European society from the

9th through the 12th century. Bloch, instead of contrasting rural and urban societies,

as he might have done if he had been writing of the medieval Middle East with its

great cities of Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, Samarqand, and Cordoba, studies the nature

of social cohesion almost entirely outside of towns. Beginning with The Solidar-ity of the Kinship Group he goes on to discuss Vassalage as a Substitute for the

Kinship Tie, and The Transformation of Human Relationships in the later manorial

system. He concludes by discussing the beginning of the evolution of the feudal polit-

ical order into nation states, but his central concern remains Feudalism as a Type of

Society.

As part of his attempt to define the nature of European feudalism, Bloch raises the

very question of genus and species that Ibn Khaldun or any logically trained historian

with a speculative intellect would want to answer. That is, was the social, juridical,

and political system known in Europe as feudalism unique to Europe or a regional

variant of a broader human phenomenon? In trying to answer this question, Bloch turns

to the comparative method advocated by Ibn Khaldun and Durkheim, a basic logical


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technique for defining universals.94 In the penultimate chapter of Feudal Societytitled Feudalism as a Type of Society, Bloch includes A Cross-Section of Compar-

ative History that he devoted to pointing out the commonalities between European

and Japanese society.95 Yet, this common logical means of generalizing, of moving

beyond the species to the genus, was just one aspect of comparison that interestedhim.

In his last and incomplete work, The Historians Craft, he discussed comparisonin a different sense, one that Ibn Khaldun also advocated as the essential mental tool

of the critical method for establishing the truth or likelihood of a particular historical

report.96 The historian, Ibn Khaldun said, must compare similarities and differences

between the present and the past [or distantly located conditions]. He must know the

causes of the similarities in certain cases and of the differences in others. . . . He must

check transmitted information with the basic principles he knows.97 Characterizing

comparison as the dialectic of historical criticism, Bloch demonstrates the useful-

ness of comparison in a way reminiscent of Ibn Khalduns discussion. Bloch writes. . . rightly understood, critical comparison is not content to collate evidences from the

same plane of time. A human phenomenon is always linked to a chain which spans the

ages.98

The scientistic nature of Marc Blochs work is best understood, therefore, not by the

false positivism that he ridiculed, but by a kind of diffuse Aristotelianism mediated

through Emile Durkheim, less clearly articulated than Ibn Khaldun no doubt, but based

on the same assumptions, at least in his later work. However, in the case of Blochs

disciple and most prominent successor, Fernand Braudel, scientific refers only to the

conduct of research while the philosophical core of Durkheims and Blochs work

becomes so diffuse as to almost disappear. Braudel proclaims his intellectual debt toBlochno aspect of his work is foreign to mebut Blochs influence seems most

evident in Braudels commitment to the importance of geography rather than to Blochs

or Durkheims philosophical inheritance. In theMediterraneanhe constructs a tripartiteargument that has the appearance of the philosophical method of Ibn Khaldun, but it

lacks Ibn Khalduns logical rigor. Thus, Braudels division of the Mediterranean intoenvironmental structure, social conjuncture, and narrative of events seems to echo the

distinction that Aristotle, Umar Khayyam and Ibn Khaldun make between essences,

accidents, and meaningless events narrated for the crowd. However, Braudel does

not attribute his distinction between structure and conjuncture to philosophy, but to

economics.99

He generously attributes the phraselhistoireevenementielleto the Frenchhistorians Paul Lacombe and Francois Simiand. He presents his three sections as logi-cally independent entities as he surveys the Mediterranean worlds environment, social

structure, and finally its military and political events, but he never argues that one

caused or determined the other. Only in very minor and passing discussion of the en-

vironment does Braudel use the philosophical language of Ibn Khaldun and Durkheim,

but curiously enough he does so when discussing transhumance, remarking, Any log-

ical study should begin with this basic agricultural situation, for all transhumance

is the result of a demanding agricultural situation.100 However, Braudel is probably

using logical here in the common rather than the philosophical sense, for ultimately

the Mediterranean remains, as the French critic Claude Lefort has said, a work ofpointillism.101


