The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History

Society relies on the animals and agriculture that require the wide spaces of the desert. The Bedouin-type of people who live there are a natural part of society and have few possessions. This includes both nomadic animal herders who live in tents and small villagers who farm. The Arab Bedouin who herd camels go into the deepest desert and are therefore the purest (and most ferocious) example of this type. As some Bedouin grow prosperous, however, they naturally desire more things, which leads to cities, crafts, and commerce. This latter group is sedentary and based in cities. Bedouin and sedentary people form the two natural types of society.

The “simpler” Bedouin therefore emerge in history prior to sedentary peoples. They are morally superior since sedentary people’s habitual seeking of pleasure leads to vice, which in turn causes sedentary civilization to decay. Sedentary people shy away from danger, have their self-reliance destroyed by submission to laws, and lose their ability to defend themselves. In contrast, the Bedouin restrain themselves out of respect for their leaders and religious shaykhs. They also, in accord with God-given human nature, aid their blood-relations and sacrifice for them. To survive in the harsh poverty and violence of the desert, a group needs a “group feeling” (‘asabîyah) centered on willingly submitting to these proven leaders in a tribe based on kinship, or a system that mimics family (clients that serve a noble house, for example, often see themselves as an extended part of the noble’s group). Only this group feeling can restrain people from mutual violence and serve as the basis for society.

The desert Bedouin, living in the harshest conditions, therefore maintain it and the sense of kin fervently, while Arab groups or others in richer lands allow this group feeling to wither. The boundaries of kinship evolve over time as memories fail or as clients who wish to become leaders fabricate blood-ties, since leaders need that kinship to be accepted by their followers. New royal dynasties come from these hardened and charismatic desert chiefs amassing power. However, a “house” or family that once had prestige often loses its ability to generate the group feeling. Usually, the fourth generation of ruler has forgotten what it took to achieve power and, additionally, has been corrupted by luxury. It may retain power temporarily only by employing groups with vibrant group feeling, such as the Abbasid Caliphate employing Turks.

A leader who gains enough prestige to start a royal dynasty must have admirable virtues, such as generosity and support of religion. God grants this virtue to let good men prosper or instills vices to destroy a dynasty. If a particular dynasty enters into “senility” or decay due to corruption from luxury, another family within the group may still gain power as long as group feeling persists. The Persians, for example, went through several dynasties before God willed a new group, the Muslims, to replace them in power.

A defeated nation will imitate the customs of its conqueror, either believing in the victor’s superiority or erroneously believing that those customs explain why the new nation won. The losers often then become apathetic and allow the conquering people to absorb them as happened to the Persians. Ibn Khaldun claims less temperate people, like Black Africans living in hot climates, have less human ability to resist and are easily absorbed or enslaved.

However, the true Bedouin of the deep desert have weaknesses despite their vigor. Their leaders have trouble motivating them to attack hilly, easily-defensible terrain. Since they are “savage” and resent authority, these Bedouin fail to conquer for long-term gain and instead quickly loot and ruin settled society. Therefore, this kind of Bedouin has trouble establishing royal authority or lasting civilizations, except when a prophet unites and restrains them. Furthermore, they depend on the crafts, coin, and resources of urban areas, so a strong urban ruler can dominate neighboring Bedouin people by leveraging these resources.

This chapter investigates how dynasties and their associated states arise. Since people desire royal authority, they fight to get it and can only triumph by motivating their followers through their group feeling. Later people, ignorant of the beginning of an established dynasty, often fail to realize this fact. Only true religion can create powerful enough group feeling to create the greatest dynasties. The Arab conquest of much larger empires at the beginning of Islam proves it. However, a would-be prophet who does not act when God desires and does not have the people sufficiently behind him will fail.

Overextension can also weaken a dynasty. Those who possess group feeling are limited in number and can only protect so much land before being too dispersed to fight effectively. In this way, the caliphs of the early Arab conquests quickly saw their authority crumble in distant lands like the Maghrib. The central regions may still hold together for a long time, as the Byzantines did when they lost Syria but retained their capital at Constantinople. Even a senile dynasty may survive for generations at its core. In contrast, the peripheries often have an alternative group feeling already existing that challenged earlier integration and leads them to separate from a senile dynasty.

Human nature, with its pride and selfishness, leads royal leaders to undermine their own dynasty by seeking to hog glory and embracing luxury. Over the course of a few generations, the group loses its willingness to sacrifice for a single person who no longer acts to protect the group as a whole. They resent the ruler or focus instead on gaining luxuries for themselves, becoming soft and full of vices. Taxes go for luxuries rather than defense.

