Ibn Khaldun’s Systems Thinking Approach to Property and Political Legitimacy

Abstract

This article examines Ibn Khaldun’s foundational economic principle that active human work—expressed through the ever-present, transformative agency of the hand (yad)—produces rightful ownership (kasb) that cannot be surrendered except through compensation (ʿiwaḍ). This dynamic relationship between labor, possession, and reciprocal exchange not only legitimates individual property but also establishes the systemic conditions under which the State may impose taxes without descending into injustice. In grounding political and fiscal legitimacy in the natural processes of human work rather than in inherited legal categories, Ibn Khaldun articulates a worldview that sets him apart from classical Muslim jurists and places him in a category of his own within Islamic intellectual history. This same systems-thinking framework—through which he analyzes value, authority, and historical change—has rendered him profoundly misunderstood or entirely un-understood by many modern scholars, who often read him through juridical or nationalist lenses rather than through the systems thinking principles he himself constructs.

The Grammar of Work

Ibn Khaldun’s Muqaddima is often celebrated for its breadth—its sociology of tribes and states, its reflections on economy and labor, its analysis of dynastic cycles, and its pioneering historical method. However, beneath these well-known contributions lies a coherent philosophical foundation that has remained largely unnoticed: a systems-thinking framework in which human work, embodied presence, and reciprocal exchange form the structural basis of economic life and political legitimacy. This framework diverges sharply from the classical Islamic juristic tradition, which typically grounds property and taxation in legal categories derived from revelation, precedent, or communal consensus. Ibn Khaldun, by contrast, roots ownership in human agency itself. Property is neither a divine allotment nor a State concession. In Ibn Khaldun’s mind, ownership is the outcome of active work—the continuous, transformative engagement of the human hand (yad) with the material world—through which value is produced (kasb) and responsibility is established.

From within this framework, the principle that “whatever the hand acquires is protected against others except with compensation (ʿiwaḍ)” functions not as a legal maxim but as a universal rule of economic justice. It is from this principle that Ibn Khaldun derives his view of legitimate and illegitimate taxation. The State may take from what workers have produced only when it provides commensurate public goods—security, justice, infrastructure, and the material conditions that enable ongoing projects that serve the public good. Whenever taxation becomes detached from this reciprocal logic, it falls into the category of unjust exaction (ẓulm), eroding the incentives that sustain economic activity and triggering the long-term patterns of decline that Ibn Khaldun traces through his theory of dynastic cycles. In other words, political authority itself is sustained only when it aligns with the natural moral order embedded in work.

Despite its clarity, this principle has been obscured in both premodern and modern scholarship. Classical Muslim jurists interpreted property through legal prescription rather than through systems of production, and thus rarely appreciated the work-based foundation that Ibn Khaldun develops. Modern scholars, meanwhile, have generally read the Muqaddima through the lenses of institutionalism, nationalism, or Weberian rationalization, missing the underlying systemic logic that ties together Ibn Khaldun’s anthropology, economics, and political theory. By foregrounding his use of descriptive categories such as mutaʿāraf—which signal the sociological rather than normative basis of fiscal practice—this article recovers a vision of Ibn Khaldun as a thinker for whom economic justice, political stability, and historical transformation all arise from the interaction of work, possession, and reciprocity. Recognizing this paradigm clarifies his difference from classical jurists and reveals the depth and originality of his contribution to the history of economic and political thought.

Ibn Khaldun’s Unique Contribution to Islamic and Global Economic Thought

Modern interpreters of Ibn Khaldun often focus on his cyclical theory of dynastic rise and fall, or on his sociology of work, wealth, and political authority. Moreoer, underlying all these themes is a remarkably coherent—and often overlooked—ethical principle of economic life: property originates in work, and its legitimacy arises from the human hand (yad) that transforms, appropriates, and sustains resources. In Ibn Khaldun’s formulation, kasb (property; acquired wealth) and yad (active possessive grasp, transformative, or productive control) together generate rightful ownership. What individuals or groups work upon, transform, cultivate, or produce becomes theirs not because the State bestows it, nor because lineage entitles them, but because their effort (sa`y) and presence establish a natural priority of claim. This principle is expressed in one of al-Muqaddima’s most important lines: “What the hand has obtained becomes inaccessible to others except with compensation (‘iwaḍ).” For Ibn Khaldun, this is not merely a legal observation. It is a universal rule governing social, economic, and political relations. It is the philosophical core of his understanding of livelihood (maʿāsh), wealth (māl), and justice (ʿadl).

This principle grounds Ibn Khaldun’s account of the origins of property in lived human activity. Wealth is not a metaphysical possession, nor a mere legal artifact. Wealth, for Ibn Khaldun, is a product of transformative human engagement. When he writes that livelihood consists of “the seeking of sustenance and striving to obtain it,” he ties the concept of life (ʿaysh) directly to the productive exertion that makes life possible. Humans must work to extract, transform, or cultivate God-given resources; without this effort there is no wealth and, indeed, no livelihood. His taxonomy of economic activity—foraging, hunting, animal husbandry, cultivation, craft production, trade—serves to illustrate that every form of lawful wealth arises (hususl) from human effort (sa`y) applied to the raw materials of the world. Nothing is owned simply because it exists. A thing becomes owned because someone has devoted work to its acquisition (tahsil), refinement, or preservation.

The companion concept to kasb is yad. Once work has been expended, the worker must maintain a form of possession, protection, oversight, and stewardship over the object or resource. Ibn Khaldun uses yad to describe this possessive relationship, not as a metaphor but as a real mode of presence: the hand that holds, guards, tends, or manages a thing gives rise to rightful control. The pastoralist with his herd, the cultivator in his field, the craftsperson at her loom—all exercise yad by devoting sustained, embodied presence to what they produce. Through this dual mechanism of work and possession, wealth becomes ethically shielded from unwanted intrusion. No one may seize or appropriate what another has worked on and possesses except through a compensatory exchange (ʿiwaḍ), which Ibn Khaldun treats not as a contractual form but as a principle of justice embedded in the very structure of society.

