It is often noted that no full scholarly biography of Ibn Khaldun has been written, and that the appearance of such a work would, at any time, be most welcome. With almost a blank slate, beyond a bare and well-known narrative, such a work would be a challenging and important task. It is unfortunate that this book does not rise to the challenge.
The book positions itself directly against the anachronism which has all too often marred studies of Ibn Khaldun. It begins with a chapter sketching an outline of the main events and developments in Ibn Khaldun's world, from Syria to al-Andalus, and then goes on, in a series of chapters, to give an account of his life and activities in the Maghrib and the Mashriq. Emphasizing his sense of foreboding, his perception of history coming to an end, his solitariness and frustrations, and his declared ambivalences, the book attempts to conjugate history with biography. It also attempts here and there to offer interpretations of IK's thought in the light of his life and times.
But for all this, the results are limited by the author's almost complete reliance on Ibn Khaldun's autobiography. A more interesting story might have been told had the author apprised himself of external works which could have been used to check his subject's self-perception, and provide more interesting additional material. Some such works are mentioned, with little evidence of their having been read (for instance, al-Maqqari, p. 176 n. 29, described as “an Egyptian historian” on p. 110) and others when quoted, e.g. al-Sakhāwī, are cited second-hand from quotations in secondary works (112, n. 6, 7). Ibn Khaldun gives many hints and leads, both in his autobiography and in the Muqaddima, including ones about his own dream-world, which are not pursued.
It is unsurprising, therefore, that very interesting episodes in Ibn Khaldun's life remain obscure. His adventures and misadventures in Cairo are not explored in detail, and it would have been beneficial to tease out the clues to be found in Ibn Ḥajar, al-Sakhāwī, and al-Maqrīzī (the author is aware that such works exist, pp. 172–3) which convey hints about Ibn Khaldun's relations with the grandees and the ʿulama’, and of a possibly demi-mondiste side to his private life as well. His activities in the Maghreb and al-Andalus are better accounted for, but their significance in the local context, and to IK's life itself, remains incompletely examined; much mileage might have been had from the Fürstenspiegel composed by the Zayyanid sovereign Abū Ḥammū, whom IK knew. There is precious little about IK's intellectual formation, his teaching and judicial activity, and, very importantly, about the composition of the Muqaddima and of the History, and of the period of residence at Qalʿat ibn Salāma. One would also have wished for some controlled imagination, perhaps primed by recent novelistic biographies of IK in Arabic.
Clearly the author, publishing this book hastily between his history of the Almohads (2010) and his history of modern Qatar (2011), had not done his homework, thereby compromising any seemingly sensible points made. There is much egregious carelessness throughout. “Tartar” and “Mongol” are used indifferently and interchangeably with reference to Tamerlane and his armies. Al-Jafr, the author believes, designated “secret books written for the Prophet Muhammad” (p. 5); reading the relevant chapter from the Muqaddima would have revealed otherwise. It is asserted that the Mamluks took control of Egypt from the Fatimids who had been their owners (p. 9); Ḥaḍramawt is described as “an oasis” (p. 42); and the author believes that Tlemcen, which played a not inconsiderable part in Ibn Khaldun's life and in this book, is a coastal city (77, 80, 120 – its location on the map on p. viii is suggestive but open to interpretation). The author also holds that the Shāfiʿī qadi in Cairo under the Mamluks was “predominant” (p. 99), and that, in the course of a famous revolt, the “Yulbugha clan” supported one al-Nāṣirī (p. 10, in fact, Yalbughā al-Nāṣirī was so called having been a Mamluk of Sultan al-Nāṣir Muḥammad). Moreover, we are told that a “rafidi” is a “defector from Islam” (p. 109), that the main biography of the Prophet was composed by “Muhammad al-Ishaq” (p. 115 and index), that Bourdieu is a postmodernist (p. 130), that maẓālim designates an officer rather than an office (p. 67), and that Ibn Khaldun had an “argument with Ibn Rushd” (p. 128).
More could be mentioned in this vein. More grievous than incognizance is the evident incomprehension of the Muqaddima. It is described as being “highly generalized and philosophical” in nature, betraying “a free form of thinking” (p. 84), using “rules of logic” (p. 116). Matters might have become clearer to the author had he relied more on an analytical reading of the text than on meaningless general statements and on the citation of chapter titles, and had he taken the trouble to read Ibn Khaldun scholarship, some of which is cited in statements so general as to be of little analytical utility. Unsurprisingly, there is too much loose usage of ʿaṣabiyya, tribal federation, tribal names, and so forth, too summary a view and use of IK's praise for savagery, to the extent of seeing Ibn Khaldun's complex position to be an “anti-centralized theory [sic] of human society” (p. 90).
Finally, the author makes much of Ibn Khaldun and Sufism, and in fact evokes the Sufi notion of esoteric knowledge as a key to unlocking the primary motif of the Muqaddima. Unfortunately, his account of IK's position on Sufism betrays little acquaintance with the issues involved, or with IK's own writings, and the author's suppositions carry little conviction. This also skews and obscures the interpretation of Ibn Khaldun's interesting relationship with Ibn al-Khaṭīb, for whose reconstruction an actual reading of al-Maqqari, which contains correspondence between the two, would have been advisable. It is a pity that, upon reading this book, one has the sense of having been conveyed back to the drawing board.
