Knowledge and Beauty in Classical Islam

An Aesthetic Reading of the Muqaddima by Ibn Khaldūn

Giovanna Lelli

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9781000205596
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Middle Eastern History
• Index: History

This volume offers an aesthetic reading of the Muqaddima by Ibn Khald?n (d. 1406), a text that has been studied up to the present as a work on historiography. It argues that the Muqaddima is also a comprehensive treatise on classical Arab-Islamic culture and provides a picture of classical Arab-Islamic aesthetics in its totality.

The theme of the book is the intrinsic connection between beauty and knowledge in the Muqaddima. Whenever Ibn Khald?n deals with the problem of knowledge and science, he also deals with the problem of sensual beauty as an instrument or an obstacle to attain it. Ibn Khald?n's philosophy of history is necessarily also an aesthetics of history. His key-notion of "group feeling", the physical, ethic and aesthetic virtue of Bedouin societies, is at once the origin of the ascent of centralised States and the cause of their ruin. It represents a tragic contradiction that applies to the history of the Maghreb but then takes a universal value. It reflects a range of other contradictions inherent to the "system" of classical Arab-Islamic aesthetics. These contradictions undermine the aesthetic system of the Muqaddima from within and provide decisive elements for the emergence of modern aesthetics.

Offering a comparative approach, the volume is a key resource to scholars and students interested in Arabic and Islamic studies, philosophy, aesthetics and global history.

1 Ibn Khaldūn and his historical context¹

 

The life of Ibn Khaldūn, intellectual and member of the Arab political-administrative ruling class of the fourteenth century is emblematic, both with respect to the society to which he belonged and to the fundamental leitmotiv of his aesthetics of history, which I shall analyse in this book. In his prologue to the A History of the Arab Peoples, the historian Albert Hourani (1993) takes the life of Ibn Khaldūn as an example in order to illustrate the profound, unshakeable unity of the classical Arab-Muslim culture along with its diversity, its cultural variety, its political fragmentation, the instability of its State institutions and the precariousness of human life. A civilisation in which a family from Southern Arabia, the Khaldūns, could return to Spain, its place of origin, six centuries after having left it, and still find itself in a familiar environment, could not but have a profound cultural unity.² Hourani goes on to maintain that this unity was the result of the Arabic language, a common body of knowledge and the belief in a sole creator God.

To Hourani’s words I should like to add that the unity and the cultural wealth of the classical Arab culture, its strength and its fragility are displayed in a masterly manner by the Muqaddima and appear in a particularly rich way in an aesthetic reading of the work.

In the course of his life, Ibn Khaldūn moved from one part of the Arab world to another, as was often common practice for the members of the cosmopolitan cultural élite to which he belonged. In the service of diverse dynasties of the Maghreb or Andalusia, he switched his allegiance whenever it proved advantageous to him or according to the changing fortunes of the States and their relationships with their client States. The ruling houses, in turn, suffered from a congenital vulnerability due to the egalitarian structure of their tribal-military social base. Indeed, the latter were able to overturn the State every time it came into conflict with their interests.³

The leitmotiv of the aesthetics of the Muqaddima is twofold: the virtues of the Bedouins which are contrasted with the vices of sedentary citizens; and the seeds of decadence that begin to destroy the most flourishing States from within, from the very moment of their birth. Both stem from observing the social and historical situation in the Maghreb and from the real political precariousness of its dynasties. However, the aesthetics of the Muqaddima is not an added ingredient in the historiographical vision of Ibn Khaldūn, but rather it is an integral part of its historiography: it springs from it and is explained through it.

Ibn Khaldūn was born in Tunis in 1332 and died in Cairo in 1406. His life is known to us mainly through his autobiography, al-Ta‘rīf (Introduction).⁴ His family belonged to the political-administrative ruling class. Originally from the Arab peninsula but having moved to Seville, towards the year 1230 they left Andalusia which had fallen prey to internal struggles. They settled in Tunis, at the time of the foundation of the Hafsid dynasty (Banū Ḥafṣ) (1228–1574), one of the dynasties of Bedouin origin in the Maghreb. The Khaldūn family was in their service and enjoyed their protection.