Ibn Khaldun’s systems thinking framework provides a powerful lens through which to understand Ibn Khaldun’s ambivalent treatment of State taxation. Contrary to interpretations that portray him as endorsing broad sovereign rights over wealth, his analysis consistently positions taxation as a morally precarious intrusion into what workers have already rightfully earned. Property (kasb), having arisen from work and secured by yad, is not something the ruler owns by virtue of sovereignty it is something the ruler touches at the risk of violating the natural moral order. Therefore, taxation is not inherently legitimate. Rather, it is an exceptional act whose justification depends on whether it satisfies the requirement of ʿiwaḍ—whether the State provides meaningful public goods, security, order, infrastructure, or all other public services in return. Without such compensatory service, taxation becomes nothing more than a coerced transfer of wealth from workers to rulers, undermining the very basis of economic vitality.

Ibn Khaldun’s language reinforces this point. When he describes taxation as “taking [wealth] from another’s hand by power according to some customary rule (bi-qānūn mutaʿāraf),” he does not elevate taxation to the status of a legitimate or recognized law. The term mutaʿāraf is crucial: it denotes a habitual, socially perceived practice, something that people operate under because they are accustomed to it—not because they believe it is rooted in justice or divine sanction. It is descriptive, not prescriptive. Ibn Khaldun could have used maʿrūf, sharʿī, or muʿtabar had he wished to signal legitimacy. Instead, he selects a term indicating a de facto convention devoid of intrinsic authority. This subtle philological choice underscores his view that fiscal exactions are tolerated because social life under a state requires such toleration, not because such exactions possess an inherent moral foundation. When placed alongside his categorical assertion that “whatever the hand acquires is protected against others except with compensation,” mutaʿāraf reads almost as a critique: the State’s power to tax rests on mere social custom, whereas the worker’s right to property rests on universal natural justice.

This tension is central to Ibn Khaldun’s larger theory of political economy. In his celebrated analysis of dynastic cycles, states rise when taxation is light, predictable, and closely tied to public service—conditions that approximate the ethical requirement of ʿiwaḍ. Early rulers take little from their subjects because they rely on tribal solidarity (ʿaṣabiyya) and have not yet developed expensive courtly lifestyles. As a result, workers retain most of what their hands produce, production expands, and wealth circulates widely. Over time, however, rulers demand more revenue to support growing administrative and military bureaucracies. They impose new levies, raise existing taxes, and multiply “customary regulations” that are accepted only because they are enforced by power. As taxation grows heavier and increasingly detached from public service, it becomes a form of systemic injustice (ẓulm) that erodes incentives to work. The economy contracts, populations decline, and the dynasty weakens. In other words, a government’s departure from the principle kasb + yad → rightful ownership sets in motion the very social and economic forces that lead to its collapse.

In this sense, Ibn Khaldun anticipates notions that later appear in political philosophy, particularly in theories of the social contract and the labor theory of value. Long before Locke’s dictum that labor “mixes” with natural resources to create ownership, Ibn Khaldun had outlined a more integrated and socially embedded account of how work generates value and legitimates possession. Moreover, he goes beyond Locke in tying taxation explicitly to reciprocity. Sovereign power does not give the ruler a normative claim over the property of subjects. Instead, in this paradigm, the ruler’s access to that property is justified only to the extent that he provides compensatory goods that uphold the social order. Rousseau, likewise, draws a distinction between legitimate authority and domination. Ibn Khaldun prefigures this by showing that once taxation becomes detached from justice, it becomes indistinguishable from theft. In modern economic language, Ibn Khaldun articulates a theory of value generation, property rights, and transactional legitimacy grounded in the concrete realities of work and the material systems of livelihood (ma`ash).

The Hand and the World

Understanding Ibn Khaldun’s conception of property (kasb) as emerging from work and protected by yad also reframes the meaning of justice in his thought. Justice is not defined abstractly as conformity to law, nor as obedience to authority, but as the protection of the worker’s right to the fruits of labor. This naturalization of justice has far-reaching implications. First, it democratizes the source of value: all wealth originates from human effort (sa`y; work), not from aristocratic privilege or dynastic entitlement. Second, it makes justice measurable: a system is just to the extent that it preserves the relationship between work and ownership. Third, it introduces a moral constraint on political power: rulers must justify any interference in economic life through reciprocal benefit. When taxation ceases to satisfy ʿiwaḍ, the ruler steps outside the bounds of justice and undermines the very conditions upon which his authority depends.

Seen through the systems thinking framework, Ibn Khaldun offers not only a theory of historical change but also a proto-systemic analysis of economic equilibrium. A healthy civilization is one in which the State’s fiscal systems align with the natural moral order established by work. When the State provides security, infrastructure, and justice, taxation functions as compensation and enhances wellbeing and public welfare. When the State fails to provide these goods yet continues to extract wealth, taxation becomes a corrosive force that depletes both material and moral resources. Therefore, for Ibn Khaldun, the sustainability of political authority rests on honoring the sacred linkage between work, possession, and reciprocal exchange.

In synthesizing these elements, Ibn Khaldun implicitly advances a principle that resonates strongly with contemporary economic ethics: legitimate taxation is inseparable from reciprocity. The ruler may touch the wealth generated by the hands of workers only when he returns value to them. This principle—simple in form yet profound in effect—connects Ibn Khaldun’s anthropology of work to his sociology of the State and his theory of historical change. It is the fulcrum upon which civilizations rise and fall.