A Literary History of the Arabs

by Reynold Alleyne Nicholson

The names of Ibnu ’l-Khaṭíb and Ibn Khaldún represent the highest literary accomplishment and historical comprehension of which this age was capable. The latter, indeed, has no parallel among Oriental historians.

Lisánu ’l-Dín Ibnu ’l-Khaṭíb[806] played a great figure in the politics of his time, and his career affords a conspicuous example of the intimate way in which Moslem poetry and literature are connected with public life. "The Arabs did not share the opinion widely spread nowadays, that poetical talent flourishes best in seclusion from the tumult of the world, or that it dims the clearness of vision which is required for the conduct of public affairs. On the contrary, their princes entrusted the chief offices of State to poets, and poetry often served as a means to obtain more brilliant results than diplomatic notes could have procured."[807] A young Ibnu ’l-Khaṭíb (1313-1374 a.d.). man like Ibnu ’l-Khaṭíb, who had mastered the entire field of belles-lettres, who improvised odes and rhyming epistles with incomparable elegance and facility, was marked out to be the favourite of kings. He became Vizier at the Naṣrid court, a position which he held, with one brief interval of disgrace, until 1371 a.d., when the intrigues of his enemies forced him to flee from Granada. He sought refuge at Fez, and was honourably received by the reigning Sultan, ‘Abdu ’l-‘Azíz; but on the accession of Abu ’l-‘Abbás in 1374 a.d. the exiled minister was incarcerated and brought to trial on the charge of heresy (zandaqa). While the inquisition was proceeding a fanatical mob broke into the gaol and murdered him. Maqqarí relates that Ibnu ’l-Khaṭib suffered from insomnia, and that most of his works were composed during the night, for which reason he got the nickname of Dhu ’l-‘Umrayn, or 'The man of two lives.'[808] He was a prolific writer in various branches of literature, but, like so many of his countrymen, he excelled in History. His monographs on the sovereigns and savants of Granada (one of which includes an autobiography) supply interesting details concerning this obscure period.

Some apology may be thought necessary for placing Ibn Khaldún, the greatest historical thinker of Islam, in the Ibn Khaldún (1332-1406 a.d. present chapter, as though he were a Spaniard either by birth or residence. He descended, it is true, from a family, the Banú Khaldún, which had long been settled in Spain, first at Carmona and afterwards at Seville; but they migrated to Africa about the middle of the thirteenth century, and Ibn Khaldún was born at Tunis. Nearly the whole of his life, moreover, was passed in Africa—a circumstance due rather to accident than to predilection; for in 1362 a.d. he entered the service of the Sultan of Granada, Abú ‘Abdalláh Ibnu ’l-Aḥmar, and would probably have made that city his home had not the jealousy of his former friend, the Vizier Ibnu ’l-Khaṭíb, decided him to leave Spain behind. We cannot give any account of the agitated and eventful career which he ended, as Cadi of Cairo, in 1406 a.d. Ibn Khaldún lived with statesmen and kings: he was an ambassador to the court of Pedro of Castile, and an honoured guest of the mighty Tamerlane. The results of his ripe experience are marvellously displayed in the Prolegomena (Muqaddima), which forms the first volume of a huge general history entitled the Kitábu ’l-‘Ibar ('Book of Examples').[809] He himself has stated his idea of the historian's function in the following words:—

"Know that the true purpose of history is to make us acquainted with human society, i.e., with the civilisation of the world, and with Ibn Khaldún as a philosophical historian. its natural phenomena, such as savage life, the softening of manners, attachment to the family and the tribe, the various kinds of superiority which one people gains over another, the kingdoms and diverse dynasties which arise in this way, the different trades and laborious occupations to which men devote themselves in order to earn their livelihood, the sciences and arts; in fine, all the manifold conditions which naturally occur in the development of civilisation."[810]

Ibn Khaldún argues that History, thus conceived, is subject to universal laws, and in these laws he finds the only sure criterion of historical truth.

