Ibn Khaldun displays a very distinctive and assertive methodology. He keeps criticizing the former historians like Tabari, Mas’udi for their faults in writing the history of their field of interest, claiming that what he has achieved has no correspondent before.

Ibn Khaldun was not a philosopher only; he was, at the same time, a historian. It can be said that he is a genius historian opening up new horizons for the students of this field of social science. “He was an historian, who like any other Muslim or Western historian, was dependent on the records of the past, on the authorities which preceded him.”14 However, he made use of these records in a very critical manner, and paying attention to the smallest details, especially in case there are differences in the accounts of different writers on the same event. He does not use to take the records for granted, but “compares these authors with each other, checks their respective statements, notices their divergences, differences or similarities, in order to establish the truth of every fact, be it a date, a name, a place, etc.”15.

History, as an original-independent science, is his invention. Before Ibn Khaldun, there was the notion of past, some people tell the stories of ancient people, however, as an independent science we had not history. Schmidt, again, claims that “nowhere does the conception appear of history as a special science having for its object all the social phenomena of man’s life. This is Ibn Khaldun’s contention. If it is proper thus to extend the scope of history, and if history is a science, the great Tunisian who laid down and defended these propositions seems, in this respect, to have had no predecessor, and it may well be claimed that he was the discoverer”16

While he invents this novel science, he was not bigoted; he, comprehensively, covers all the regions of the world in history. And he pays attention to each, without any discrimination. Nonetheless, it should be considered normal that he highlights Maghrib much more than the others, since as he states, he knows his country and where he lives better than the faraway regions. It should not be forgotten that in Muqaddimah he allocated tens of pages to the zones (iklim) of the world (his original taxonomy) and analyzes the people of these zones covering various ‘nations and races’. So he cannot be accused of not being impartial in approaching the society of his own, and the ‘other’s.

In Ibn Khaldun’s understanding, different from the conventional historians as story-tellers without critical stance, history has a hidden mind and structure. The events taking place which are taken, generally, as pop-up, in fact, are a part of big structure, and a chain in the sequence of history. For instance, he claims that we cannot accuse Caliph Umar for toppling down Persians, in war of Qadisiyya, this event, to him, should be placed in the historical sequence of cause-and-effect.17 In his words:

“In the past,, the Persians filled the world with their great numbers. When their military force was annihilated in the days of the Arabs, they were still very numerous. It is said that Sa’d (Abi Waqqas) counted (the population) beyond Ctesiphon. It numbered 137,000 (individuals), with 37,000 heads of families. But when the Persians came under the rule of the Arabs and were made subject to (oppression by) force, they lasted only a short while and were wiped out as if they had never been. One should not think that this was the result of some (specific) persecution or aggression perpetrated against them. The rule of Islam is known for its justice. Such (disintegration as befell the Persians) is in human nature. It happens when people lose control of their own affairs and become the instrument of someone else.”18 (Emphasis is mine)

The last sentence is striking; he uses present tense and puts: “it happens …”. This is a statement of a law like an absolute degree. In any case, this example is given within the section titled “A nation that has been defeated and come under the rule of another nation will quickly perish.” At the beginning, he puts the law, all-embracing and overarching to foster the arguments and examples he uses in the section.

References:

14 Fischel. W. J., “Ibn Khaldun’s Use of Historical Sources”, Studia Islamica, No. 14. (1961), p. 109

15 Ibid, p.  118

16 Schmidt, N., Ibn Khaldun, Historian, Sociologist And Philosopher, New York: Ams Press, 1967, p. 19

17 Ibn Khaldun, trans. by Rosenthal F., The Muqaddimah, 2nd edition, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967, p. 301

18 Ibn Khaldun, trans. by Rosenthal F., The Muqaddimah, 2nd edition, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1967, p. 301

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