Ibn Khaldun

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• published: 28 Aug 2015
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Ibn Khaldun's life is relatively well-documented, as he wrote an autobiography (التعريف بابن خلدون ورحلته غربا وشرقا, at-Taʻrīf bi-ibn Khaldūn wa-Riḥlatih Gharban wa-Sharqan) in which numerous documents regarding his life are quoted word-for-word. Generally known as "Ibn Khaldūn" after a remote ancestor, he was born in Tunis in AD 1332 (732 A.H.) into an upper-class Andalusian family of Arab descent, the Banū Khaldūn. His family, which held many high offices in Andalusia, had emigrated to Tunisia after the fall of Seville to the Reconquista in AD 1248 . Under the Tunisian Hafsid dynasty some of his family held political office; Ibn Khaldūn's father and grandfather however withdrew from political life and joined a mystical order. His brother, Yahya Khaldun, was also a historian who wrote a book on the Abdalwadid dynasty, and who was assassinated by a rival for being the official historiographer of the court.[14] In his autobiography, Khaldun traces his descent back to the time of Muhammad through an Arab tribe from Yemen, specifically the Hadhramaut, which came to the Iberian Peninsula in the eighth century at the beginning of the Islamic conquest. In his own words: "And our ancestry is from Hadhramaut, from the Arabs of Yemen, via Wa'il ibn Hajar, from the best of the Arabs, well-known and respected." (p. 2429, Al-Waraq's edition). However, the biographer Mohammad Enan questions his claim, suggesting that his family may have been Muladis who pretended to be of Arab origin in order to gain social status. Enan also mentions a well documented past tradition, concerning certain Berber groups, whereby they delusively "aggrandize" themselves with some Arab ancestry. The motive of such an invention was always the desire for political and societal ascendancy. Some speculate this of the Khaldun family; they elaborate that Ibn Khaldun himself was the product of the same Berber ancestry as the native majority of his birthplace. A point congenial to this posits that Ibn Khaldun's unusual written focus on, and admiration for Berbers reveals a deference towards them that is born of a vested interest in preserving them in the realm of conscious history; such is that which the true Arabs of his day would find no enthusiasm for and indeed a vested interest in suppressing. Moreover the special position that he affords Berbers in his work is fully vindicated upon comparing it with his vitriolic attitudes towards the Arab, and his relative lack of interest in the state of affairs outside the Maghreb. In contrast, Muhammad Hozien chooses to believe: "The false [Berber] identity would be valid however at the time that Ibn Khaldun's ancestors left Andalusia and moved to Tunisia they did not change their claim to Arab ancestry. Even in the times when Berbers were ruling in Al-Andalus, the reigns of Almoravids and Almohads, the Ibn Khalduns did not reclaim their Berber heritage."[16]