"The rule for distinguishing what is true from what is false in history is based on its possibility or impossibility: that is to His canons of historical criticism. say, we must examine human society (civilisation) and discriminate between the characteristics which are essential and inherent in its nature and those which are accidental and need not be taken into account, recognising further those which cannot possibly belong to it. If we do this we have a rule for separating historical truth from error by means of a demonstrative method that admits of no doubt.... It is a genuine touchstone whereby historians may verify whatever they relate."[811]

Here, indeed, the writer claims too much, and it must be allowed that he occasionally applied his principles in a pedantic fashion, and was led by purely a priori considerations to conclusions which are not always so warrantable as he believed. This is a very trifling matter in comparison with the value and originality of the principles themselves. Ibn Khaldún asserts, with justice, that he has discovered a new method of writing history. No Moslem had ever taken a view at once so comprehensive and so philosophical; none had attempted to trace the deeply hidden causes of events, to expose the moral and spiritual forces at work beneath the surface, or to divine the immutable laws of national progress and decay. Ibn Khaldún owed little to his predecessors, although he mentions some of them with respect. He stood far above his age, and his own countrymen have admired rather than followed him. His intellectual descendants are the great mediæval and modern historians of Europe—Machiavelli and Vico and Gibbon.

It is worth while to sketch briefly the peculiar theory of historical development which Ibn Khaldún puts forward in Ibn Kaldún's theory of historical evolution. his Prolegomena—a theory founded on the study of actual conditions and events either past or passing before his eyes.[812] He was struck, in the first place, with the physical fact that in almost every part of the Muḥammadan Empire great wastes of sand or stony plateaux, arid and incapable of tillage, wedge themselves between fertile domains of cultivated land. The former were inhabited from time immemorial by nomad tribes, the latter by an agricultural or industrial population; and we have seen, in the case of Arabia, that cities like Mecca and Ḥíra carried on a lively intercourse with the Bedouins and exerted a civilising influence upon them. In Africa the same contrast was strongly marked. It is no wonder, therefore, that Ibn Khaldún divided the whole of mankind into two classes—Nomads and Citizens. The nomadic life naturally precedes and produces the other. Its characteristics are simplicity and purity of manners, warlike spirit, and, above all, a loyal devotion to the interests of the family and the tribe. As the nomads become more civilised they settle down, form states, and make conquests. They have now reached their highest development. Corrupted by luxury, and losing the virtues which raised them to power, they are soon swept away by a ruder people. Such, in bare outline, is the course of history as Ibn Khaldún regards it; but we must try to give our readers some further account of the philosophical ideas underlying his conception. He discerns, in the life of tribes and nations alike, two dominant forces which mould their destiny. The primitive and cardinal force he calls ‘aṣabiyya, the binding element in society, the feeling which unites members of the same family, tribe, nation, or empire, and which in its widest acceptation is equivalent to the modern term, Patriotism. It springs up and especially flourishes among nomad peoples, where the instinct of self-preservation awakens a keen sense of kinship and drives men to make common cause with each other. This ‘aṣabiyya is the vital energy of States: by it they rise and grow; as it weakens they decline; and its decay is the signal for their fall. The second of the forces referred to is Religion. Ibn Khaldún hardly ascribes to religion so much influence as we might have expected from a Moslem. He recognises, however, that it may be the only means of producing that solidarity without which no State can exist. Thus in the twenty-seventh chapter of his Muqaddima he lays down the proposition that "the Arabs are incapable of founding an empire unless they are imbued with religious enthusiasm by a prophet or a saint."

In History he sees an endless cycle of progress and retrogression, analogous to the phenomena of human life. Kingdoms are born, attain maturity, and die within a definite period which rarely exceeds three generations, i.e., 120 years.[813] During this time they pass through five stages of development and decay.[814] It is noteworthy that Ibn Khaldún admits the moral superiority of the Nomads. For him civilisation necessarily involves corruption and degeneracy. If he did not believe in the gradual advance of mankind towards some higher goal, his pessimism was justified by the lessons of experience and by the mournful plight of the Muḥammadan world, to which his view was restricted.[815]

In 1492 a.d. the last stronghold of the European Arabs opened its gates to Ferdinand and Isabella, and "the Cross The fall of Granada (1492 a.d.). supplanted the Crescent on the towers of Granada." The victors showed a barbarous fanaticism that was the more abominable as it violated their solemn pledges to respect the religion and property of the Moslems, and as it utterly reversed the tolerant and liberal treatment which the Christians of Spain had enjoyed under Muḥammadan rule. Compelled to choose between apostasy and exile, many preferred the latter alternative. Those who remained were subjected to a terrible persecution, until in 1609 a.d., by order of Philip III, the Moors were banished en masse from Spanish soil.