Birth in Tunis
ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn Khaldun was born in Hafsid Tunis into a family of scholars and officials who had left Seville around the time of its conquest by Castile in 1248.
Arabic historiography · science of civilization · 1332–1406
Ibn Khaldun
Read history through the nature of human society.
Tunis · Fez · Cairo
Biography
The thread of a life.
ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn Khaldun, born in Tunis into a family of Andalusian origin, spent his life between the courts of North Africa, Granada and Mamluk Cairo as secretary, envoy, teacher and Maliki judge. From that experience of dynasties rising and falling he drew the Muqaddimah, which tests historical reports against the nature of human society and explains political power through group solidarity, the passage from desert to city and the decline that luxury brings.
The Black Death
The plague that swept North Africa killed both his parents and many of his teachers, a loss he later described as a shrinking of civilization itself.
Courts of the Maghreb and al-Andalus
He served the Marinids in Fez, where he spent nearly two years in prison, then the Nasrids of Granada and the Hafsid emir of Bougie.
Retreat at Qalʿat Ibn Salama
Sheltered by a tribe in a castle in present-day Algeria, he drafted the Muqaddimah in about five months and finished its first version in 1377.
Judge in Cairo
Sultan Barquq appointed him Maliki chief judge; the same year his wife and children drowned when their ship sank off Alexandria.
Timur and the last years
Outside besieged Damascus he met Timur and recorded their conversations; he died in Cairo in 1406, a few weeks after his sixth appointment as judge.
Understanding a life in depth
01Tunis, learning and the plague
ʿAbd al-Rahman ibn Khaldun was born in Tunis in 1332 into a family of Arab descent that had held office in Seville for generations before settling in Ifriqiya around 1248. His father, a man of learning, taught him the Quran, Arabic grammar and poetry, and other masters trained him in hadith and Maliki law. When the Marinid sultan Abu l-Hasan occupied Tunis in 1347, scholars from Fez came in his train, among them al-Abili, who introduced the young man to logic, mathematics and philosophy. The plague of 1348–1349 killed his parents and many of his teachers. In 1352 he took his first post at the Hafsid court, writing the formula of praise that authenticated official documents, but he soon left Tunis in search of a wider career.
02Courts, prison and embassies
In 1354 Ibn Khaldun joined the circle of scholars around the Marinid sultan Abu ʿInan in Fez and became one of his secretaries. Suspected of plotting with the deposed Hafsid emir of Bougie, he was imprisoned from 1357 until the sultan’s death in 1358. Under Abu Salim he became the ruler’s confidential secretary and later heard complaints against officials; in 1362 he moved to Granada, where the vizier and writer Ibn al-Khatib welcomed him to the court of Muhammad V. Sent in 1364 on an embassy to Pedro I of Castile in Seville, he declined the king’s offer to stay and recover his family’s lands. From 1365 he served the emir of Bougie as chamberlain, and for a decade afterwards he moved between rulers, often negotiating with Arab and Berber tribes on their behalf.
03The retreat that produced the Muqaddimah
In 1375, weary of politics, Ibn Khaldun withdrew with his family to Qalʿat Ibn Salama, a castle under the protection of the Awlad ʿArif in what is now north-western Algeria. There, as he later recalled, words and ideas poured into his mind, and in about five months, by 1377, he completed the first version of the Muqaddimah, the introduction to a universal history. Needing books that the castle lacked, he returned in 1378 to Tunis, where he finished the history of the Berbers and presented a copy of the work to the Hafsid sultan Abu l-ʿAbbas. Friction with the jurist Ibn ʿArafa and the sultan’s demands on his time led him in 1382 to sail for Alexandria, ostensibly on pilgrimage.
04Teacher, judge and witness in Cairo
In Mamluk Cairo Ibn Khaldun lectured at al-Azhar and in several madrasas, and in 1384 Sultan Barquq appointed him Maliki chief judge. His severity against corruption and influence-peddling made enemies, and he was dismissed and reappointed repeatedly, holding the office six times in all. The same year his wife and children, sailing from Tunis to join him, drowned when their ship was wrecked off Alexandria. He made the pilgrimage to Mecca in 1387 and kept revising the Kitab al-ʿIbar and his autobiography. In 1401, having accompanied the Mamluk army to Damascus, he was let down by rope from the walls of the besieged city to meet Timur, spent several weeks in his camp and wrote for him a description of the Maghreb. He died in Cairo on 17 March 1406 and was buried in the Sufi cemetery outside the Bab al-Nasr.
Ottoman historians such as Naima applied his theory of dynastic decline to their own empire, and after de Slane’s French translation of 1863–1868 European readers hailed him as a forerunner of sociology, economics and the philosophy of history. His analyses of solidarity, state power and taxation are still debated by historians, social theorists and economists, while specialists insist on reading him within the legal, theological and philosophical culture of his time.
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