Social Theory: Ibn Khaldun

27th Oct 2022 by Simon Mabon

Social Theory: Ibn Khaldun

By Ahmed Abozaid

Abdel-Rahman Abu-Zeid Walieddin Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406), also known as Ibn Khaldun, is one of the most prominent Muslim Arab scholars, responsible for articulating a theoretical approach which dismantles the dialectical relationship between the state/authority and violence. Ibn Khaldun’s life witnessed several political and social transformations, moving across three continents, from Andalus in the north to the Moroccan desert in the south, from Marrakech in the West to Damascus in the east. He also worked as a senior diplomat and politician with different regimes and governments, from Spanish Christian kings in Castile to the Tatars, and from the Memluks to the Idrisids (an Arab Muslim dynasty from 788 to 974, ruling most of present-day Morocco and parts of present-day western Algeria) in the Maghreb. This rich experience allowed him to introduce and develop a comprehensive framework for understanding religion, identity-based political affiliations, social bases for political authority within processes of state-building, constituting authority, and understanding how states flourish and decay (among other topics) across time until the 15th century. His practical experience and empirical observations drawn from field work and engagement with law and Sharia provided the intellectual grounding for insights published in the widely-cited and well-known book, al-Muqadema. Unsurprisingly, for those cognisant of the Arab debates on the issue of religion, there is a consensus among modern Arab scholars that Ibn Khaldun is the most pre-modern Islamic scholar who theoretically contributed to topics of authority, state and human sociology in general. 

Main Argument

The definition of the state, authority, political regimes and governments at theoretical and methodological levels is typically restricted to Western comparative politics. As distinctive and highly established modernist products, these terms are used here as synonymous. Indeed, in Arabic, scholars use such terms interchangeably as if they have the same meanings as they are all references to collectives of security forces and police in the Arab context. This selective approach on the use of terminology sits with the well-established traditions in Arabic studies where both words of the ‘state’ and the ‘authority’ are used to refer to the same entity, supreme bodies with exclusive and repressive powers. Furthermore, according to a senior Arab political scientist, the post-colonialist Arab world is marked with overlapping or intersections on the definitions and the perceptions of the state, the authority, the regime and the government. From the Khaldunian perspective, the definition of the state becomes, as Ali Saad Allah, Abid al-Jabri and others note, ‘a spatial and temporal extension of asabiyah’. 

For Ibn Khaldun, asabiyah relates to the establishment and reinforcement of dominant political groups and also to the systematic oppression of opposite forces. Ibn Khaldun claimed that the main tool used in pursuit of asabiyah (by oligarchs, dominant groups or nationalist groups in modern language) is excessive use of violence and coercion, be it material in the shape of police and the army or symbolic in the shape of rhetoric, politicisation, securitisation of Sharia (discourse and ideology). 

The main contention of Ibn Khaldun is that authority in the Islamic world was formulated (and re-formulated) on the basis of violence and coercion, both physical and symbolic, for the sake of controlling and monopolising political power and for hegemony. In this vein, or what we might call the Khaldunian perspective, the history of Islamic states is an one of continuous struggle and competition between ahl al-Sultan (ruling elites close to the Sultan) and ahal al-‘Ilm (scholars) or ahl al-Sayef (owners of the sword) and ahl al-Qalm (owners of the pen). According to Albert Hourani, the relationship between the authority (the state) and society in the Islamic world is always a one between the ruling elites (the authority) and public opposition, especially scholars or intellectuals. Therefore, we cannot separate between state violence, legitimacy and authority since the creation of the so-called modern Arab state at the end of the 19th centur,y especially if we exclusively depend on Western/imperialist readings (liberalism, Marxism, nationalism) or traditional readings (orientalist or Salafist studies). 

