In Our Time - Ibn Khaldun

Episode Date: February 4, 2010

Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the life and ideas of the 14th-century Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun.Ibn Khaldun was a North African statesman who retreated into the desert in 1375. He emerged having written one of the most important ever studies of the workings of history.Khaldun was born in Tunis in 1332. He received a supremely good education, but at 16 lost many of his family to the Black Death. His adult life was similarly characterised by sharp turns of fortune. He built a career as a political operator in cities from Fez to Granada. But he often fared badly in court intrigues, was imprisoned and failed to prevent the murder of a fellow statesman. In 1375, he withdrew into the Sahara to work out why the Muslim world had degenerated into division and decline. Four years later, he had completed not only a history of North African politics but also, in the book's long introduction, one of the great studies of history. Drawing on both regional history and personal experience, he set out a bleak analysis of the rise and fall of dynasties. He argued that group solidarity was vital to success in power. Within five generations, though, this always decayed. Tired urban dynasties inevitably became vulnerable to overthrow by rural insurgents.Later in life, Ibn Khaldun worked as a judge in Egypt, and in 1401 he met the terrifying Mongol conqueror Tamburlaine, whose triumphs, Ibn Khaldun felt, bore out his pessimistic theories.Over the last three centuries Ibn Khaldun has been rediscovered as a profoundly prescient political scientist, philosopher of history and forerunner of sociology - one of the great thinkers of the Muslim world.Robert Hoyland is Professor of Islamic History at the University of Oxford; Robert Irwin is Senior Research Associate of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London; Hugh Kennedy is Professor of Arabic in the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.

This BBC podcast is supported by ads outside the UK. Salku X, we're again, five number, five vhietta, arvokesia, pouttellu, poweria.

Palkintona XPeng, G-KU, sacko, Towsin'omax. 10-weekquo-a-rax in a codeo-o-o-oitteassoiteess, Pover.compta-X. Thanks for downloading the In Our Time podcast. For more details about In Our Time and for our terms of use,

please go to BBC.co.com.uk forward slash radio four. I hope you enjoy the program. Hello, in 1375 in North Africa, after career beset by imprisonment, intrigue, and the murder of his mentor, an ambitious political administrator went to live among the Bedouin. His name was Imkhaldun. And when he emerged from the desert, four years later,

it completed a book which still stands today as one of the great philosophical works dedicated to understanding history. Even Haldun's view of history was bleak, hardly surprisingly so. He sought to make sense of how the Muslim world seemed to have descended since the triumphs of Muhammad into feuding and decay.

He concluded that all political dinnerses were doomed to destruction within five generations as their rulers became ever more distanced from their people. Late in life he met the terrifying Mongol conqueror Tamerlane whose triumphs seem to bear out his theories. Ibn Haldun's work had a little impact in this time, but more recent scholars have been astonished to come upon a thinker whose ideas seem to predict much modern political philosophy.

With me to discuss the life and ideas of Ibn Haldun are Robert Irwin, senior research associate of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, Robert Hoyland, Professor of Islamic History at the University of Oxford, and Hugh Kennedy, Professor of Arabic in a School of Oriental and African Studies, studies at the University of London. Hugh Kennedy, can you introduce us to Ibn Caldoun

his period when he was brought up his time and the society in which he grew up? Yes, he led a long and adventurous life, as well as being a great thinking, born in 1322, to a family that had long lived in Muslim Spain.

He could trace his ancestry right back for four or five hundred years, and he was very proud and conscious of his status, as it were, one of the aristocrats, of the Muslim West. But these were very difficult times. The Christians were conquering more and more territory in Spain. The city of Seville, where his family originally came from,

was now under Christian rule. And so he was compelled to make a career essentially in exile. Or he was prepared, he had to go around looking for jobs, basically, and he sought jobs in the administration. He was trained in Muslim law. He was trained in the art of writing letters. and documents and so on. So he went from one little court to another in North Africa

looking for career opportunities. Can you tell us a bit more about these courts? You went from one court to another. Can you give us some gist of that society across that band of North Africa and it stretched across to the Asia Minor? Yes, this was a period when the Muslim world was really in a state of political disintegration.

The earlier period of Islamic history when there were caliphates, which had ruled over the large sections of the Muslim world, had disappeared. The last caliph when Abbasid caliph had been killed, rolled up in a carpet and trampled to death in Baghdad in 1258. There was no longer a centre. Even Kaldun felt this very strongly.

