Table Of ContentTHE BIRTH OF HISTORY AND THE
PASTOFTHETHIRD WORLD
1L! U t! 11 LI U U U DU.
L2713
1984
YVES LACOSTE is an eminent and internationally respected geographer.
He is the editor of the well-known French journal, Herotte, and the
author of a number of works including The Geography of Underdevelop
ment and Unity and Diversity of the Third World.
Yves Lacoste
Verso
Ibn Khaldun:
The Birth of History and
The Past of the Third World
British Library
Cataloguing in Publication Data
Lacoste, Yves
Ibn Khaldun.
1. Ibn Khaldun, ‘Abd ar-Rahman ibn Muhammad
I. Title
907'.2024 DI 16.7.13
First published as
Ibn Khaldoun: Naissance de I’Histoire
Passe du tiers-monde
© Librairie Francois Maspero, 1966
This translation first published, Verso, 1984
© Verso Editions, 1984
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Contents
Translator’s Note
Preface 1
Part One : The Past of the Third World 11
1. General Characteristics and Fundamental Structures 13
2. A Politician from a Great Family 34
3. From Condottiere to Historian 53
4. The Myth of the ‘Arab Invasion’ 65
5. The Crisis of the Fourteenth Century 79
6. The Development of the State 92
7. The Case Against the Townspeople 118
Part Two : The Birth of History 133
1. Thucydides and Ibn Khaldun 135
2. Historical Materialism and Dialectical Conceptions 151
3. The Emergence of the Science of History 159
4. Historiography and the Rationalist Heritage 172
5. The Effect of Religious Reaction 181
Conclusion 194
Notes 202
Index 212
Translator’s Note
Quotations from Franz Rosenthal’s translation of Ibn Khaldun, The
Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, Bollingen Series XLIII, New
York, Pantheon Books, 1958, 3 vols., have occasionally been modified to
take account of variations between it and the French translation used by
the author: Les Prolegomenes historiques d’lbn Khaldoun, tr. Baron De
Slane in Notices et extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliotheque Imperiale—
Academic des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres—vols. XIX-XXI, Paris
1862-1868. Material not included in Rosenthal is indicated as ‘De
Slane’. Histoire des Berberes indicates quotations from Histoire des Ber-
beres et des dynasties musulmanes de I’Afrique septentrionale, tr. Baron De
Slane, Algiers 1852-1856, 4 vols.
David Macey.
Preface
Ibn Khaldun?
The encyclopedia gives the following information: ‘Ibn Khaldun (Abd
al-Rahman), the most famous of Arab historians (born Tunis 1337, died
Cairo 1406)’.
In North Africa, the name of Ibn Khaldun1 still evokes the splendours
of the past, even for relatively unsophisticated people. But outside the
Arab world, most educated people familiar with the major problems of
our own time have never heard of him. He is known only to specialists in
the history of the Maghreb and in the development of the science of his
tory. Those historians and philosophers who have had occasion to read
his work praise him unstintingly: ‘Ibn Khaldun was the greatest histor
ian and philosopher ever produced by Islam and one of the greatest of all
time’.2
‘The work of Ibn Khaldun is one of the most substantial and interest
ing books ever written’.3
‘He has Conceived and formulated a philosophy of history which is
undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been pro
duced by any mind in any time or place’.4
Such comments are more than justified: Ibn Khaldun’s work marks
the birth of the science of history and is perhaps the most prestigious
product of what can only be called the ‘Arab miracle’. Ibn Khaldun
wrote at a time when what had once been the centre of medieval Arab
civilization was in decline. He had no real followers and his work was
forgotten for centuries. For my part, I believe that, if Ibn Khaldun’s
thought is to become more widely known and if it is to be integrated into
contemporary thought, we have to do more than simply restore him to
his rightful status as one of the founders of History. We are now witness
ing major and totally unprecedented events: throughout the world,
2
people are faced with vast and tragic problems which mankind has never
previously experienced. The reconstruction of the past is therefore not
an end in itself. It is a matter of contemporary interest and importance.
