Page 131 - Encyclopedia Of World History Vol III

950 berkshire encyclopedia of world history

Ibn Khaldun on Taxes

In the early stages of the state, taxes are light in
their incidence, but fetch in a large revenue...As
Ibn Khaldun was born in Tunis. His father, himself a time passes and kings succeed each other, they
scholar, ensured that Ibn Khaldun received a thorough lose their tribal habits in favor of more civilized
education, rooted in the study of the Quran, Arabic ones.Their needs and exigencies grow...owing
grammar, and jurisprudence. Ibn Khaldun took particu- to the luxury in which they have been brought
lar interest in his teachers, chronicling their lives and the up. Hence they impose fresh taxes on their sub-
subjects that they taught. But in 1349, the seventeen- jects...[and] sharply raise the rate of old taxes
year-old Ibn Khaldun lost his great mentors and parents to increase their yield...But the effects on busi-
to the Black Death, the great plague that ravaged Afro- ness of this rise in taxation make themselves
Eurasia in the fourteenth century. Ibn Khaldun later felt. For business men are soon discouraged by
came to recognize the Black Death as a contributing fac- the comparison of their profits with the burden
tor to the political instability of Muslim regimes in Spain of their taxes... Consequently production falls
and North Africa during the fourteenth century. off, and with it the yield of taxation.
In 1350 Ibn Khaldun began a chaotic odyssey through
North Africa and Muslim Spain. From 1350 to 1375, he
served numerous masters as secretary, ambassador, and the process of laying siege to Damascus. Ibn Khaldun’s
chamberlain, was imprisoned, and even lived among the encounter with Timur illustrates the decline of Arab
Bedouin tribes of Algeria. In 1362 he crossed into Gra- power in the face of Central Asian invaders, yet it also
nada, entering into the service of the sultan of Granada underscores the unity of an Islamic civilization that con-
as an ambassador to the Christian king of Castille, Pedro nected Muslim Spain, Mamluk Egypt, and Turkic-Mongol
the Cruel. Ibn Khaldun’s mission went so well that he Central Asia.
was offered a position in Pedro’s service. Although he In the Muqaddimah Ibn Khaldun explored religious,
declined to serve in Christian Castille, Ibn Khaldun’s economic, and geographical determinants of social or-
experience in Christian Spain offers historians an illu- ganization. However, the most important element of his
minating, non-European view of the Christian expansion science of social organization is asabiyah (social soli-
into Muslim Spain. darity). He reasoned that small, rural societies have the
After an intense quarter-century of political life, Ibn strongest social cohesion and the potential to become
Khaldun retired to the castle of Qal‘at ibn Salama (near great empires, while large, urbanized states tend to be-
present-day Frenda, Algeria) in 1375. He began writing come corrupted by luxury.This weakening of social soli-
his massive seven-volume historical work, Kitabal-‘ibar darity led, he theorized, to economic and social decay,
(Universal History), which includes his masterpiece, the which ultimately caused societies to fall prey to a strong-
Muqaddimah (Prolegomena to History). The Kitab al- er conqueror. Thus, Ibn Khaldun’s astonishingly mod-
‘ibar also contains a definitive history of North Africa as ern philosophy of history and social organization artic-
well as a candid autobiography, detailing his numerous ulated universal cycles of cultural change and the rise
political and academic appointments. He continued his and fall of civilizations.
scholarship until his departure for a pilgrimage to Mecca Although Ibn Khaldun lived and wrote in the four-
in 1382, which led him to a new career in Cairo. teenth century, his approach to history foreshadowed that
In 1382, Ibn Khaldun met the Mamluk sultan of Egypt, of twentieth-century world historians such as Arnold
Barquq, who appointed him as a lecturer at al-Azhar Uni- Toynbee and Oswald Spengler. Like today’s world his-
versity as well as the chief qadi (judge) of the Maliki torians, Ibn Khaldun was concerned with cross-cultural
school of Sunni Islamic jurisprudence. In 1400, Ibn interactions, large-scale comparisons between empires,
Khaldun accompanied the sultan as an emissary to the and patterns of history that affect empires and cultures.
conqueror Timur (Tamerlane, 1336-1405), who was in Therefore, Ibn Khaldun’s work is likely to become more