There was no longer a centre of gravity in the Muslim world. Rather that in each of the, or in many of the little towns in North Africa had their own dynasties, their own courts, running their own administration. And this gave an opportunity for an administrator to, as it were, and to go around from one court to another looking for jobs,

looking for really short-term contracts. And Imaldu's experience and his view of history was heavily influenced by the fact, by the insecurities of his own life. Now, as sooner did he seem to find a friend and a patron, than the friend and patron got murdered or lost his throne or whatever, and Imul Caldou was on the road again looking for somebody else to work for. And that gave him a really very pessimistic view of history in lots of ways. You can we just, for one moment, go back to his education.

because we've got the great Arabic Renaissance in learning going throughout what we would call our dark ages, not dark for them, and early medieval times. So what would he have got out of his education? He got a training in Arabic language. That's the formal Arabic language. He got a training in Islamic law, which was kind of crucial to doing any sort of administrative job. he certainly read philosophy and read the philosophy of Averrois

for example who is it So there's some sort of training in logic for instance There's a training in logic But Imukaldoin rather rejected formal logic Much more he was much more More interested in pragmatic observation of how people work Than in in theoretical structures of any sort And so

But he also got a firm education Or he gave himself a firm education In Islamic history In the broad sweep of Muslim history from the time of Muhammad onwards. And he said he'd learned the Quran by heart and he learned the art of poetry, which was very important later

for you logistic and supplicatory purposes, wasn't it? Absolutely. He can't be considered a great poet. Everyone had to do poetry to a greater or less. One of the ways they talk to each other in those days, so it has to be registered. Robert Owen, can we elaborate more on this complicated political career? He went from Tunis to Fez, Seville, Grenada,

bougie, Bisque, back to Fez, once more to Grenada, ended up in Egypt. Can you give us some idea of why he's making these moves and what he's doing? Sometimes it seems to be a Prime Minister and so on and so. He's enormously ambitious and really rather arrogant. He has great, great idea where he should be. And so for a start, he moves from Tunis, which in those days was the backwater. He moves to Fez, which is ruled by the Merinids, and takes service with Abu Inan, the ruler there.

And he's given a job eventually in the Secretariat, and he'll do in a remark none of my ancestors did a job as lowly as this. So there's the arrogance coming through. And Abu Nain has given him a job. But very quickly, Ibn Khaldun is intriguing with the prince who was under house arrest in Fez to put this prince in charge of Bougé. And Ibn Khaldun's plotting is discovered. He's put in prison, perhaps gave him time to think.

Eventually, Abu Nang... Quite a while. It was two years, isn't it? Yes. You do a lot of thinking in prison in two years if you're up to it. It's the beginning, perhaps, of his great ideas on history. He's eventually released when Abu Nain is killed and the vizier who releases him. Ibn Khaldun shows no gratitude to at all. He sides with the other candidate for the throne, the one that the vizier wasn't supporting.

And so it continues. And Ibn Khaldun supports a man called Abu Sili. And has this hope that he can train this princeling to become a kind of philosophy. King, and it's a recurrent motif in Haldun's early political career, that he can make a philosopher king on the model that had been suggested by earlier Islamic philosophers. What comes over from this career is that he's incredibly ambitious, arrogant, and treacherous. He's a great writer, but he's not a very likable man, and he's operating in a very violent and turbulent society.

Enoch Powell once said all political careers end in terms. failure in 14th century in North Africa, political careers tended to end up with a knifing or a grotting. The number of emirs and viziers who died violently is quite extraordinary. It makes quite difficult to become a successful politician. On the other hand, from what I've read from your notes, he was the equivalent of a prime minister in one quarter of another. He was a diplomat sent out to negotiate with the great Tamburane. He was sent on various missions, including most importantly, to go into the deserts, to talk to the Berber try, as the Bedouin.

So he wasn't, I mean, you're, am I, am I binging him up when I shouldn't be? But he achieves short-term successes, but by the nature of North Africa. There wasn't anything else by the sign of it in those times. No, indeed. I mean, because, you know, whatever ruler you sponsored, there's sooner or later going to be a revolt against that ruler or that ruler is going to get assassinated. So it's very hard for him to establish himself anyway. Eventually, therefore, he decides to move to Egypt, which is a bit more stable.