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C O N C L U S I O N

Despite that Bloch and other members of the Annalesschool did not and do not makeexplicit their philosophical or theoretical assumptions, historians now associate certain

geographic, social, and economic notions of structure or structuralism with thatloosely knit group of scholars.102 It is hardly surprising that structuralismin linguistics,

anthropology, literature, and historyshould first flourish in France, given that countrys

tradition of aggressive rationalism. The term structuralism is now used so commonly that

its philosophical origins and assumptions have been almost completely forgotten, just as

modern sociologists have, as Robert Bellah observed, forgotten the philosophical roots

of their discipline.103 The philosophical roots of Ibn Khalduns discipline are identical

with those of French scholars and Western sociologists, as many Islamicists have intuited

but not explained, but in Ibn Khalduns case, these principles have not been so much

forgotten as they have remained unappreciated. These roots are Aristotelian logic and

Greek environmental determinism, the first left him with a desire to understand and the

intellectual tools to interpret historical change, whereas the second provided him with

axiomatic truths about human society. Perhaps the one Aristotelian distinction that best

illumines the common philosophical debt of Ibn Khaldun and French sociologists and

historical structuralists is that between axiom and theorem or fundamental truths and

accidental qualities, the distinction, as noted earlier, that yields the concept of natural

law. This distinction is fundamental to what is identified as structuralist thought, and

both Ibn Khaldun and French scholars believed it to be the starting point for historical

explanation.104 As Bernard Guenee has written: The study of structures seemed to me to

be irreplaceable. It illuminated the past with marvellous coherence.105 Seven centuries

earlier, Ibn Khablun asserted that these structures, these axioms or fundamental truths,

these general conditions of regions, races, and periods that constitute the historians

foundation provided the basis for explaining the otherwise inexplicable chaos of his

time.106

N O T E S

Authors note: The author is indebted to Bahram Tavakolian of Denison University, Lisa Balabanlilar of

Ohio State University, and the anonymousIJMESreviewers for their helpful critiques of this article.1Originally, theMuqaddimaconstituted the first book of his history, the Kitab al-ibar, which had its own

muqaddima or Introduction, one that was typical of earlier Muslim historians. However, even during theauthorslifetime, the wordmuqaddima wasgiven as a title to theseparatevolume in which IbnKhaldun outlined

his new historical science, and offered his cyclical theory to explain North African and Iberian politics of

his day. In his autobiography, Ibn Khaldun titles the first book of the three-volume history as theMuqaddima.

This work also contains Ibn Khalduns original Introduction. See Ibn Khaldun,The Muqaddimah, trans.

Franz Rosenthal (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1958), 1, lxviii. As Rosenthal points out, Ibn

Khalduns work was known to his contemporaries and to some 15th-century Arab scholars. See ibid., lxvi.2M. Talbi expresses this view, which reflects the attitude of many scholars he quotes or cites in his

bibliography, when he concludes his Encyclopaedia of Islam article by remarking that Ibn Khaldun was

Certainly a solitary genius, he does not belong to any current of AraboMuslim thought, Encyclopaedia

of Islam, new edition, ed. B. Lewis et al. (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1971), 3:83031. This is, however, an extreme

statement of this position; many modern historians have discussed Ibn Khalduns legacy from earlier Islamic

scholars, however, without explaining his profound debt to the rationalism of the GrecoIslamic philosophicaltradition. See n. 40.