Therefore, dynasties have a natural lifespan like individual people. After the initial vigor of the first generation, the next two generations gradually lose group feeling until the dynasty enters into a feeble old age (“senility”) and passes away when the fourth generation is overthrown. The wealth of the second generation provides an alternate source of strength for the second generation as it transitions to sedentary life, but cannot balance out the loss of group feeling and the “savage” strength of the desert in subsequent generations. Rulers often try to rely instead on a group of strangers who possess unity as military clients to enforce their power. This new group, however, lacks natural loyalty to the ruler and ultimately takes over political power.

In the middle third of Chapter 3, Ibn Khaldun analyzes the organization of different types of states. Royal authority is natural as the necessary means to restrain humanity’s natural injustice and aggression. However, the ruler himself has these same tendencies which may alienate his subjects. Rational political customs can restrain his natural tendencies, but God’s law offers the best check on his power.

Humanity’s true end lies in eternal paradise, and a government based on God’s law lifts ruler and subject toward that end. For this reason, God established the caliphate as a substitute for Muhammad after his death. Imams (successors to Muhammad’s prophethood) and sultans (an Arabic royal title) can also function as caliphs (having religious authority as well as secular) even if they do not have the title of caliph. While Muslims have differing opinions about the imamate, ultimately there should be a single imam, but he does not need to descend from Muhammad’s Qurashite Arab tribe.

Although the Prophet Muhammad seemed to condemn group feeling and royal authority, in reality he only condemned these when not directed toward establishing true religion. The caliphs therefore assumed royal authority to bring people to God while using a new group feeling based upon Islam. Occasional examples of the early caliphs seeming to succumb to greed, lust for power, or petty quarreling can be interpreted as concern for the Muslim people. As Muslims lost their self-restraint, caliphs had to assume proportionately more authority. When first the Umayyad and then the Abbasid caliphs forgot their purpose over generations and became ordinary royal rulers, rivals overthrew them.

The caliph’s religious duties include wide-ranging matters of justice. He leads prayers, supervises religious teachers, and serves as a fair and equitable judge (since Islamic law is in force). As head of the judicial system, in which economic transactions and contract law play a major role, the caliph oversees other judges, the police, official witnesses or notaries, market supervisors, and the mint. As a military leader, he also bears the title “Commander of the Faithful.” Muslims seek to “convert everyone to Islam either by persuasion or force” (183), so the caliphs need military authority, unlike Christian or Jewish religious leaders. Non-Arab Muslim successor states have often borrowed this title or other partial caliphal titles as the old Arab caliphate has lost authority and group feeling. The caliph and other rulers also must employ civilian bureaucracy (“the pen”) and a military one (“the sword”) to govern effectively. A wazir often heads both hierarchies simultaneously.

Both Muslim and non-Muslim bureaucracy inevitably varies from state to state and era to era depending on the age of the dynasty, customs, needs, and human resources. The practice of warfare has varied considerably. Motives range from unhealthy tribal feuds to good holy war and just enforcement of dynastic rule. Fighting in organized formation can maintain morale and group cohesion.

In the final third of Chapter 3, Ibn Khaldun returns to charting the decline of a dynasty. As successive rulers grow greedy for luxuries, they raise taxes, which counterintuitively decreases revenue by discouraging commerce and cultural enterprise. People resent the ruler because he fails to use revenue for the group’s good. This injustice destroys his civilization.

Often the ruler of a senile dynasty envelops himself in flamboyant royal rituals to the point of separating himself from others, and thus fails to see the danger. Even if he does, the power of luxurious customs makes positive change impossible. He isolates himself from his kin and even kills them to remove rivals, so inadvertently removes his most important source of group support. Regional groups with solidarity on the borders rise up, causing the empire to disintegrate. As revenues decline, the ruler oppresses his people more to squeeze money out of them and so alienates even more supporters.

Border provinces that separate may become the seeds of a series of new dynasties or a single powerful group among rebels or a neighboring people to overthrow and replace the old dynasty. Often this war requires trickery and patience to allow the senile dynasty’s weaknesses to emerge and undermine it. Disorder causes famine and disease, especially in densely-populated core areas.

Attempts to predict the exact future of a dynasty through methods like astrology are likely futile. The popular belief in a Mahdi (or Messiah) from Muhammad’s descendants coming to establish a kingdom is not impossible, but only fools pay attention to a self-proclaimed Mahdi living in a wasteland or groups without the resources to win a war.