Can you just give us a bit more depth on his relationship with one political leader, even Khadib in Granada, and show how that influenced him? So can we just get a bit more grip on what he was doing and the time through that relationship? Yeah, after he'd had a rather turbulent time in North Africa, he does move to Granada, Muslim, Spain. Sort of back near a home, right, is it? Yes, and he'd already met Ibn al-Khattib had been a political exile in Morocco, so they already knew each other. And in those days, if you said, well, I've been having dinner with Ibn Khaldun, probably people would say, Ibn Hu, whereas Ibn al-Khattib was the man.

He was the most famous scholar and statesman in the Western Islamic world. A very grand writer, a very famous writer, wrote rather good history, a very different kind of history from him Kaldun, much more concerned with individuals and motivation and the detailed scenario of what was happening, not interested in general laws of history. Ibn al-Khattib was an admirer of Ibn Khaldun, and Ibn Khaldun similarly admired Ibn al-Katib. What was the influence the greater man had on the rising man? I don't know that they admired each other.

They wrote such a different stuff, so I don't think it was any actual influence. What happened in Grenada was, again, Ibn Khaldun tries to raise a princeling in Grenada to become the future philosopher king, and he doesn't succeed. And Ibn Khatib gets very ratty with Ibn Khaldun, feeling that his influence is being encroached upon. And Ibn Khaldun, for once, backs down and asks to be sent away, whereupon their friendly relationships resume. Once even Khaduans back in North Africa, their corresponding great friendship, they recognize each other as the two top intellectuals. And it's noticeable that when Ibn Khaldun writes his autobiography towards the end of his life, he quotes an awful lot of letters from Il al-Khattib for two. reasons. One, Ibn al-Qatib's a very good writer, and two, it's kind of name-dropping. I knew

Ibn al-Qatib. Robert Hoyland, I'd like to just say more about the political setup there, and we just try to envisage the courts, how many people were involved, what he's doing, moving from one place to another, because his work in the field was so influential, as Arnold Toynbee admired so much, in the way he wrote and what he wrote and what he wrote about history, theory. Can we just go on from what. Robert Owen said, and talk more about the political setup at the time. Well, the great empires, first of the Amoravids and Mohads in West Africa, have now fallen away.

And so we're left with a whole host of small competing dynasties, the Merinids in Fez, the Amdilwadids in Tlem Sen, the Hafsids in Tunis. And, as Hugh Kennedy said, even sub-dinasties, within that. Lots of the port cities, for example, were held by sub-r rulers. And there the courts could be really quite basic. You've got a very minimal government, really. You need military powers, so there's someone in charge of that. You need the basic administration of writing the documents you need and things like that. Are we talking about wealthy courts? Are we talking about places where learning was encouraged

and flourished and patronised? Definitely. Although it's portrayed often very negatively this kind of disintegration of the Muslim world. Courts, numerous little courts, in some ways, can help scholarship because each ruler they know what they're meant to be seen as is a patron of learning. And so they try and attract scholars to them. That tradition continues even despite the disintegration,

because that was very high tradition for centuries, wasn't it? Yeah, very definitely. It leads to a rather funny paradox in the Islamic world where it's precisely often at periods of disintegration. So, for example, when the Abbasid world disintegrates in Iran, called the lots of little courts pop up, led by little dynasts, and it's actually a period of cultural efflorescence. It's often referred to as the period of Islamic humanisms

in the 11th, 10th, 11th, 12th centuries. Also, because Spain is changing, the Christian, different Christian rulers are trying to infiltrate and take more control of Muslim areas. And so a number of Muslim scholars are thinking, well, the winds are going against us, and they actually go back to Africa, and they are looking for courts, for patronage.

When we say patronage, we're looking, talking about, you know, a salary, maybe a teaching job at a college or grants of land. For example, Im Chalduan in Egypt was given now a farm in the Faiom oasis near Cairo just to be able to support him. Looking at a livelihood that will keep you going, be able to practice your scholarship, be able to write in peace and so on. He's been described quite vividly as this intrigue. the treacherous person, this man, as it were,

and by the sound of it, rightly imprisoned for stabbing people in the back. Was that, was he thought, would that be typical of the time, or was he outstandingly treacherous, intriguing, etc.? I wouldn't really agree with the term treacherous. He's simply ambitious, an Egyptian colleague remarks of how he adored public office. And he certainly... Oh, him can't call him.

