Ibn Khaldun · Civilisations
Ibn Khaldun’s great dialectic - the eternal tension between the hardy, cohesive peoples of the desert and the luxurious, civilised, but soft life of the city.
Central to Ibn Khaldun’s science of society is a great contrast between two fundamental ways of human life: badawa - the life of the desert, the steppe, the countryside, the margins - the hardy, simple, rugged life of nomads, herders, and rural peoples living close to necessity; and hadara - the life of the city, of settled, sedentary, urban civilisation - the refined, complex, luxurious life of cities, with their crafts, commerce, arts, sciences, government, and pleasures. These two ways of life - the hardy simplicity of the desert and the luxurious refinement of the city - represent two fundamental poles of human social existence, with profoundly different characters, virtues, and effects on the people who live them. The contrast between them, and the dynamic interaction between them, is one of the central themes of Ibn Khaldun’s science of society.
From this contrast, Ibn Khaldun derived a great dynamic of history: the cycle whereby hardy desert peoples conquer the luxurious cities, found dynasties, and then themselves grow soft and are conquered in turn. The hardy desert peoples, with their strong solidarity, toughness, and courage, are militarily strong; the luxurious city dwellers, soft and dependent, are militarily weak. So the hardy desert peoples, when united by strong asabiyya (often amplified by religion), can conquer the rich but soft cities, overthrow their decayed dynasties, and establish their own rule - bringing the vigour of the desert to the civilisation of the city. But once established in the city, enjoying its wealth and luxury, the conquering desert people themselves gradually grow soft - their hardy solidarity and toughness eroded by the luxury and ease of city life, over the generations - until they in turn become soft, decayed, and weak, and are conquered by a new hardy people from the desert. This cycle - the hardy desert conquering the soft city, then growing soft itself and being conquered in turn - is, for Ibn Khaldun, a basic engine of the rise and fall of dynasties and the dynamic of history.
Ibn Khaldun’s view of civilisation is thus profoundly double-edged. On one hand, the city and sedentary civilisation (hadara) represent the height of human achievement: the development of crafts, commerce, arts, sciences, government, law, and all the refinements and achievements of civilised life. Civilisation is the goal and fruit of human social development, the flowering of human achievement. But on the other hand, the very luxury, comfort, and refinement of civilisation tend to erode the hardy virtues - solidarity, toughness, courage, self-reliance - and produce softness, weakness, and dependence, sowing the seeds of decline. Civilisation both achieves the heights of human refinement and produces the softness that leads to decline; it is both the flowering of human achievement and the source of the weakness that undoes it. This double-edged view of civilisation - as both the height of human achievement and the source of the softness and decline that undo it - is one of Ibn Khaldun’s most profound and characteristic insights, capturing the deep tension between the achievements of civilisation and the hardy virtues needed to sustain it.
This is the opening of the lesson. The rest — the dialogue, the primary source, and the recall — is in the app.
You learned that Ibn Khaldun contrasted hardy desert life with luxurious city life, and saw a cycle whereby desert peoples conquer cities and then grow soft. Explain this dialectic in your own words.
Leads to Jean Jacques Rousseau.
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