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3M. Quatremere,Prolegomenes DEbn-Khaldoun(Paris: Benjamin Duprat, 1858) I, 50. This is the text to

which Rosenthal keys his English translation. In this article, European structuralism refers to the sociological

and historical variant of Durkheim, Bloch, and their intellectual heirs. Christopher Lloyd describes the varieties

of structuralism in his bookExplanation in Social History (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1986), and remarks that

the geographical, economic and social current of structuralism is broadly synonymous with the Annales

School of Historians, 24041. See also his discussion of theAnnalesSchool, 24354. For an early discussion

of structuralism as a 20th-century Francophone movement by one of its principal theorists, see Jean Piaget,

Le Structuralisme(Paris: Presses Universitaires De France, 1972).4For a recent example, see Fuad Baali, Society, State and Urbanism: Ibn Khalduns Sociological Thought

(Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1988). Another scholar who does not discuss Durkheim

at length but who sees Ibn Khaldun as the first non-Western sociologist is Mahmoud Dhaoudi in his article,

Ibn Khaldun: the Founding Father of Eastern Sociology, International Sociology3, 31935.5There is a vast, erudite, and stimulating scholarly literature devoted to analyzing this theory or model and

discussing its applicability to the Middle East and Central Asia. For the Ottoman case, see Cornell Fleischer,

Royal Authority, Dynastic Cyclism and Ibn Khaldunism in Sixteenth Century Ottoman Letters, in Ibn

Khaldun and Islamic Ideology, ed. Bruce Lawrence (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1984), 4669, and Z. Fahri Fndkoglu,

Turkiyede ibn Haldunizm, 60 [Altmsnc] Dogum yili Munasebetiyle Fuad Koprulu Armagan,M elanges

Fuad K opr ulu (Istanbul, 1957), 15363. In the late Ottoman period, a copy of the Ottoman translation ofthe Muqaddima was included in the 1862/63 waqfor endowment of the mother of Sultan Abdulaziz. See

J. M. Rogers,Empire of the Sultans (Alexandria, Va.: Art Services International, 2000), 82. Bruce Lawrence

discusses colonial-era Muslims from the Middle East and elsewhere who were influenced by Ibn Khaldun

in his essay Ibn Khaldun and Islamic Reform, inIbn Khaldun and Islamic Ideology, ed. Bruce Lawrence,

6989. Valuable modern studies are Walter Fischels Ibn Khaldun in Egypt(Berkeley, Calif.: University of

California Press, 1967), Aziz al-Azmehs,Ibn Khaldun: An Essay in Reinterpretation (London: Frank Cass,

1981), and Yves Lacostes, Ibn Khaldun: The Birth of History and the Past of the Third World(London:

Verso, 1984). Lacoste, whose French text was first published in 1966, offers the most original interpretation

of Ibn Khalduns ideas in which he suggests comparisons of these ideas with the Greek past and European

future. Aziz al-Azmeh includes a useful critical bibliography, which should be supplemented by the numerous

footnotes to the articles in Lawrence ed., Ibn Khaldun and Islamic Ideology, references in Hans Daiber,

Bibliography of Islamic Philosophy (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1999), 2:22330, and M. Talbis bibliography in hisessay Ibn Khaldun,Encyclopaedia of Islam, 82531.

6Muhsin Mahdi, Ibn Khalduns Philosophy of History (London: George, Allen & Unwin, 1957). See

especially pp. 12425, 16062, and 17287 and especially p. 172 n. 1. Apart from Mahdi, few other scholars

have shown an interest in Ibn Khalduns philosophical assumptions. One of the few to do so is the 20th-

century Moroccan philosopher, Muhammad Abed al-Jibri in his dissertation Falsafat al-tarikh inda Ibn

Khaldun (Rabat Morocco: 1970), published as Fikr Ibn Khaldun: al-tarikh al-Islami (Casablanca: Dar al-

Thaqafah, 1971). See also Abed al-Jibris essay,Arab-Islamic Philosophy, A Contemporary Critique, trans.

Aziz Abbasi (Austin, Tex.: Center for Middle Eastern Studies, 1999) where, in chapter 5, he describes Ibn

Rushds admiration for Aristotles axiomatic or demonstrative method and concludes with a discussion of

Ibn Khaldun. Miklos Maroth is one of the few scholars who has taken Mahdis reference to Aristotelian logic

one step further and specifically attributed Ibn Khalduns particularstyle of logical argument to Galen. See

his article Aristoteles und Ibn Khaldun, Zur Entstehung Einer Aristotelischen Geschichtsphilosophie, inAristoteles Werk und Wirkung, ed. Jurgen Wiesner (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1987), especially 397, 399400, 408.