Yes, and he's certainly an opportunist, the example Robert Irwin gave, The vizier al-Hassanim Omar gets him out of prison. Another sultan comes along when Sulaiman kicks out the vizier. But Ibn Khadoum doesn't go to the defence of the vizier. He quickly joins up with the new sultan. But in a situation which Hugh Kennedy described where you really have so many courts and so much intriguing, basically you've got to look out for yourself to some extent.

So he's an astute survivor, I will put it as. And it's a grand old age, doesn't they? 75 or 76. That's right, yes. Very unusual by the sound of it. Yes. I suppose also when he comes from a very important

and long-established bureaucratic family, so he has his family reputation to think of. And this is a world where land ownership doesn't provide for elites. There isn't a continuity of land ownership. So what's kind of,

your main capital as an elite family is your knowledge and education and your ability to put your offspring into positions of power, and it's their duty to kind of maintain that. So trying to stay and get up in high office is extremely important. Now, very significantly, very significantly, from around 1365, he was sent on missions to the Berber tribes in the North African Sahara Desert. Now, this was very important for him.

Can you briefly explain why, because we'll be going into that in some detail? We're brought in in different ways. He seems to have, he doesn't explain how. but a number of different sultans commission him to do propaganda work to bring the tribes on side. It's important for the leaders because it gives them military manpower for trying to prosecute their various wars. It makes Imchaldun into a very important power broker. A lot of sultans later on are seeking his services in that direction. So whether that's important in and of itself to him that he actually.

he can set portray himself as a major power broker for them. He obviously uses these relations when he wants his period of sabbatical and he's got a bit fed up all the politicking and he goes off for four years to write his great muqadima. He's able to find refuge with a particular Bedouin clan and he left alone in their protection. You need protection in these desert tribes especially, so potentially that's important.

But he's our autobiography doesn't exactly make it clear. Hugh Kennedy, but he did a few years later in 1375, as it were, withdraw from public life as far as I've read from the notes, and wrote his history of the Arabic world and also his philosophy of history, the Mogadima. And the Berbers, the Bedouin, were very important to that. So why did he suddenly leave public life? We have a two-track, even Haldun from now,

and for the rest of this conversation, the great scholar, although unrecognised in his time, and the man who's still intriguing, knocking around from court to court and so on. So have we anything that tells us why he took this big chunk of time out of an ambitious life to go into the desert with a particular tribe and write these books? I think he'd been thinking about it for some time. I think like lots of intellectuals, he lived in this sort of fantasy. If only I could get away from all this everyday stuff and just hide myself away,

I'm going to write a great book. But he did. And he did, unlike lots of other people. He made it. But then in the end, the lure of the wide world comes back, and, you know, four years is enough. First of all, why did he go there then? What took him there then?

Before he comes back, let's get him there. He went away for over three years and wrote this book in a remote plant in the desert. So come to do anything? Come in his early 40s. He had quite a lot of experience of the world, and I think he felt exactly that he needed a sabbatical. and he had these ideas

and the Mukadama seems to have been written very fast it's not written in particularly finely tuned Arabic it seems to be written very fast and he himself speaks of the ideas just pouring out of his mind and so on he's scribble scribble scribble you know he has to get it down

and he's very excited by these ideas clearly he's worked out what he wants to say and I think it's just a career choice if you like at that moment Can we then, Robert Owen, move into the writing? And I want to keep the Bedwin and the Desert in mind because it seems to me that that becomes very important to. So we've got to, first of all, talk briefly by him as an historian,

because we get that out of the way, and then as a philosopher of ideas. As a historian, he wrote, well, you tell me. He wrote, first, and what he's most famous for, the Mukadima, or the pro-legomenon, the introduction, to his big history, and that's his most exciting work where he explores what is plausible in history, how the laws of history work, how society's rise and decline. He followed this up with a massive history, the Kitabali Bar, which he originally conceived of

as a history of North Africa, of the Berbers and Arabs in the region of Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria, but subsequently expanded it to a world history, and he finally follows this up with a kind of autobiographical memoir come history which he wrote in Egypt, where he details his account of his meeting with Tamerlane. I think what is important about, we can't go on talking about Yvind Khaldun without registering the fact that Ibn Khaldun lived through the Black Death. It gave him a sense that things had changed, that society, that the world before the Black Death was very different from the world after. He lost a great number of his family as well. He lost, he lost his parents, he lost most of his teachers, towns and villages were deserted,

it had a devastating effect. And it gives Ibn Kaldun's philosophy of history a rather pessimistic tone. But it also gives him the sense that societies are different at different times. It's very obvious to us as modern historians, but his peers and predecessors among Islamic historians tended to write as if 9th century Baghdad was very much the same as 14th century Baghdad that things never changed very much. But Ibn Kaldun had this sense that, yes, things were...