The content of a work of the past can only be integrated into an active
intellectual movement (one which leads to some political understanding
of the times in which we live) in so far as it has contemporary resonance
and increases our understanding of the problems that face us in the latter
part of the twentieth century.
Exploring the thought of Ibn Khaldun does not mean straying into
medieval orientalism, plunging into the distant past of an exotic country
or complacently entering into a seemingly academic debate. It does not
mean turning our backs on the modern world. It is, rather, a means of
furthering an analysis of the underlying causes of the most serious of
contemporary problems. As we shall see, in his analysis of economic,
social and political conditions in medieval North Africa, Ibn Khaldun
raises a number of fundamental historical problems. His work sheds
light upon a very important stage in the history of what are now under
developed countries. He describes very complex social and political
structures whose development determined a lengthy historical process
and whose effects are still being felt today. In combination with equally
determinant external causes, those structures led to colonial domination
in the nineteenth century, and colonialism led in its turn to the present
situation of underdevelopment.
Provided that they are analysed with care, the most important and
original features of Ibn Khaldun’s work can now be seen as a major con
tribution to the study of the underlying causes of underdevelopment. It
must, however, be stressed that the relationship between the work of the
Maghrebian historian and underdevelopment is far from straight
forward. It would be not merely simplistic but quite wrong to think that
in the fourteenth century Ibn Khaldun described the characteristics of
an objectively underdeveloped country. He was studying medieval
structures which slowed down or blocked social, political and economic
development. It was only several hundred years later that those struc
tures combined with outside influences to facilitate colonization, and
colonization determined the appearance of the phenomenon of under
development.
Fourteenth-century North Africa was no underdeveloped country.
Contrary to the opinion of certain writers, underdevelopment has not
always existed and does not date back to ancient times: it is a relatively
Preface 3
recent phenomenon. We have to be careful not to confuse the situation
that ‘traditionally’ prevailed in North Africa and much of the rest of the
world with modern underdevelopment. The underdeveloped countries
have of course’inherited many features from the past, but those features
are now integrated into a radically new combination. Traditionally, what
are now underdeveloped countries were characterized by an equilibrium
between a very slow rate of demographic growth and an equally slow rate
of economic growth. Whereas ‘development’ can be described in terms
of an economic growth rate which since the nineteenth century has out
stripped population growth, ‘underdevelopment’ in all Third World
countries is characterized by a population growth which greatly out
strips the increase in the resources available to the population.5
The astonishing demographic growth rate which has characterized
almost all Third World countries over the last few decades is a result of
modern health programmes. But the inadequate increase in resources is
a direct or indirect effect of factors which block the exploitation of exist
ing resources, rather than of any natural lack of potential. Most of these
factors relate to colonial domination. And in North Africa colonization
was made possible by structures which had existed for centuries.
A discussion of the present situation may seem out of place here and
irrelevant to a study of Ibn Khaldun. Nothing could be further from the
truth: if we are to analyse the past adequately, we must have a clear pic
ture of the times in which we live. Such considerations enable us to
perceive a basic and much older problem which is of direct relevance to
the period and the countries studied by the great Maghrebian historian.
Colonialism itself cannot be regarded as the primary reason for under
development: it is neither a necessary nor a sufficient historical cause.
Europe has not always had an economic and social lead over the rest of
the world by any means. In historical terms, the technological develop
ment of Europe is a relatively recent phenomenon which appeared only
in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In other parts of the world,
economically advanced societies existed hundreds of years earlier. By the
Middle Ages, China, India and the Arab countries had reached a techno
logical level which was equal to or even in advance of that achieved in
Europe prior to the Industrial Revolution.6
We have, then, to explain why the scientific and technological advan
ces made by the great states of Asia and Africa in the Middle Ages did
not lead to a process of economic development comparable to that to be
observed in nineteenth-century Europe. This is a very complex question,
