The Orange Trees of Marrakesh: Ibn Khaldun and the Science of Man

Dale (The Muslim Empires of the Ottomans, Safavids, and Mughals), professor emeritus of history at Ohio State University, examines Ibn Khaldun's masterwork, the Muqaddimah, to discover its philosophical underpinnings and to learn more about the man himself. Ibn Khaldun (1332%E2%80%931406) was a North African Muslim who spent his life as an administrator, religious judge, and scholar. In his most studied work, he lays out a dialectical model of "the cyclical nature of North African politics," wherein desert tribes conquer urban areas, only to succumb to decadence and fall to other tribes within four generations. Dale points out that few people have analyzed the Muqaddimah in the context of the Greco-Islamic philosophy that informs Ibn Khaldun's model, though he traces elements of the philosophy of Aristotle, Ibn Sina, al-Ghazali, and others throughout. He also discerns some of Ibn Khaldun's opinions on various topics through careful reading of passages in the Muqaddimah that appear to be autobiographical. Dale devotes a chapter to the similarities between Ibn Khaldun's philosophical history and the works of later Northern European scholars, noting that both drew from the same well of Greco-Islamic philosophy, and that the Europeans did not build directly upon Ibn Khaldun's work. The audience for this work may be limited, but it's excellent scholarship on a fascinating subject. (Nov.)