7Ibn Khaldun specifically mentions using istiqr a when discussing the Arabic language. Quatremere,

Prolegomenes, 3:301.8Aristotle makes this comment in hisPoetics, where he writes: Hence poetryis something more philosophic

and of graver import than history, since its statements are of the nature rather of universals, whereas those

of history are singulars. Jonathan Barnes ed.,The Complete Works of Aristotle (Princeton, N.J.: Bollingen

Series LXXI, 1984), 2:2323.9For an accessible introduction to Islamic philosophy, see Oliver Leaman, An Introduction to Classical

Islamic Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).10Nassif Nassar, Le Maitre dIbn Khaldun: Al-Abili, Studia Islamica 20 (1964): 109, 113. See also Mahdi,

Ibn Khalduns Philosophy of History, 3337.11

P. Luciano Rubio,Lubab al-muhassal fi usul al-din de Ibn Khaldun (Tetuan, Morocco: Editora Marroqui,1952).


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12Alfred L. Ivry, trans. and ed., Averroes Middle Commentary on Aristotles De Anima (Provo, Utah:

Brigham Young University Press, 2002), xiii. For a fuller discussion of Ibn Rushds philosophical engagement

with Aristotle, see Gerhard Endress and Jan A. Aertsen ed., Averroes and the Aristotelian Tradition(Leiden:

E. J. Brill, 1999), including Ivrys article, Averroes Three Commentaries on De Anima, 199216. For

al-Farabi, see Richard Walzer, ed. and trans., Al-Farabi on the Perfect State, Abu Nasr al-Farabis Mabadi

ara ahl al-madina al-fadila(Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985) and Walzers article Aspects of Islamic Political

Thought: Al-Farabi and Ibn Xaldun,Oriens16 (1963): 4060.13Mahdi,Ibn Khalduns Philosophy of History, 77, n. 2 and 109, n. 1.14For an introduction to Galen, see P. N. Singer, Galen: Selected Works (Oxford: Oxford University Press,

1997).15Barnes,The Complete Works of Aristotle, 1:184a, 1015.16Ibid., 2425.17Barnes, II:1139b, 2834. See also T. H. Irwin, Aristotles First Principles (Oxford: Clarendon Press,

1992), 5.18Fann(pl.fun un) for Ibn Khaldun signifies a special field or scientific (philosophical) discipline. I am

indebted to anIJMESanonymous reader for this observation.19Now available in a splendid edition authored by Ilai Alon, Al-Farabis Philosophical Lexicon, 2 vols.

(Warminister: E. J. W. Gibb Memorial Trust, 2002).20Mahdi,Ibn Khalduns Philosphy of History, 6371.21See n. 1.22Alon,Al-Farabis Philosophical Lexicon, 1:693702.23Ibid., 2:695; see also 1:69372.24Quatremere,Prolegomenes, 1:68.25Ibid., 1:2.26Ibid., 2:365.27Ibid., 3:109,t.ab

a.28Ibid., 2:365 and 1:9, 320. See also Ivry, Middle Commentary on Aristotles De Anima, 15253, for a

discussion oftas. awwurand Quatremere,Prolegomenes, 1:9, where Ibn Khaldun uses the phrase the natures

of existing things (al-t.abai al-muj ud at). It is likely that Ibn Khaldun derived his ideas about the intellect

directly from Ibn Rushd, who discussed it in his treatise on Aristotles De Animaand in other commentarieson the intellect.