had changed and they would continue to change. And he was writing precisely a moment of great change. And one of the things that comes out in the margins of his Mukadama is that the bases of power are moving away from where they had been in the Islamic world to the north. Now, it's not clear what he meant by the north. He may have meant Europe. The reconquista is taking place

and the Muslims are losing ground in Andalusia and so on and the Europe is making great technological changes and so on. Or it may have meant the Ottomans. The Ottoman Sultan is still in its early stages, but he may have been aware of that. So Robert Hyland, he wrote this great and quite rare history, which included the Burbers and so on. And then he developed the theory of history,

which you all want to get onto. This is the thing that he is most lauded for, remembered for, and as centuries went on and became more influential. So let's talk about this theory of history in the book. What is he saying and what's he saying that's new? First of all, what's he saying? What's startling new

in the first words, actually, is that the object of history is knowledge of social organisation. He plays up the fact that no one's thought of this before in his Islamic world, and he's right, really. It's certainly not a sort of social, sociological aspect to history. I mean, history has been what God did through men before then.

God is interestingly left out of it. It's not that he isn't religious, he acknowledges God, Quran, he's very knowledgeable in Islamic law, but God doesn't play a part in history. The centre is man. One of the key concepts is this word, Asabia, which gets generally translated, group feeling or social cohesion.

It's the real cornerstone of his work. Group feeling leads to another word, mulk, which gets translated as royal authority, really just means kingship or rule, but all sorts of rule group feeling is necessary for it, and it will lead towards it. And royal authority can't exist without it. It needs it to get started.

Can we develop Asabar, because that seemed to be very central, as you say, core to him. If I'm right, I'm harping on about this a bit, but this is what he found when he went in the desert with the Burbos and the bed went in here. Yeah, it's the most... He's a very good sociologist, of his world because the cities are in a very narrow strip along the coast.

The Sahara Desert, this huge de Atlas Mountains, vast areas where tribal organization is the norm, that is self-help groups that are based, whether really or fictively, on kinship, and solidarity, this tribal solidarity, the Asabia, the group feeling. That's what binds them together. It allows them to live in the desert. He says, no tribes, no one. can exist in the desert without this group feeling. It's necessary for people must help each other to live in this difficult environment.

It gives them military strength. He gives them virtue. He actually gives it a very, it becomes equivalent to convert us in the Roman sense. And also he said it's partly because they were very close together. No man was earning more than any other man. They were very much a group. Can you tell us a bit more about why he admired just because they, it wasn't just because they could survive in the back end of the Atlas Mountains,

because of the way they worked as a unit, wasn't it? Yes, it seemed to the simplicity of their life as he saw it seemed to appeal to him, whether as in cities, people are so much worrying about their own worldly desires and desire for luxury and so on, that it just leads to corruption of any group feeling. There is no osamaia group feeling in cities. You're only going to get it in the desert,

and it's obviously something that really impressed him. And to him, it is reality, He actually has another principle which is very important. Was it mutabaqa? Your historical idea should bear relation to reality. And to him, this is what he saw, that the tribes are coming and going, taking over cities. Unfortunately, they themselves get weakened

by this terrible desire for luxury and worldly desires, and in their turn they collapse. So can we take this further on, Hugh Kennedy? He saw Dennis's declining. He had this idea that took five generations. He had how many away at the number? Can you just say how this happened? And Robert Hollins pointed out that they came in like wolves from the desert

and ended up as sheep in the cities as it were. Fundamental to Ibn Caldun's view of human nature is the idea that people are shaped by their environment. And that was radical at the time. Yes. That underpins his whole view of human nature. And the Bedouin have this Asabia, as Robert was just saying, now because of their desert environment.

And he argues that this is necessary for the creation of the dynasty. But after the dynast, as it were, takes over a city and establishes a settled state, he becomes distanced from the Bedouin, the tribesman, who had put him in power, so to speak. And they either get seduced by the luxuries of the city and lose, over two or three generations, lose their Bedouin strength, if you like. Or they drift away from the dynasty and go back to the Bedouin life and a loss to the dynasty in that sort of way. And inevitably, the dynast, the ruler, starts to employ professional soldiers, professional bureaucrats.

