Toynbee and Ibn Khaldun

Robert Irwin’s 1997 article “Toynbee and Ibn Khaldun,” published in Middle Eastern Studies, offers a nuanced and erudite comparative analysis of the historical philosophies of Arnold J. Toynbee (1889–1975) and Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406). Irwin’s central aim is not merely to juxtapose the two thinkers but to interrogate the nature and limits of Toynbee’s engagement with Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddima, exposing both the productive affinities and the profound distortions that arise when Toynbee appropriates the North African historian as an intellectual forebear. The essay functions simultaneously as a historiographical critique, a study in intellectual transmission, and a subtle reflection on the politics of historical interpretation in the twentieth century.

Irwin begins by situating Toynbee historically and intellectually: as a British scholar writing in the turbulent interwar and postwar decades, shaped by the collapse of empires, the rise of nationalisms, and his experiences at Chatham House and the Paris Peace Conference. This context is vital, for Irwin convincingly argues that Toynbee’s magnum opus, A Study of History, was not an abstract exercise in universal history but a deeply engaged response to the political crises of his age—particularly European imperialism and the emergence of the post-colonial world. Yet, in seeking to transcend Eurocentrism, Toynbee turned to non-Western historians like Ibn Khaldun as validation for his own cyclical model of civilizational rise and fall.

One of Irwin’s key contributions is his demonstration that Toynbee’s Ibn Khaldun is, in many respects, a construct. Toynbee read the Muqaddima not in the original Arabic but through William MacGuckin de Slane’s mid-nineteenth-century French translation—and, more significantly, through the interpretive lens of French colonial scholarship, especially Emile Gautier’s Les siècles obscurs du Maghreb (1927). Gautier’s portrayal of Ibn Khaldun as a solitary genius in a “nasty brutish civilization” who lamented the destructive Arab nomadic invasions (notably the Bani Hilal) profoundly shaped Toynbee’s reception. Irwin shows how this mediated reading led Toynbee to overemphasize the Hilali invasion as the central trauma of Maghrebi history, whereas Ibn Khaldun himself gave greater analytical weight to the Black Death as the catalytic event necessitating his historiographical project.

Irwin further unpacks the conceptual divergences between the two thinkers, particularly regarding the notion of ‘asabiyya. Toynbee translates this as “esprit de corps” and treats it as a quasi-Bergsonian vital force largely monopolized by nomadic “external proletariats.” However, Irwin meticulously demonstrates that Ibn Khaldun’s understanding of ‘asabiyya was more complex: it could be found among urban elites (such as the Mamluks), was not exclusively tied to blood kinship, and could be artificially cultivated—as in the case of military slaves who preserved “nomadic virtues” while serving sedentary states. Toynbee’s failure to grasp this nuance leads him to mischaracterize Ibn Khaldun as denying any social cohesion to urban societies, which in turn reinforces Toynbee’s own deterministic model that sees nomads as reactive, uncreative forces pushed by climate and pulled by civilizational vacuums.

Moreover, Irwin reveals that Toynbee’s real intellectual influences often lay closer to home than to the Maghreb. Theories of climatic determinism from Ellsworth Huntington, frontier models from Owen Lattimore (itself informed by Spengler), and even literary visions of nomadic hordes from Thomas de Quincey shaped Toynbee’s thought more directly than Ibn Khaldun’s sociological insights. Most strikingly, Toynbee’s interpretation of the Mamluk and Ottoman states owes more to Plato’s Republic—as filtered through Alfred Lybyer’s early twentieth-century orientalist reading—than to any authentic engagement with Islamic political theory. This results in the now-familiar but historically problematic metaphor of rulers as “shepherds,” Janissaries as “sheepdogs,” and subjects as a passive “flock.”

Irwin does not deny Toynbee’s genuine admiration for Ibn Khaldun or the real impact A Study of History had in introducing Ibn Khaldun to an English-speaking audience before Rosenthal’s translation. Indeed, Irwin acknowledges Toynbee’s influence on major Middle Eastern historians such as Albert Hourani and Marshall Hodgson. Yet he insists on a crucial distinction: while Toynbee sought to write a universal history of civilizations, Ibn Khaldun aimed to explain the specific dynamics of dynastic rule (dawla) in the Islamic West. Toynbee’s attempt to universalize Ibn Khaldun’s localized model not only distorts its original intent but also reveals the limits of cross-cultural intellectual borrowing when filtered through colonial and Eurocentric frameworks—even by thinkers ostensibly critical of those frameworks.

In sum, Irwin’s article is a masterclass in intellectual historiography. He carefully disentangles layers of reception, exposes the ideological underpinnings of scholarly interpretation, and restores Ibn Khaldun’s thought to its proper historical and textual context. The essay serves as a cautionary tale about the dangers of “pseudo-affiliation”—a term Irwin borrows from Toynbee himself—where later thinkers enlist earlier ones as ancestors without fully engaging their ideas. At the same time, Irwin treats both figures with scholarly respect, acknowledging their genius while refusing to let mythologization obscure historical accuracy. His work remains essential reading for anyone interested in the global circulation of historical ideas, the legacy of orientalism, or the perennial question of how civilizations understand their own rise and decline.

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Irwin, R. (1997). Toynbee and Ibn Khaldun. Middle Eastern Studies, 33(3), 461–479. https://doi.org/10.1080/00263209708701164