ʿUmrān, Ḥaḍāra, and the Architecture of Human Collectivity By Ahmed E. Souaiaia , University of Iowa, USA. One of the most persistent misreadings of Ibn Khaldun’s work is the flattening of two distinct and carefully chosen concepts, ʿumrān and ḥaḍāra, into interchangeable terms. Classical commentators and modern interpreters alike often treat both as referring either to urbanism or to “civilization,” collapsing Ibn Khaldun’s analytical precision into a single, vague category. This interpretive shortcut obscures not only Ibn Khaldun’s method but also his theory of historical development and social systems. Reading Ibn Khaldun on his own terms clarifies the architecture of his argument and lends historical and philosophical depth to contemporary debates about civilization and conflict. Ibn Khaldun was neither casual nor redundant in his vocabulary. He selected key terms with precision, using ʿumrān and ḥaḍāra to mark distinct stages and to account for distinct systemic functions wit...
...in his own words and in the words of others who read his works