There's no longer this body of people sharing this assabia in support of the dynasty. And he paints a very interesting and uncannily accurate portrayal of how the first ruler is the tough, hardy man from the desert, the second ruler is the man who has... This is when they conquered and moved in the cities, yes. The second ruler is the man who sets up the bureaucracy and so on. The third ruler is the man who starts to enjoy the luxury and begins not to pay attention to politics anymore. And distances himself from the group,

which means he loses contact with the idea of a severe. Exactly. And he relies on courtiers who will tell him what he wants to hear and on bureaucrats who have their own interests to look after. And then in the fourth and fifth generation, the rulers, essentially, abandoned themselves to luxury and display, they've lost touch with the sort of reality that brought them to power, and inevitably. And this is, I think, key to the way he thinks, inevitably,

this dynasty will collapse and be replaced by another group with their newly forged Asabia, if you like, coming into the town with a new ruler. And so the whole cyclical, cyclical, process will go on for one generation to another. Robert, I mean, to what extent is he drawing on existing Middle Eastern and North African history to reach these conclusions? Yeah, he's not drawing on history writing. He's original in that sense. But the model he's formed of the rise and decline of dynasties coming out from the desert and invading cities and then becoming civilized and then decadent is very much patterned on what had been happening in North Africa, particularly in the 12th and 13th centuries

with first the Almaravids and then the Almohads and then the Merinids, successive dynasties that come in from the desert, take over the cities, and then slowly decay in the cities. I think it's a very moralistic view of history that, you know, the dynasties decline because of extravagance, pride, luxury and so on.

It's a rather pious version of history, I think. I think there's a lot of religion in Ibn Caldoun's version of history. The thing, one of the factors that leads to the decay of dynasties once they occupy the cities is that the tribes that have come in, settle in the towns, and they lose the Asebia. And so the ruler can no longer rely on that tribe for military strength. And therefore the ruler is forced to hire mercenaries, and that's very expensive.

And therefore he has to raise more taxes. And Ibn Khaldun's a supply-side economist. he believes that it's bad to remove money for the ruler to remove money from the economy into his treasury. That leads to a diminishment of wealth for... In the long run, it's bad news. Yeah, it's kind of primitive Keynesianism.

Can I just come back to... Let's stress, because there's great talk in your writings of his originality, his radicalism. We're talking about the 14th century. This originality and radicalism wasn't recognized for three. of four centuries and then only in the 19th century he got going. To what extent, therefore, Hugh Kennedy, can we talk about, did he draw on previous thinkers,

Aristotle and Averos, the Andalutian Muslim philosopher and even Plato? He did, to an extent, he's certainly aware of these writings, but he's also very consciously, self-consciously new. This is one of the things that marks him out from many of his predecessors, who would say a work continuing in great tradition of history writing. He says, I'm doing something completely new. Nobody thought of this before. Is he right?

Yes, more or less. Particularly the emphasis on environment as a determining factor in human behaviour, I think, and that people are inevitably shaped by their environment, I think is a very new idea. And his discussion of the Bedouin is particularly interesting. He's very conflicted, almost, in his view of the Bedouin, There's a sort of noble savage almost element in his view of them. They live this tough, hardy life.

They've got all the virtues of people who live in a harsh environment. They cultivate the loyalty because that's necessary for survival, as we've just been hearing. On the other hand, he says the Bedouin are extremely destructive. And he says, very interesting passage, you only have to look at North Africa, all these ruined cities and so on. Who's responsible for that? The Bedouin. And whenever Bedouin come to power, they have no interest in cultivation. They just steal things and break things up and smash things up.

and generally cause mayhem. So it's very, I'm not a nuanced view, really. It's a very, I think, a very divided view about what these people are, their strengths and their weaknesses. Robert Hoyland, can you take that on? You raise your hand, but, and tell us a bit more about his theory of good political leadership. But first of all, what you were going to say is.

Well, I wanted to make a point because it's not really played up in the secondary literature, because Sue Kennedy's totally right, there is a very new element to his thinking. But he's very aware of the old, and there's a huge tradition of Islamic political writing and writing about the way kingship and rule works in Islam. And he has to deal with that, and he does it in an extremely clever way, because both terms Arsabir and Mulk are very negative in actually Islamic political theory. A subaer is actually partisanship when tribes are law to their tribes and not to the ruling dynasty.