Ibn Khaldūn’s education was thorough and, in accordance with the canons of the time, included both the religious (the Qur’ān, the Sunna, theology and Islamic jurisprudence) and the rational sciences (philosophy, logic, mathematics, medicine and astronomy). He also received training in history and epistolography (the art of composing official letters according to the sophisticated rules and etiquette of the administration). When the Marinid dynasty (Banū Marīn) of Morocco conquered Tunisia for a certain time (in 1347), Ibn Khaldūn switched to their service. He thereby gave proof of great diplomatic ability that would last his entire life and also, as some saw it, of opportunism. In 1348, the plague devastated the entire Arab world and Ibn Khaldūn lost his parents, friends and masters. He was subsequently active as a courtier and official at various North West African courts (Tunis, Bougie and Fez). After an imprisonment of two years for having taken the wrong side in power politics, he entered the service of the Nasrid sultanate of Granada (Banū Naṣr), the last Arab sultanate in Spain, which would survive until the definite triumph of the Reconquista in 1492. After having returned to Morocco once more, he retired to a fortress (Qal‘at ibn Salāma, 1374–1378) in the Algerian desert to devote himself to composing the Muqaddima. From that point on, Ibn Khaldūn abandoned political life. In 1382, he finally settled and spent the rest of his days in Cairo, brilliant capital of the Mamluk dynasty (Mamlūk, pl. Mamālīk 1250–1517), where he devoted himself to teaching and the magistracy, in the role of judge (qāḍī), among the most prestigious for a Muslim intellectual. He would lose all his family in a shipwreck. Tradition has it that in Damascus he had met the Turco-Mongol conqueror Tamerlane, who had so admired his ability and culture that he invited him to enter his service as an adviser but that Ibn Khaldūn had refused.

The fourteenth century in which Ibn Khaldūn lived was a century of decline, from which the Arab-Islamic world never fully recovered again. The Arab-Islamic civilisation, whose political unity had begun to fragment as early as the ninth century, contained elements of great diversity but also of profound unity. It spread from the western Mediterranean to the coasts of India and the borders of China, and drew the surplus that was crucial for its growth from international long-distance commerce and trade. In the fourteenth century, the Arab East had not yet recovered from the devastating Mongol invasions of Gengis Khan (with the destruction of Baghdad in 1258), when it suffered the new and even more devastating invasions of the Mongol Tamerlane. The Timurids (fifteenth century), successors of Tamerlane, ruled in Iran and in Mesopotamia, while Egypt and Syria were governed by the Mamluks, a dynasty that was originally composed of Turkish military slaves in the service of the ‘Abbāsid caliphate. In Asia Minor, the rise of the Ottomans in the Balkans was temporarily halted by the Timurids (1402), only to begin again a few years later. Starting from the sixteenth century, the whole Arab world, with the exception of Morocco, would be transformed into Ottoman provinces. The Arab West, the Maghreb, was under the rule of the Hafsid dynasties of Tunisia (1228–1274) and of the Marinids of Morocco (1269–1420) who were mentioned above. In Spain, the Arab civilisation steadily declined in the face of the Reconquista, until the fall of the last Arab sultanate, the Nasrids of Granada, in 1492.

What is important to underline here are the social characteristics of the Maghreb, which constitute the principal object of observation for Ibn Khaldūn when developing his historiography. As Lacoste (1998) explains in detail, the social and economic structures of the Maghreb were different from those of the Arab East. In the East (Egypt and Mesopotamia), the farming component, dependent on the existence of great water courses, was fundamental in the social production, although the surplus which was crucial for the expansion of the States derived from international commerce. The farm labourers, tied to the States that directed the great irrigation works, were a servile manpower, bound by personal relationships to the ruling class. The Arab and Berber West, on the other hand, was made up of tribal, nomadic-pastoral societies who earned their vital surplus from the trade provided by the Sudanese Gold Route. As well as imposing tributes of various types on the population, the States participated in these benefits both indirectly by taxing the commercial transactions and directly through the merchants who were associated with them.

In the fourteenth century, the conflict that existed between the Hafsid and Marinid dynasties of the Maghreb was due to their desire to control the trade routes. The benefits to be had from trade were fabulous, but owing to its long-distance nature, it rendered the beneficiary States extremely vulnerable. This observation is obviously true for the entire Arab world but particularly for societies like those of the Maghreb whose pastoral economy remained a subsistence economy. In fact, it was enough for a trade route to be interrupted for diverse reasons for the States to rapidly go to ruin. The ruling class of the Maghreb was composed of an aristocracy of merchants, military and tribal chiefs, whose precarious situation was due to the fact that the fortunes made from trade which were not reinvested in the business could either be lost or confiscated by the State. In contrast, in the Arab East the ruling class was a military caste and often of foreign origin (especially Turkish).

It was no wonder then that the Muqaddima describes history as a tale of precariousness, given the nature of the social structures peculiar to the Maghreb. As we will examine in the following chapters, in the fine analysis of Ibn Khaldūn, the group feeling (‘aṣabiyya) was at once a deciding factor in the rise of the centralised States and the cause of their ruin.

