Ibn Khaldun

When the North African Arab historiographer and historian Ibn Khaldun (1332 – 1406) wrote his book about universal history, he had noticed that there are essential elements that are repeated when nations progress, and other essential elements that are repeated when nations collapse. We can call these elements the reasons of progress and collapse.

He wrote these notes in his introduction which became more famous than the book itself, because it was, as the British historian Arnold J. Toynbee called, "a philosophy of history which is undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been created by any mind in any time or place.” Because of Ibn Khaldun’s introduction, he is claimed to be the world’s first sociologist.

Ibn Khaldun conceived a central social conflict between sedentary life in the city and nomadic life in the desert. He explained how a group of barbarians live a nomadic phase in tribes and other small kinship groups until they can develop a sort of social cohesion among themselves. This social cohesion can be intensified and enlarged by a religious or national ideology. Then they become desert warriors on the peripheries of great empires and use the unity presented by those areas to their advantage in order to conquer the city (sedentary life) and change the leadership.

Once the barbarians solidify their control over the conquered society, however, they become attracted to its more refined aspects, such as literacy and arts, and either assimilate into or appropriate such cultural practices.

But, because the new rulers establish themselves at the center of their empire, they become increasingly lax and more concerned with maintaining their lifestyles. Also, the social cohesion is most strong in the nomadic phase, and decreases as civilization advances. It carries groups to power but contains within itself the seeds of the group's downfall. So, when a society becomes a great civilization, its high point is followed by a period of decay.

Thus, a new group, bound by a stronger cohesion, can emerge at the periphery of their control and effect a change in leadership, beginning the cycle anew. Then, eventually, the former barbarians will be conquered by a new set of barbarians, who will repeat the process.