Ibn Khaldun

Ibn Khaldun, full name Abu Zayd 'Abd al-Rahman ibn Muhammad ibn Khaldun al-Hadrami (عبد الرحمن بن محمد بن خلدون الحضرمي), May 27, 1332/ah732 to March 19, 1406/ah808) was a famous Tunisian historiographer and historian born in what is modern day Tunisia, and is widely acclaimed as a forerunner of modern historiography, sociology and economics. He is best known for his Muqaddimah (Prolegomena).

Some Quotes from Works by Ibn Khaldun

On economics

"In the early stages of the state, taxes are light in their incidence, but fetch in a large revenue...As time passes and kings succeed each other, they lose their tribal habits in favor of more civilized ones. Their needs and exigencies grow...owing to the luxury in which they have been brought up. Hence they impose fresh taxes on their subjects... sharply raise the rate of old taxes to increase their yield...But the effects on business of this rise in taxation make themselves felt. For business men are soon discouraged by the comparison of their profits with the burden of their taxes...Consequently production falls off, and with it the yield of taxation."

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This sociological theory includes the concept known in economics as the Laffer Curve (the relationship between tax rates and tax revenue follows an inverted U shape).

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On the Arabs

• "Arabs dominate only of the plains, because they are, by their savage nature, people of pillage and corruption. They pillage everything that they can take without fighting or taking risks, then flee to their refuge in the wilderness, and do not stand and do battle unless in self-defense. So when they encounter any difficulty or obstacle, they leave it alone and look for easier prey. And tribes well-fortified against them on the slopes of the hills escape their corruption and destruction, because they prefer not to climb hills, nor expend effort, nor take risks. Whereas plains, when they can reach them due to lack of protection and weakness of the state, are spoils for them and morsels for them to eat, which they will keep despoiling and raiding and conquering with ease until their people are defeated, then imitate them with mutual conflict and political decline, until their civilization is destroyed. And Allah is capable of their creation, and He is the One, the Victorious, and there is no other lord than Him." (original text)
• Most of the scholars in Islam have been non-Arabs (Persians). It is a remarkable fact that, with few exceptions, most Muslim scholars both in the religious and in the intellectual sciences have been non-Arabs. When a scholar is of Arab origin, he is non-Arab in language and upbringing and has non-Arab teachers.

Note on Ibn Khaldun's use of "Arab"

Some scholars believe that, in many instances, Ibn Khaldun uses the name Arab to mean bedouin. Other scholars, such as Mohamed Chafik, deny this.

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From Bernard Lewis, The Arabs in History pp. 14-16 (1950)

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:"From late 'Abbasid times onwards the word Arab reverts to its earlier meaning of Bedouin or nomad, becoming in effect a social rather than an ethnic term. In many of the Western chronicles of the Crusades it is used only for Bedouin, while the mass of the Muslim population of the Near East are called Saracens. It is certainly in this sense that in the sixteenth century Tasso speaks of

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::'Altri Arabi poi, che di soggiorno, / certo non sono stabili abitanti;' (Gerusalemme Liberata, XVII 21.)

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:"The fourteenth-century Arabic historian Ibn Khaldun, himself a townsman of Arab descent, uses the word commonly in this sense."

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Some text from the 1911 Encyclopaedia Britannica

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On the Persians

From The Muqaddimah, Translated by F. Rosenthal (III, pp. 311-15, 271-4 ; R.N. Frye (p.91):

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?It is a remarkable fact that, with few exceptions, most Muslim scholars?in the intellectual sciences have been non-Arabs?thus the founders of grammar were Sibawaih and after him, al-Farisi and Az-Zajjaj. All of them were of Persian descent?they invented rules of (Arabic) grammar?great jurists were Persians? only the Persians engaged in the task of preserving knowledge and writing systematic scholarly works. Thus the truth of the statement of the prophet becomes apparent, 'If learning were suspended in the highest parts of heaven the Persians would attain it"?The intellectual sciences were also the preserve of the Persians, left alone by the Arabs, who did not cultivate them?as was the case with all crafts?This situation continued in the cities as long as the Persians and Persian countries, Iraq, Khorasan and Transoxiana (modern Central Asia), retained their sedentary culture."

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