29Douglas F. Challenger,Durkheim Through the Lens of Aristotle, Durkheimian Postmodernist and Com-

munitarian Responses to the Enlightenment (Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994), 2425.30Quatremere,Prolegomenes, 1:4.31Ibid., 1:6.32Ivry,Middle Commentaries on Aristotles De Anima, 5. For Aristotles statement that the sum of these

angles is an accidental property, see Barnes, The Complete Works of Aristotle, 1:1025a, 1434.33R. Rasheed and B. Vahabzadeh, Omar Khayyam The Mathematician (New York: Biblioteca Persica Press,

2000), 218.34Quatremere,Prolegomenes, 1:329.35Alon,Al-Farabis Philosophical Lexicon, 2:578.36

Quatremere,Prolegomenes, 1:58.37Ibid., 3:26869.38Rosenthal, Ibn Khaldun, The Muqaddimah, 1:13, n. 28. The full title is Kitab al-ibar wa-diwan al-

mubtada wa-l-khabar fi ayyam al-Arab wa-l-Ajam wa-l-Barbar wa-man asrahum min dhawi al-sultan

al-akbar.39Quatremere,Prolegomenes, 1:82.40Ibn Khaldun derived his geographical information, his division of the world into seven climatic zones,

and the environmental determinism stemming from the climate and agricultural products of those zones

from many sources. The Arab geographer al-Idrisi (11101165 CE) was evidently his principal source for

his geographical knowledge, and for al-Idrisi, see among many studies, S. Maqbul Ahmad, Cartography of

al-Sharif al-Idrisi, in J. B. Harley and David Woodward ed., Cartography in the Traditional Islamic and South

Asian Societies(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 15774. Al-Idrisis maps were in turn primarily

based upon those of Ptolemy. Ibn Khalduns notions of the ways that climate affects human character mayhave been derived at least in part from Galens works, which he apparently encountered first in the writings of


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al-Masudi. See Ibn Khaldun, Muqaddimah, 1:175 where, however, he criticizes both scholars explanation

of emotionalism in Negroes. Greek theories concerning the determining effects of environment may also be

found in earlier sources, including Aristotles treatise on Physiognomics. See Barnes,The Complete Works

of Aristotle, 2:806b16, and Aristotles series of questions: Problems Connected with the Effect of Locality

on the Temperament, ibid., 2:909a13910b9.41Ibid., 1:15765. Solomon Pines suggests that Ibn Khaldun might have derived his ideas on necessity and

luxury from Plato. See his article The Societies Providing for the Bare Necessities of Life According to Ibn

Khaldun and to the Philosophers,Studia Islamica24 (1971): 12538. Ibn Rushddoesparaphrase Platos idea

when he writes, the human desire for wealth, pleasure, and comfort leads to a transition of the regime . . . .

Oliver Leaman,Averroes and his Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1988), 131. However, see also Erwin

K. Rosenthals work Political Thought in Medieval Islam (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1968),

267 n. 5, where Rosenthal rejects the idea that Ibn Khaldun knew of Ibn Rushds commentary on Platos

Republic, a likely source suggested by Pines. I am indebted to Patricia Crone for the reference to Pines article.

For Ibn Rushds commentary, see Charles E. Butterworth, Philosophy, Ethics and Virtuous Rule: A Study

of Averroes Commentary on Platos Republic, Cairo Papers in Social Science. 9, (Spring 1986) (Cairo:

University of Cairo Press, 1986). The idea that environment had a determining effect on human character

circulated in 5th century BCE Greece, and in the 4th century BCE, the notion that luxurious indulgence led to

military and political decline was fully developed. See Josef Wieshofer,Ancient Persia(London: I. B. Tauris,1996), 7983.

42Alon,Al-Farabis Philosophical Lexicon, 1:35758.43Quatremere,Prolegomenes, 1:223.44Alon,Al-Farabis Philosophical Lexicon, 1:342.45Ibn Khalduns termbedouinsis oftentranslated simply as pastoral nomads, camel-herding transhumants.

However, he repeatedly indicates that bedouins practiced agriculture and, when discussing crafts, states

[Agriculture] is a Bedouin craft which is not practiced or known by sedentary [i.e., urban] people. The

Muqaddimah, 2:357. Peter von Sievers forcefully makes this point in his article Back to Nature: The

Agrarian Foundations of Society According to Ibn Khaldun, Arabica27 (1980): 71.46Quatremere,Prolegomenes, 2:368.47As the Greeks had no separate word for social, Ibn Khalduns citation of Aristotles dictum can be taken

to mean social in this context.48Quatremere,Prolegomenes, 1:264, 256. (Note: ilm al-ghayutmeans mathematics.)49Ibid., 1:259.50Ibid., 1:364.51Ibid., 2:264.52Ibid., 2:94.53Ibid., 2:3.54Ibid., 2:36263.55Peter Derow, Historical Explanation: Polybius and His Predecessors in Greek Historiography, ed.

