Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

IBN KHALDUN (1332-1406 A.D.) The fourteenth century may be called the century of Neo-
s S)ed Ameer Ah. Histon, of the Saracens. P 315 } Hitti. Histon of the Arabs. P 477 |(Hanfi. Surve\ of Muslim Institutions and Culture. P 179 ( Ri/wan. Ni/am-ui-Mulk Tusi. P 106 Hilti. Histon of the Arabs. P 447

884
Political and Cultural Histon/ of Islam

Hanbalism. Ibn Taymiyah and his disciples insured the victory of Neo-Hanbalism over scholastic theology and philosophy, and although the intellecutal momentum of Islam had wanted by this time, exceptions continued to arise here and there. Of these exceptions Ibn Khaldun of Tunis is the most remarkable in the West. Mulla Sadra the most remarkable in the Last, both for the vastness of his learning and the originality of his sociological thought, Ibn Khaldun occupies a place apart in the annals of Islamic philosophical thought.
Born in 1332 into a noble Arab-Spanish family of scholars and civil servants, Abdu’l-Rahman b. Khaldun receive the customary education of his class. He studied the Quranic and linguistic sciences, the traditions, and jurisprudence with a series of teachers whom he praises in a lengthy autobiography. He travelled west in

1352 driven by the political squabbles of the times and the plague of

1348-1349, which took the lives of his parents and most of his teachers. After a short stay in Bougie he settled down in Fez at the court of the sultan Abu Inan, who was recruiting scholars for his new scientific council. One of the scholars Ibn Khaldun met at Fez was al-Sharif al-Tilmisani al-’AIwi (d. 1370), to whom he gives unqualified praise. In addition to jurisprudence, theology, and linguistics, this scholar reportedly introduced one of Ibn Khaldun’s teachers, Ibn Abd al-Salam, to the suspect study of the philosophical writings of Ibn Sina and Ibn Rushd. From Fez. where he attained at one time a high administrative position under Abu Salim, the successor to Abu Inan, he moved on to Granada, which he reached in

1362. Later he was a lured back to Fez and Bougie, where he also occupied positions of eminence at court. But throughout those troubled years and despite the allurements of Public office, which he often struggled with. Ibn Khaldun yearned for a quiet life of stud) and meditation.

During a short period of solitude in 1377 he was able to complete his most important work, al-Muqaddiinah, which was the introduction to his world history. Kitab al-lbar. Tired of public life and the ha/ardous service of fickle rulers in North Africa, he sailed to Alexandria in 1382. In Cairo, the Mamluk sultan, al-Malik alZahir Barquq, recognized his great achievement as a scholar and a jurist. In 1384 he was appointed professor of Maliki Law and subsequently Chief Maliki Judge of Egypt. With intermittent interruptions he retained the position of Professor of law at various
Eminent Scholars of Medieval Islam
885
Mamluk institutions and the judgeship until his death. One final memorable episode in his life should be mentioned: in 1406 he encountered Timur Lane outside the walls of Damascus. Timur Lane apparentl> showed great regard for this scholar and may have wished to attach him to his court. Ibn Khaldun, however, returned to Egvpt shortly after to resume his activities as jurist and scholar until his death in 1406.
Abu Zaid ’Abd al-Rahman ibn Khaldun was a Muslim historian, philosopher economist, politician and pedagogue. Above all he was the father of the science of history, and one of the founders of sociology. His position as a philosopher in the professional sense of the term has almost been completely eclipsed by his fame as a sociologist and theorician of history. He was indeed, in a sense, hostile towards philosophy and, like Kant, deemed metaplnsics an impossibility. Yet this pronouncements against philosophy are philosophically so significant that no student of philosophy can afford to ignore them. Ibn Khaldun struck quite an independent and original note in Muslim philosophy by going away with all the Aristotelian and !\eoplatonic borrowings. He was one of the first to make a really critical study of the nature, limitations, and validity of human knowledge. Of the whole array of Muslim philosophers going before him he \\as impressed by none; of the speculative systems of Farabi, Ibn Sina, Ibn Rushd and others he speaks rather lightly.
We can, however, compare him with al-Ghazali:12 both had a highly critical attitude towards philosophy, and both strongly maintained that it is not through reason alone but through religious experience that we apprehend the nature of ultimate reality.
It is quite interesting to note that the philosophical views of Ibn Khaldun are available to us not through any regular and independent work on philosophy11 but in an introductory volume on the methods of history, called Muqaddimah, i.e. ’Prolegomena’, which he wrote before he launched upon his voluminous history of the world. It is prolegomena not to all future metaphysics like that so Kant’s but to all future history, yet, significantly enough, it serves the
” Ibn Khaldun. in fact. \\as cleeph influenced b\ al Ghazali. Sarton calls c\cn the follower of al-Ciha/li. cl his Introduction to the llistor\ ot Science. Baltimore

1947. Vol in. Part 11. P 1775. Maud al-Fakhr\ llisioi\ ol Muslim Plhi.^ophx I ondon. P 223

886