Critical engagement with the theory of Ibn Khaldun drawing on discussion of the state, authority, legitimacy and violence on one hand and with the modern trans-temporal or -spatial interpretation on the other, reveal how the imperial and colonial powers (for implicit or explicit reasons) did not undermine or erode the importance of traditional structures of authority. Instead, colonial powers kept these structures and practices in order to serve imperial interests. Despite their support for attempts to expand the creation of representative and parliamentary institutions, the status quo in Arab countries was imposed through different. Similarly, the powers’ actions towards opposition forces and dissidents during the colonial or post-colonial eras remained draconian. The emergence of power was not necessarily based on the classical Khaldunian criteria, but it took different forms, shaped by the complexities and contingencies of different social or political formulations and milieu. These formulations were class-based (i.e. the bourgeois), ethnicity-based (i.e. Turks, Carcassians, Europeans) or profession-based (e.g. the army and landowners). Historical records show that living under a modern national state has done nothing but submitting its citizens to imitating the colonial powers, an inevitable outcome for the disappearance of predominant power to become a defeated power imitating the winning power as Ibn Khaldun predicted. 

In The Muqaddimah, Ibn Khaldun does not use the word violence but rather qahr [brute force], ghalba [preponderance or dominance]) and shawka [brute violence and repression] whose main point of reference is the excessive use of force for political purposes rather than everyday practices as stressed in Arab dictionaries on their definition of ‘violence’ 

There are two kinds of the foundational elements as per the rule in Islamic authority. The first element is the top-down violence of the state towards opposition. The second element is the systematic process of politicising and securitising Sharia, and later on, the secular laws imported from the outside before being excessively blended with the traditional Sharia laws, as part of justifying repression and radical actions towards opposition forces discrediting these despotic authorities. According to Ibn Khaldun, these formations were not born today but are products or the outcome of hierarchical, historical and established structures in the process of creating the state and the Islamic umma since the 7th century. I here refer to violence neither as an inherited phenomenon not as an inherent cultural feature that set the cultures of specific societies from others. This understanding is evident in Ibn Khaldun’s analysis of the al-fitna al-kubra , (or the second civil war in Islam) and the struggle between the two Islamic caliphs Muawiyya and Ali as well other power struggles in the first seven centuries of the history of Islam. Contemporary researchers tend to interpret this event as counter-revolutionary action led by Muawaiya as a coup against the caliphate. 

In Application

As Ibn Khaldun was originally a theorist (a feature almost fully ignored in most of the modern interpretations of his works), his works have a global expansion, in comparison with the regional feature of theories and works of European centralism. I believe that the best contribution of Ibn Khaldun in the international relations, along with his contributions of Mustapha Pasha and Robert Cox among others, is posing a challenge to knowledge communities controlling the interpretations of processes of forming the state and constituting the authority and competitions between the cross-national forces across history. Ibn Khaldun’s theory on asabiyya offers a thought-provoking analysis of the dynamics of the rise and fall of dynasties and ruling authorities from the 15thcentury. Instead of replacing them with new modern and fully European models, they become fully blended within the context of complex sophisticated processes and different forms of hybridity, mutual existence and different forms of governability, social accountability and discipline. 

The re-evaluation of the ideas of Ibn-Khaldun contributes to the establishment of a general theory through which we can understand the relationship and dynamics of forming the state and the institutionalised role of violence in the process. As Weberian concepts on how to understand the Westphalian nation state as the main unit of analysis in most modern international relations theories, the non-Western concepts and other forms of government and political groupings were excluded. This form of ‘epistemic oppression’ led to the erosion and exclusion of many historical, political, social and cultural scholarship and expertise (that is non-Western and pre-modernist and which could help deepen our understanding of the history of the world. 

It is fair to argue that as the state/authority (empires) were mostly violent, oppressive and cruel, the Islamic society has not been equally violent, especially as it was not enslaved or even in cognisance of the culture of resistance as some Orientalist studies went for. The historical empirical studies emphasise that the Islamic society has always been in a permanent and continuous state of revolution and rebellion against the oppressive authorities, but none of these revolutionary movements (with political and social goals) were able to successfully replace the authority with another that is more just, representative or less excessively violent.

