Ibn Khaldun Today

Soumaya Mestiri’s essay, “Public Debate, Shûra, (Overlapping) Consensus, Ijma’: Toward a Global Concept of Democracy,” published in the UNESCO volume Asian-Arab Philosophical Dialogues on Globalization, Democracy and Human Rights (2010), offers a compelling critique of both Eurocentric and Islamist exceptionalisms regarding democracy. Situating her argument within a broader effort to pluralize democratic theory, Mestiri draws on classical Islamic concepts—particularly shûra (consultation) and ijma’ (consensus)—to demonstrate the latent democratic potential within Islamic intellectual traditions. Her central thesis challenges the notion that democracy is exclusively a Western inheritance and asserts that a global, culturally plural conception of democracy must be forged through cross-cultural philosophical dialogue. Mestiri begins by deconstructing the “Islamic exception” thesis—the idea that Islam is inherently incompatible with democracy. She rightly critiques both Western orientalist...

By Nathaniel Schmidt Ibn Khaldun would not have understood the statement that he was the founder of sociology rather than of scientific history. He regarded himself as the discoverer of the science of history precisely because he conceived of history as the science dealing with all the social phenomena of man's life. He would have strenuously objected to any such separation. What he had so laboriously put together, let no man put asunder. What would have been the use of his persistent efforts to show that his new science had for its object all aspects of human society, not only the rise and fall of states, defeats and victories in war, the exploits of generals and armies, diplomacy and peace treaties, and the various forms of political government, but all the occupations of men, trades and commerce, arts and sciences, philosophy and religion, and all the factors producing this varied social life, if the vast additions he had made to the province of history were to be taken away and...

By Mohammad Abdullah Enan Ibn Khaldun's comprehension of history. Sociology or the conditions of human community. How he considers it the basis to understand history. His analysis of social phenomena. How he divides sociology. The contents of the Prolegomena. Ibn Khaldun's criticism of historians. His exposition of the subject of his science. His theory of the Asabiyah (Vitality). Ibn Khaldun and the Arabs. His opinions of the stale and sovereignty. His theory on the age of the state. The kinds of sovereignty. The origin of the cities and countries. Livelihood and how to earn it. The different kinds of sciences. Ibn Khaldn is distinguished from the rest of Muslim historians, indeed from all his predecessors, by the fact that he considered history as a science worthy of study—not as narrative merely recorded. He wished to write history in the light of a new method of explanation and reasoning, and his reflections and studies led him to establish a kind of social philosophy. He w...

by Mohammad Javid Fedayee Abstract: This article is a study of the social and political works of Ibn Khaldun, a famous 14th-century Muslim historian, philosopher, and scholar. His insights into the field of social dynamics of international relations were widely acclaimed and still influence current scholars. Ibn Khaldun's method of history was distinctive, which is emphasizing how social institutions and human behavior shaped historical facts. The Muqqddima, his seminal work, offered a thorough examination of the cycles and patterns of human behavior and the evolution of society,especially in the area of international relations. Ibn Khaldun's Asabiya, Umran, Rural and Urban life, State, and Power are his most fascinating works, and his Umran can be considered a universal civilization. His concepts still help us understand the complexity of human behavior and social development, especially in international relations. ______________________________________________________________...

Dr. Mohammad Omar Farooq’s draft article “Islam and Critical Thinking: The Legacy of Ibn Khaldun” (September 2017) offers a timely and compelling intervention into contemporary debates concerning epistemology, intellectual heritage, and educational reform in the Muslim world. Situated at the intersection of Islamic intellectual history, historiography, and critical pedagogy, the article presents a forceful argument for reclaiming and revitalizing a tradition of critical inquiry exemplified by the 14th-century scholar Ibn Khaldun. Farooq positions Ibn Khaldun not merely as a historical figure of scholarly interest but as a pivotal intellectual whose methodological innovations remain urgently relevant for addressing what many scholars—including Abdulhamid Abu Sulayman and Tariq Ramadan—have diagnosed as a “crisis of thought” in contemporary Muslim societies. The article begins by contextualizing the perceived tension between Islam and critical thinking, a discourse often marred by orien...

Abstract:  This work aims to present key concepts, ideas, and events that can be derived mainly from Ibn Khaldun’s chapter on economic life, which he captures with the heading, Chapter on Making a Living ( ma`āsh ). Justifying this undertaking is the significance of Ibn Khaldun’s contributions, the scarcity of translations of his work, and the dependency of secondary interpretive works on a single English translation. While a reading of Ibn Khaldun’s economic philosophy through a textual analysis of the primary sources remains the focus of this work, a sampling of the interpretive and translation works is also presented here in order to understand the level of engagement of non-Arabic scholars with Ibn Khaldun’s work and as a frame of mind with which economic philosophers and social historians might engage. Source: The Journal of Philosophical Economics XVI (Annual issue) 2023