Mulk is kingship. It's bad because it's contrast. to Khalifa, which is caliphal rule. Kaleful rule is by Islamic principles. It's joined with religion, whereas Mulk is earthly rule. It's dynasty, it's family members succeeding each other rather than the election of the best person and so on. So how does he deal with this?

Because he sees Mulk as a very positive thing to which people aspire, as they should do. And what he does is he says that Mulk is leadership by rational insight to help people in this earthly world, whereas chilefa is leadership by religious insight to help them for the other world. What happens in the beginning then, because he has to deal with the first caliphs,

of Medina caliphs, this is crucial. He says that, yes, in their time, they were chalifers, they were proper caliphs. They ruled in this more religious way. But they could only do this by rejecting the outer world. Omar famously, very, walked around in rags, didn't have a treasury, and so on. They kind of kept it out.

but this couldn't go on. So when Ma'Awia, he says very explicitly, defeats Ali, he might have been wrong, but he was doing what had to happen. Milk could be the only way forward, what gets translated as royal authority. He had, when he appoints his son, everyone sees it as bad, but it had to happen for Mulk to continue. And he gives the defence that otherwise the whole venture of Islam would have collapsed.

Can we just nail this one, Hugh Kennedy, before we move on. Could he be described as a... A religious thinker? No. Well, I think that Robert Darwin may be about to scream a meal. I think not. I think what is striking about is his thought is it's moralistic, to be sure, but it's a very secular morality, what works and what doesn't.

I think he is a very Hobbesian view, if you like, of human society. You need strong authority or people will go around doing bad things to each other. Yeah, exactly. So I think what we've just been hearing about, the necessity of political authority and therefore anybody who can assert this authority and make it work should be supported.

So Hobbes' idea 200 years later that life was nasty British and short therefore we had to get together to have one holding force, the Leviathan, was already present in his work there but you wanted to say something about his religious Yes, I think he is a religious think I think religion is primary

It's not obvious, but it is primary in Ivan Caldian's writing. He was an extremely pious Maliki Muslim. He was a Sufi like Ibn al-Khattib. And when he writes about Asabir, he writes about it in quite a positive style. But that's because Asabia is God's way of moving society along. God underpins everything that happens in history, and there is a divine purpose to history. And also, when he's writing about these tribes that invade,

settled society, they can set up, they can conquer and they can set up dynasties, but the most successful ones, the only really successful ones, are ones who not only have Asabir, but also have dean, religion. And this obviously applies to the early Islamic conquests in 7th century, but it also

applies to Almaravids and Almahads who had quite a strong religious agenda. He actually sees Islam as a way of the way these tribes got out of being centred just on themselves and came together and made them, could make them a great sweeping force, is that right?

Yes, and a prophet or a religious leader was necessary for the most successful movements because a prophet or religious leader brought the tribes, or brought tribes people together and, as it were, undermined or replaced their ancient rivalries, I think.

Late in his life he went to Egypt, which he thought was a wonderful place, and he became a judge there, and he had a coherent theory of justice, as one might expect. What did he find in Egypt that almost contradicted some of the things he'd been saying in his already written theories. I'm not sure as one mentioned this coherent theory of justice. I'm not sure what do you mean. I mean, he was very rigorous as he saw it in his autobiography and his application of just proper Islamic law.

And this seems to have got him into trouble because he wouldn't accept, for example, the intercession of notables and high officials. Very quickly he was kicked out of office by a kind of concerted group of lobbyists to the Sultan. He does have in the Mukadama a number of points at which he stresses that in unjust rule, he's bad for civilisation. If a ruler

acts in a kind of arbitrary way, if he seizes people's property and land, in particular he uses forced labour, which is particularly bad because he sees labour as a free man's source for making a living. So, unjust behaviour in that sense

is to be avoided. Sorry, Robert. Robert Irwin. what he found in Egypt was something quite new, fairly new to him. He must have known it from a distance, but he's brought up directly with the Mamluk regime. And the Mamluk system works by recruiting slaves from the South Russian stepp Turks and training them to be slave soldiers.

And so there's a continuous meritocracy of new slaves being brought in and being promoted to become generals and administrators. And Ibn Khadun thought this was rather marvelous, because you've got the Asabir, because these people have been children in the tribes and the steps, and then they're educated together, and they get a kind of Asabir in the barracks from fighting together and training together. And Ibn Khaldun seems to have thought, he doesn't spend much time on it, but he seems to have thought that the Mamluk regime had found a way of avoiding the inevitable cycle of rise and decline. The other big thing about this time in Egypt, partly it was much safer place to be than Tunis or Fez or.