Building on Ibn Khaldun is a methodological choice to end colonialism, posit a form knowledge resistance and initiate a rebellion against epistemic oppression drawn on the dominant western forms of knowledge. The Khaldunian concepts can help complete projects of international relations towards a better understanding of the history of regimes, civilisations and international modernism. This will also help dismantle the historical formulations for the state, political societies, governments, institutions, regimes, and scholarship on forms of the state, the role of violence and law in these operations. Many of the social formulations, values and political rules analysed and debated by Ibn Khaldun are still effectively present. However, most scholarship on the state, authority and political violence insist these manifestations and rules were either undermined or disappeared in the modern global order. Therefore, Ibn Khaldun enriches our understanding of the process of forming the state and constituting authority as well as making legitimacy. Our goal can be realised through paying attention to the role and functions of local political and social formulations and structures, political alliances between dominant groups, struggles with rivals among other steps in the internal and external decision-making processes. 

To conclude, we can argue that the Khaldunian example can help unveil dynamics and means under which the European colonialism got established from the 16th century until the 19th century. The same applies to the process of maintaining dominant social or political groups, asabiya, and how to use hegemony and repression to control and dominate as Ibn Khaldun insightfully and cogently claimed at the end of the 14th century.

   

Further Reading

  • Abu–Lughod, J. 1989. Before European Hegemony: The World System A.D. 1250–1350. New York: Oxford University Press. 
  • Alatas, S. 2014. Applying Ibn Khaldun: The Recovery of a Lost Tradition in Sociology. Abingdon: Routledge. 
  • Al-Azmeh, A. 1982: Ibn Khaldun: An Essay in Reinterpretation. London: Frank Cass. 
  • Ali Al–Wardi, A. 1950. A sociological analysis of Ibn Khaldun’s Theory: A study in the sociology of knowledge. PhD thesis, The University of Texas at Austin.  
  • Anter, A. 2014. Max Weber’s Theory of the Modern State: Origins, Structure and Significance. New York: Palgrave MacMillan. 
  • Ayubi, N. 1994. Over–Stating the Arab State: Politics and Society in the Middle East. London: I. B. Tauris. 
  • Badie, P. 1987. Les deux états: Pouvoir et société en Occident et en terre dIslam [The Two States: Power and Society in the West and in the Land of Islam]. Paris: Fayard. 
  • Chakrabarty, D. 2000. Provincializing Europe: Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 
  • Cox, R. 1992. Towards a post-hegemonic conceptualization of world order: Reflections on the relevancy of Ibn Khaldun, in: Governance without Government: Order and Change in World Politics. Edited by J. Rosenau and E. Czempiel (pp. 132-159). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Donner, F. 1986. The Formation of the Islamic State. Journal of the American Oriental Society, 106(2), 283–296.
  • Duri, A. 2011. Early Islamic Institutions: Administration and Taxation from the Caliphate to the Umayyads and Abbasids. London: I.B. Tauris. 
  • Hall, J. (ed.). 1986. States in History. London: Basil Blackwell. 
  • Hodgson, M. 1974. The Venture of Islam, Volume I: The Classical Age of Islam. University of Chicago Press. 
  • Hourani, A. 1962. Arabic Thought in the Liberal Age, 1789–1939. New York: Oxford University Press. 
  • Ibn Khaldun, Abdulrahman. [1376] 2015. The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History. Translate and introduced by Franz Rosenthal. New Jersey: Princeton University Press. 
  • Kazancugul, A. 1986: The state in global perspective. London: Gower-UNESCO.
  • Mahdi, M. 1957. Ibn Khaldun’s Philosophy of History: A study in the philosophic foundation of the science of culture. London: George Allen & Unwin Ltd. 
  • Norrlöf, C. 2021. The Ibn Khaldûn Trap and Great Power Competition with China. The Washington Quarterly, 44(1), 7–28. 
  • Pasha, M 2018, Ibn Khaldun and the Wealth of Civilizations. Routledge Handbook of Ethics and International Relations. Edited by in B. Steele and E. Heinze (pp. 554-564). London: Taylor & Francis. 
  • --. 2017. Islam and International Relations: Fractured Worlds. Abingdon: Routledge. 
  • --. 1997. Ibn Khaldun and World Order. in S. Gill & J. Mittelman (eds.). Innovation and Transformation in International Relations Theory. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 56-70. 
  • Rosenthal, E.  1958. Political Thought in Medieval Islam: An Introductory Outline. New York: Cambridge University Press. 

 

 

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