Summary
Melvyn Bragg and guests Robert Hoyland, Robert Irwin and Hugh Kennedy discuss the life and ideas of the 14th-century Arab philosopher of history Ibn Khaldun.Ibn Khaldun was a North African statesman who retreated into the desert in 1375. He emerged having written one of the most important ever studies of the workings of history.Khaldun was born in Tunis in 1332. He received a supremely good education, but at 16 lost many of his family to the Black Death. His adult life was similarly characterised by sharp turns of fortune. He built a career as a political operator in cities from Fez to Granada. But he often fared badly in court intrigues, was imprisoned and failed to prevent the murder of a fellow statesman. In 1375, he withdrew into the Sahara to work out why the Muslim world had degenerated into division and decline. Four years later, he had completed not only a history of North African politics but also, in the book's long introduction, one of the great studies of history. Drawing on both regional history and personal experience, he set out a bleak analysis of the rise and fall of dynasties. He argued that group solidarity was vital to success in power. Within five generations, though, this always decayed. Tired urban dynasties inevitably became vulnerable to overthrow by rural insurgents.Later in life, Ibn Khaldun worked as a judge in Egypt, and in 1401 he met the terrifying Mongol conqueror Tamburlaine, whose triumphs, Ibn Khaldun felt, bore out his pessimistic theories.Over the last three centuries Ibn Khaldun has been rediscovered as a profoundly prescient political scientist, philosopher of history and forerunner of sociology - one of the great thinkers of the Muslim world.Robert Hoyland is Professor of Islamic History at the University of Oxford; Robert Irwin is Senior Research Associate of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London; Hugh Kennedy is Professor of Arabic in the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London.
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| 0:00.0 | Just before this BBC podcast gets underway, here's something you may not know. |
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| 0:45.6 | I hope you enjoy the program. |
| 0:48.6 | Hello in 1375 in North Africa after career beset by imprisonment, intrigue and the murder of his |
| 0:54.9 | mentor, an ambitious political administrator went to live among the Bedouin. |
| 0:59.7 | His name was Ibn Halun and when he emerged from the desert four years later he completed a book which still stands today as one of the great |
| 1:07.2 | philosophical works dedicated to understanding history. Ibn Haldoon's view of history is bleak, hardly surprisingly so. |
| 1:15.3 | He sought to make sense of how the Muslim world seemed to have descended since the triumphs |
| 1:19.3 | of Mohammed into feuding and decay. |
| 1:22.0 | He concluded that all political dinuses were doomed to destruction within five generations |
| 1:26.0 | as their rulers became ever more distanced from their people. |
| 1:29.7 | Late in life he met the terrifying Mongol conqueror Tamborane whose triumphs seemed to bear out his theories. |
| 1:35.0 | Even Halduin's work had a little impact in this time, but more recent scholars have been astonished to come upon a thinker whose ideas seem to predict much modern political philosophy. |
| 1:45.9 | With me to discuss the life and ideas of Ibn Halun are Robert Erwin, Senior Research |
| 1:50.4 | Associate of the School of Oriental and African Studies at the University of London, |
| 1:54.8 | Robert Hoyland, Professor of Islamic History at the University of Oxford, and Hugh Kennedy, Professor |
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