It had big libraries, and it had much more resources and there were far more scholars in Egypt. And indeed, scholars tended to migrate from North Africa or Iraq to Egypt. So it was a much more stimulating, much more scholarly place. Then he met the, we can't, in 40-01 he negotiated with it, I understand, the Mongol conqueror Tamer. Can you tell us about that here? Yes, he'd gone to Damascus to negotiate. Tamerlane was based in Iran, but was invading Syria. And it swept right across from right to India.

He conquered Aleppo and he's outside the walls of Damascus. And Ibn Khaldun goes out to negotiate with him. What was he going to negotiate? I mean, this man had sort of gone thousands of miles. And Imman Caldun is going out to say, what's going to space? Will you stop? He wants to arrange the peaceful surrender of Damascus. And he makes himself quite unpopular within the city

because there are people who want to hold out. That does seem to be a distinguishing characteristic, doesn't it? repeating. Well, judging by what happened to people who resisted Tamerlane, it was a sensible and prudent option. So he goes out to see him, and he speaks for an interpreter, but he gives him, according to Ibn Caldoun, at least, rather charmingly a sort of history lesson.

And he talks about Asabia and all his ideas of history to the great man who seems to appreciate it and is generous to him and so on. It's a slightly sort of self-serving account in a way. But it does make the point as an interlemen he's got something to offer the great conqueror. He can talk about history. And he says, you want to know about this? Well, let's go and read the great history of Tubbery

and things like the great early Islamic history and find out about these things. So it gives them a little history lesson and a little seminar on political power and so on. And in the end, for all sorts of different reasons, Tamerlone withdrew from Damascus and he had other problems on to deal with. And Ibn Caldulah goes back to Karate.

Tell us everybody about it. Robert Hoyland, can we just brisked down for it? because we're running out of time. His ideas capture the imagination of the European intelligentship. Let's move right to the 19th century with August Comte. Why did he take these ideas up, and they've swam further and further into the centre of the pool ever since? I suppose it was because European sociology also started

with this question of social cohesion. It's felt at the time August Compt is writing, particularly Durkheim, that their societies are being more challenged to the, old sort of traditions that are holding society together are changing. So it's a question, what does hold people together? And this is exactly the question that Ibn Khaldun's dealing with. So this rather captured the imagination. And he developed...

Sorry, Robert, Robert Owen. There's another part of the background. It's very striking that it's the French who take up Ibn Khaldun in the early mid-90th century. It's the French who first edit him and the French you first translate him. And part of the background to that, I think, is the French invasion of Algerian. in 1830 and then the move into Morocco subsequently. So the French scholars and administrators are very preoccupied with how to manage Berbers and Arabs in North Africa.

And Ibn Khaldun seems to provide a ground plan for them to work from. How does his reputation rest now, Hugh Kennedy? I think his reputation rests very high and he's particularly been rediscovered by Arab Muslim intellectuals in really since the Second World War. And a lot of Muslim scholars have been working on him and they see, in a sense, his career and his writing is a refutation of this idea that medieval Islam ran out of ideas and ran out of creative genius

and they can always point to him in Caldoun and say, look, this great thinker was produced very late in the golden age of Islam, so to speak, in the 14th, early 15th centuries. So he's a useful corrective to Western denigration of the creativeness. Just to recap the headline, he was without doubt way ahead of his, ahead of his time in what he was saying. Robert Irwin's shaking his head, he said it appears. You agree. Oh, it's the shaking head that agrees.

He was a one-off, I think. I'm not sure whether ahead or isn't necessarily right way, but he was a one-off, a very individual thinker with a very clear and distinctive view of human society and its evolution. Well, thank you very much. Hugh Kennedy, Robert Hoyland and Robert Irwin. Next week we'll be talking about unintended consequences in mathematics, for instance, a 17th century theorem

described even in the 1940s, as pure and useless went on to enable online encryption of credit card numbers. I've got an announcement. I'm pleased to say that today we're launching a new in-our-time website. For the first time, you can now access the complete archive of our past programmes, over 440 of them, back to when we started in October 1998.

Thank you very much for listening. If you've enjoyed this Radio 4 podcast, why not try others, such as Thinking Aloud, where Laurie Taylor discusses the latest social science research. To find out more, visit BBC.com. www.uk forward slash radio 4

Thank you.