HISTEROGRAPHER (IBN KHALDUN )

By the year 1840 CE, the French were start to occupy Northern Africa and to establish permanent presence there, as we call it, they were trying to colonize it. Although, there had been resistance, most notably, the Berbers were proving to be a thorn in their sides. To defeat the Berbers, the French had to understand them and to understand them, the French went to an unlikely source. The French Minister of War, called for translation of a historian’s works. More specifically the passages he wrote that concerned Berbers and the Maghreb, North Africa. The Historian was called Ibn Khaldun. Ibn Khaldun was many things, an economist,a sociologist, and much more but what concerns us here, is his work as a Historiographer. 

Historiography is the study of how to record history and how to understand it and many consider Ibn Khaldun to be the forerunner in the field. He was born in Tunis in 1332 CE. He traced his family’s origins to Andalusia,Muslim Spain during the eighth-century, when it was newly conquered by the Umayyads. Before that, he claims to have descended from tribe in Yemen. At the time of his birth, the region was incalamity. First of all, the Almohad dynasty that had bridged Spain and North Africa had collapsed leaving behind smaller emirates, all underpressure from the Christian Reconquista. His family had relocated to Tunis because of that. According to Ibn Khaldun his father “abandoned the way of sword and service [to the state] for that of knowledge and [scholarly] retreat”. As a child, he was educated in many things including the Qur’an, Arabic Poetry and rudimentary Islamic Law. 

One of the most impressionable events of his early life was seizing of Tunis by the Marinids, a berber dynasty, from the Hafsids, who were the de facto rulers of the region. Even though, the Marinid control of Tunis didn’t last long, the impact it left on Ibn Khaldun was permanent. Ibn Khaldun realized the politics of North Africa and Spain. He understood how unstable the region actually was. After the Almohad, the region was broken up into tribal territories and city states. The Black Death hit North Africa around the year 1348 CE, both of Ibn Khaldun’s parents died from it. Tunis had been a hotbed of intellectual activity after all the Iberian scholars, that had been exiled by the Spain Reconquista had moved to Tunis, now, however, thanks to the Plague, a lot of them perished and Ibn Khaldun’slearning might’ve been seriously affected by it. 

Ibn Khaldun spent the next thirty years inservice of many of these city states. He served as a high-ranking minister, secretary,administrator, ambassador or counsellor to rulers in Tunis, Fez, Béjaïa (Bougie), Tlemcenand Granada. He also came in contact with many nomadicand semi-nomadic tribes from whom he learned their history and their differences from the settled people. During his time at these court, he was often on the losing side of political intrigue and was even jailed twice. In 1375 CE, he was tired of politics and he sought isolation. He found it in the safety of a castle, Qalʿatibn Salāmah, near what is now the town of Frenda, Algeria. There, he collected his thoughts and compiledthem into a series of books. The first one, which is now, more famous than the series, was called the Introduction or Al Muqaddimah. 

The series was meant to be a universal historyof the Arabs and the Berbers but he thought that it would be better to talk about historical method before he discussed actual history and to lay down the rules and criteria for distinguishing historical truth from fabrications. I like to think that he introduced logic to history, that if all the stories say something but it doesn’t really make sense, it’s probably not true. There’s many examples in the book of such stories that contradict logic. Do check it out yourself. It was first published in 1377 CE. Although, Ibn Khaldun kept making revisions almost till the day he died. The seven-volume History began with the story of Creation and carried through to the Muslim west, his homeland. It was finished in 1381 CE, surprisingly,not that long for a book this size. In around 1382 CE, he left for a pilgrimageto Mecca. He never returned to his homeland of North-Western Africa. By 1384 CE, Ibn Khaldun was a member of theMamluk state in Egypt, where he held various positions, one of which he held six times,throughout his life.

 He said of Egypt, At the time, the Mamluk Sultanate was pretty much the only stable Muslim realm in the Middle East, post the disasters that were, the Mongol Horde & The Black Death. Ibn Khaldun served it for quite a while. However, he found himself tangled in political intrigue once again. In the same year, 1384 CE, a ship carryingIbn Khaldun’s wife and children sank near the coast of Alexandria, a tragedy like none other for Ibn Khaldun. Afterwards, Ibn Khaldun retired from political positions and went to teach at various schools and universities around the Mamluk Egypt. In 1400 CE, Timur the Lame or as I like to call him, Timur the JERK, attacked Damascus. The Sultan of Egypt, took Ibn Khaldun with him to deal with Timur. However, the Mamluk army and the sultan returned to Egypt, but Ibn Khaldun was left in the city under siege. On behalf of the city’s elites, Ibn Khaldun went to negotiate with Timur. He spent some seven weeks in his camp and discussed various topics with him. It’s present in great detail in Ibn Khaldun’s autobiography. Timur is said to have treated Ibn Khaldun with respect and asked him about the condition of the Maghreb, North Western Africa. Ibn Khaldun made an extensive report on it,because he was such a huge nerd! Due to this favor, Ibn Khaldun asked Timur to treat the city well and let him return to Egypt. 

Timur allowed it and then he sacked Damascus and burned its great mosque because how else would be make sure that he was remembered as Timur the Jerk. Ibn Khaldun returned to Egypt and led the rest of his life in various positions, scholarly and political. He passed away on 17th of March, 1406 CE. Ibn Khaldun’s legacy, in both European and Islamic world, is maybe unlike anyone else. He wrote in Al Muqaddimah, In this way, Ibn Khaldun proposed a system for history, rather than a linear series of stories transmitted from one to the other. The first time I read the book, I couldn’t find a story that I wasn’t questioning. Ibn Khaldun introduced a new way of thinking about history and for that, his work will always live on. He gave the world many things, even Ronald Reagan quoted him in support of what is known as supply-side economics and claimed to haveseen prophetic ideas for the fiscal problems of capitalism in his works but perhaps the greatest thing that Ibn Khaldun gave the world was Al Muqaddimah.