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Scholars, Politicians and History - The Case of Ibn Khaldun -
Prof. Joseph Kostiner, Prof. Gadi Algazi and Ms Ursula Wokoeck
ההרצאה תינתן בעברית
Wali al-Din 'Abd al-Rahman b. Muhammad b. Muhammad. b. Abi Bakr Muhammad b. al-Hasan IBN KHALDUN (1332-1406) was born in Tunis. He belonged to a prominent family there that had come to Tunis from Seville prior to the Reconquista. As of the age of 20 Ibn Khaldun he was employed in state service, frequently changing his employers from among the various competing dynasties throughout the Maghreb, namely the Hafsids (Tunis, 1228-1574), the Merinids (Morocco, 1196-1464) and the 'Abd al-Wadids (Tlemcen, 1235-1554), as well as the Nasrids in Granada (1230-1492). His career led him also to the tribal federations of the Maghreb, as well as, once, to Christian Spain. In 1382 Ibn Khaldun left Tunis in order to go on the hajj (the pilgrimage to Mecca). When he reached Cairo, he joined the entourage of the Mamluk sultan Barquq (r. 1382-1389, 1390-1399) as religious scholar and political advisor. He spent the rest of his life in Cairo, apart from the hajj in 1387/88, a trip to Jerusalem and Hebron, and another one to Damascus in 1401 during the military confrontation between the Mamluk forces and the conquering forces of Timur (d. 1405), whom Ibn Khaldun met personally.
Among his writings, Ibn Khaldun's most extensive work is his "kitab al-'ibar wa-diwan al-mubtada wa-l-khabar fi ayyam al-'arab wa-l-'ajam wa-l-barbar wa-man 'asarahum min dhawi al-sultan al-akbar" (book of the signs and register of the reports and their principles with regards to the great days of the Arabs, the non-Arabs, and the Berbers, as well as their contemporaries who held great power). Kitab al-'ibar is a world history; it consists of an introduction and three books; history proper is found the book two and three: the third book contains the history of the Berbers and at the end Ibn Khaldun's rather extensive autobiography; the second book deals with the rest of world history, that is the history of the Arabs and that of the non-Arabs. By contrast, the first book contains what Ibn Khaldun considered his new science: 'ilm al-'umran (the sciences of socialized human existence). Ibn Khaldun began writing Kitab al-'ibar in 1375, and for the rest of his life he continued working on it, completing expanding, and revising it. Already during his lifetime, the introduction and book one became known as Muqaddima (introduction or preface).
While the books two and three are seen to present history as it was usually written at the time, the Muqaddima appears to contain something out of the ordinary, a conceptional outline at odds with the standards of writing (and possibly thinking) of its time. It was the Muqaddima that attacked the interest of Western scholars since the early 19th century, who detected its "modernity", namely a "secular" concept of causality resulting to a rational, modern concept of history, state, and society. The discovery of such "modernity" in pre-modern times gave rise to a fascination that has not declined, but rather kept on growing, despite the fact that since the early 20th century there has also been a (much smaller) scholarly current that has tried to deconstruct that the Muqaddima's presumed modernity.
In the light of the controversy over Ibn Khaldun's modernity, Ursula Wokoeck will consider the Muqaddima as part of Kitab al-'ibar, -- a project of writing history seen from the vantage point of Ibn Khaldun's biography, and try to suggest that the conceptions of modernity and pre-modernity underlaying the controversy may have to be reconsidered.
Joseph Kostiner will outline the central importance of Ibn Khaldun's Muqaddima for modern research on Middle Eastern tribal societies and their relations to states.
Gadi Algazi will focus on Ibn Khaldun's views on the sociology of intellectuals and draw attention to some of his observations on the sociology of culture, especially on the uses of the written word and the scholar's vision of the social world.
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