Simon Hornblower (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998), 86.56Hornblower, Greek Historiography, 24. Lenn Evan Goodman compares Ibn Khaldun with Thucydides,

but not their methodologies, in his article Ibn Khaldun and Thucydides,Journal of the American Oriental

Society92 (1972): 25070.57Elisabeth Young-Bruehl, What Thucydides Saw,History and Theory 25 (1986):10.58Derow, Historical Explanation,Greek Historiography, 8485.59Ibid., 79, and Arnaldo Momigliano, Greek Historiography,History and Theory17 (1978): 7.60Hornblower, Greek Historiography, 3335, and Momigliano, Greek Historiography, 9.61Momigliano, Greek Historiography, 9.62Hornblower, Greek Historiography, 33.63Yves Lacoste,Ibn Khaldun, 142.64Lacoste,Ibn Khaldun, 159. The possible link that Lacoste identifies, Aristotles notion that movement

is an essential characteristic of all things, was not a major aspect of Ibn Khalduns methodology.65Ibid., 149.66Warren Schmaus,Durkheims Philosophy of Science and the Sociology of Knowledge (Chicago: University

of Chicago Press, 1994), 4344.67Lloyd,Explanation in Social History, 10.


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68Lacoste,Ibn Khaldun, 156.69Joseph J. Spengler discusses Ibn Khalduns economic ideas against the background of Islamic economic

thought, but he is careful to state he cannot trace any of Ibn Khalduns ideas to a particular source. Ultimately

Spengler attributes Ibn Khalduns economic observations to his practical knowledge. Economic Thought of

Islam: Ibn Khaldun,Comparative Studies in Society and History6 (1964): 268305.70Peter Burke, The French Historical Revolution (Oxford: Blackwells, 1969), 67. See among other articles,

H. M. Hopfl, From Savage to Scotsman: Conjectural History in the Scottish Enlightenment, Journal of

Scottish Studies 17 (1978): 1940, and, for its discussion of Aristotles influence among these Scottish

thinkers, Andrew Skinner, Economics and Historythe Scottish Enlightment, Scottish Journal of Political

Economy12 (1965): 122.71It is impossible within the page limits of this article to discuss contrasting European attitudes toward

Aristotelian thought. However, it is worth noting that, while some Europeans denounced Aristotelian meta-

physics, nearly all Europeans, including British empiricists, internalized Aristotelian logic that held sway in

Europe until relatively recent times.72Robert Shakleton alludes to Montesquieus study of Aristotle and Galen in his definitive biography

Montesquieu(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1961), 264, 303.73W. Watts Millar, ed., Miller and Emma Griffiths, trans., Montesquieu Quid Secundatis Politicae Insti-

tutuendae Contulerit(Oxford: Durkheim Press, 1997), 48c.74See especially, Douglas F. Challenger,Durkheim Through the Lens of Aristotle: Durkheimian, Postmod-

ernist, and Communitarian Responses to the Enlightenment(Lanham, Md.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1994).75For an especially forceful presentation of Aristotles influence on Durkheim, see Donald A. Nielsen,

Three Faces of God. Society, Religion and the Categories of Totality in the Philosophy of Emile Durkheim

(Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1999), 21.76Nielsen,Three Faces of God, 22.77Ibid., 22.78Emile Durkheim, Course in Sociology, Opening Lecture, in Emile Durkheim on Institutional Analysis,

ed. Mark Traugott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), 45.79Durkheim, Sociology and the Social Sciences, in On Institutional Analysis, 82.80Ibid., 83.