Notes

1 The information contained in this chapter is very general. For a more detailed account, cf. among others, Yves Lacoste, Ibn Khaldoun: Naissance de l’Histoire, passé du tiers monde (Paris: La Découverte, 1998), the introductory pages of the translation of the Muqaddima by Vincent Monteil, Ibn Khaldūn: Discours sur l’histoire universelle (Paris: Sindbad, 1967–1968), and the translation by Franz Rosenthal, Ibn Khaldūn, Muqaddima, translated by Franz Rosenthal, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, Vols I–III (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1980 [1967]), the classics Muhsen Mahdi, Ibn Khaldūn’s Philosophy of History: A Study in the Philosophical Foundation in the Science of Culture London: Routledge, 1957), Charles Issawi, An Arab Philosophy of History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1986), and more recently Robert Irwin, Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2018).

2 Albert Hourani, A History of the Arab Peoples (London: Faber and Faber, 2013 [1993]), 4.

3 Yves Lacoste, Ibn Khaldoun: Naissance de l’Histoire, passé du tiers monde (Paris: La Découverte, 1998), 123ff.

4 Ibn Khaldūn, Al-ta‘rīf bi Ibn Khaldūn wa riḥlatihi gharban wa sharqan [Presenting Ibn Khaldūn and his Journey West and East], edited by Muḥammad Tāwīt al-Ṭanjī (Cairo: s.n., 1370/1951).

References

Hourani, Albert (2013 [1993]) A History of the Arab Peoples. London: Faber and Faber.

Ibn Khaldūn (1370/1951) Al-ta‘rīf bi Ibn Khaldūn wa riḥlatihi gharban wa sharqan [Presenting Ibn Khaldūn and his Journey West and East], ed. Muḥammad Tāwīt al-Ṭanjī. Cairo: s.n.

Ibn Khaldūn (1967–1968) Muqaddima, trans. Vincent Monteil, Ibn Khaldūn: Discours sur l’histoire universelle. Paris: Sindbad.

Ibn Khaldūn (1980 [1967]) Muqaddima, trans. Franz Rosenthal, The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, Vols I–III. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Irwin, Robert (2018) Ibn Khaldun: An Intellectual Biography. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Issawi, Charles (1986) An Arab Philosophy of History. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.

Lacoste, Yves (1998) Ibn Khaldoun: Naissance de l’Histoire, passé du tiers monde. Paris: La Découverte.

Mahdi, Muhsin (1957) Ibn Khaldūn’s Philosophy and History: A Study in the Philosophical Foundation in the Science of Culture. London: Routledge.

2 Beauty and knowledge

The meaning of ‘beauty’ (jamāl) and ‘knowledge’ (‘ilm) in the Muqaddima

In order to embark on our aesthetic and epistemological journey through the Muqaddima, we shall need adequate tools. First of all, it is necessary to clarify the meaning of ‘beauty’ (jamāl) and the meaning of ‘knowledge’ (‘ilm) and in what context these two terms are used by Ibn Khaldūn. This is a preliminary and general exposition, regarding which it is necessary to point out from the start that neither the term ‘ilm, nor even the term jamāl exhaust the vast semantic fields of ‘knowledge’ and ‘beauty’ – or their reciprocal relationships in the Muqaddima.

The meaning of beauty (jamāl)

In the Muqaddima, the word ‘jamāl’ is far from being the sole occupant of the semantic field of intelligible and sensual beauty. Other terms also contribute to rendering its meaning, like kahyr (the good), ḥusn (goodness, beauty) and kamāl (perfection). In fact, jamāl is rather a rare word in the Muqaddima, because it only occurs few times.¹ However, what makes it interesting is that, unlike the other terms that indicate beauty, it indicates only beauty and only sensual beauty, despite having many different connotations. For this reason, jamāl i...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgement
• Preface: the rationale and aims of the book
• 1 Ibn Khaldūn and his historical context
• 2 Beauty and knowledge: the meaning of ‘beauty’ (jamāl) and ‘knowledge’ (‘ilm) in the Muqaddima
• 3 Knowledge and beauty in history: epistemological beauty and phenomenological beauty in history
• 4 Human geography and the Unseen world: knowledge and beauty in human geography and in the perceptions of the Unseen (ghayb)
• 5 Bedouin society: knowledge and beauty in the Bedouin society of Arab paganism (jāhiliyya)
• 6 The dawn of Islam: knowledge and beauty at the dawn of Islam
• 7 Sedentary civilisation: the aesthetic State
• 8 The Muqaddima as a tragedy
• Bibliography
• Index