81Ibid., 79.82Schmaus,Durkheims Philosophy of Science, 58, 60.83Durkheim, Sociology and the Social Sciences, in On Institutional Analysis, 80.84Challenger, Durkheim Through the Lens of Aristotle, 147.85Durkheim, Sociology and the Social Sciences, in On Institutional Analysis, 82.86Durkheim, Sociology and the Social Sciences, in On Institutional Analysis, 85.87Traugott ed.,On Institutional Analysis, 1314.88Richard J. Evans,In Defense of History (New York: Norton, 1999), 258. For another view, see the authors

extended discussion of scientific history in chapter 2, History, Science and Morality. Susan W. Friedman

also uses this term but is more precise when she says that Marc Bloch was not a law-seeking sociologist.

Marc Bloch, Sociology and Geography Cambridge Studies in Historical Geography(Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1996), 173. J. H. Hexter discusses the different implications of the word science in his article

Fernand Braudel and theMonde Braudelien . . . in J. H. Hexter,On Historians(Cambridge, Mass.: HarvardUniversity Press, 1979), 90.

89Friedman writes in her book, Marc Bloch, Sociology and Geography that Blochs interest was never to

carve a domain for a logically independent discipline, 183.90Ibid., 174.91Quoted in ibid., 179.92Hayden V. White makes this comment about Ibn Khaldun in his essay Ibn Khaldun in the World

Philosophy of History, Comparative Studies in Society and History 2 (1959): 11028. James A. Henretta

makes an analogous point about structuralism in his article Social History as Lived and Written,American

Historical Review84 (1979): 1293322. See also Johan H. Meuleman, La causalite dans la Muqaddimah

dIbn Khaldun,Studia Islamica 74 (1991): 10539. See especially Section 5.3 La place de lhomme dans

reflexion dIbn Khaldun, 13536. Lloyd, in contrast, criticizes the individualist approach. See Explanation

in Social History, 1719, 37. He also cites Braudels dismissal of individual agency, 251.93Marc Bloch,Feudal Society, L. A. Manyon, trans. (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961), 1819.


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94Ibn Khaldun discusses this aspect of comparison when explaining the science of logic. Ibn Khaldun, The

Muqaddimah, 3:138.95Friedman explains Marc Blochs evolving attitude toward the comparative method.Marc Bloch, Sociology

and Geography, 178. She does not, however, mention his discussion of the method inThe Historians Craft.

See also William H. Sewell, Jr., Marc Bloch and the Logic of Comparative History, History and Theory 6

(1967): 20818.96Ibn Khaldun,The Muqaddimah, 1:15, 56.97Ibid., 1:56.98Marc Bloch,The Historians Craft, 122.99Fernand Braudel,The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Philip 2 , Sian Reynolds

trans. (New York: Harper Torchbook, r. 1976), 353. These two aspects of reality [ structure and conjuncture

are always present], as economists are well awareindeed it is to them we owe the original distinction . . . .

See also Braudels discussion of the term structure in History and the Social Sciences, in On History 29,

and History and Sociology, in On History, 70 and n. 22.100Braudel,The Mediterranean, 95. Braudel does not mention Ibn Khaldun in this work, which represents

Arab Muslims in orientalist terms. He learned of the cyclical theory later, but it never captured his interest.

See the references to Ibn Khaldun in Fernand Braudel, Autour de la M editerranee, ed. Roselyne De Ayala and

Paule Braudel (Paris: Editions de Fallois, 1996), 116, 329.101Claude Lefort, Histoire et sociologie dans loeuvre de Fernand Braudel, in Cahiers internationalaux

de sociologies13 (1952), quoted in Hans Kellners article Braudels Menippean Satire,History and Theory,

18, 124.102A point made by Breisach,Historiography: Ancient, Medieval and Modern, 37172.103Quoted by Douglas Challenger,Durkheim Through the Lens of Aristotle, back cover.104See Lloyds introductory discussion of causation among structuralists. Social Science History, 710.105Jacques Le Goff, After Annales: The Life as History, Times Literary Supplement(1420 April 1989),

394 and 405.106See n. 3.


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ibn khaldun: the last greek and the first annaliste historian (2006)

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