Ibn Khaldun

2011 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Leezenberg
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
North Africa ◽  
World History ◽  
Urban Life ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
Ibn Khaldun ◽  
New Science ◽  
Pendulum Swing ◽  
Swing Movement ◽  
Rural Group

Although Ibn Khaldun (b. 732/1332–d. 808/1406) does not appear to have exerted any constitutive influence on any of the founders of the modern social sciences, he is often described as a precursor or ancestor of sociology. Among others, he is the author of a voluminous world history, the Kitāb al-ʿibar or Book of Examples, part of which is a chronicle of the various local dynasties—many of them of Berber extraction—in North Africa. Another part of this work deals with other Muslim lands, and even with the non-Muslim world, making it one of the first Islamic attempts at world history. By far the most famous part of this book, however, is the Muqaddimah, or introduction, in which Ibn Khaldun formulates the principles of what he himself described as a new science serving as an auxiliary for historiography. This ʿilm al- ʿumran, or “science of civilization” as he called it, attempts to formulate general laws of history, as a principled means of establishing the veracity of historical reports. The most important of these laws is the circular, or pendulum-swing, movement between rural or tribal (badawa) societies and urban civilizations (hadara). Rural societies are bound together and strengthened by a bond of ʿasabiyya (solidarity or group spirit), which also enables them to conquer more refined urban civilizations. Once in power, however, the new dynasty will progressively become weakened by the refinements of urban life, and after several generations it will be overthrown by a new rural group still held together by its ʿasabiyya. Among contemporaries, Ibn Khaldun’s ideas did not generate much interest, but in later centuries he has been read with great interest by both scholars and policymakers, and both inside and outside the Muslim world.

Reflections into the Spirit of the Islamic Corpus of Knowledge and the Rise of the New Science

1993 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 153-164
Author(s):  
Mahmoud Dhaouadi
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Third World ◽  
New Physics ◽  
Western Civilization ◽  
Western Science ◽  
New Science ◽  
Scientific Disciplines ◽  
The World ◽  
The Future ◽  
Primary Reference

There is no question that contemporary western civilization has beendominant in the field of science since the Renaissance. Western scientificsuperiority is not limited to specific scientific disciplines, but is rather anovetall scientific domination covering both the so-called exact and thehuman-social sciences. Western science is the primary reference for specialistsin such ateas as physics, chemistry, biology, medicine, economics,psychology, and sociology. It is in this sense that Third World underdevelopmentis not only economic, social, and industrial; it also suffersfrom scientific-cultutal underdevelopment, or what we call "The OtherUnderdevelopment" (Dhaouadi 1988).The imptessive progress of western science since Newton and Descartesdoes not meari, however, that it has everything tight or perfect. Infact, its flaws ate becoming mote visible. In the last few decades, westernscience has begun to experience a shift from what is called classical scienceto new science. Classical science was associated with the celestialmechanics of Copernicus, Kepler, Newton, the new physics of Galileo,and the philosophy of Descartes. Descartes introduced a radical divisionbetween mind and matter, while Newton and his fellows presented a newscience that looked at the world as a kind of giant clock The laws of thisworld were time-reversible, for it was held that there was no differencebetween past and future. As the laws were deterministic, both the pastand the future could be predicted once the present was known.The vision of the emerging new science tends to heal the division betweenmatter and spirit and to do away with the mechanical dimension ...

Islamic International Relations Towards a Theoretical Framework

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gubara Hassan
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
International Relations ◽  
Modern Society ◽  
Theoretical Framework ◽  
World Politics ◽  
Muslim World ◽  
The West ◽  
The Past ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The World

The Western originators of the multi-disciplinary social sciences and their successors, including most major Western social intellectuals, excluded religion as an explanation for the world and its affairs. They held that religion had no role to play in modern society or in rational elucidations for the way world politics or/and relations work. Expectedly, they also focused most of their studies on the West, where religion’s effect was least apparent and argued that its influence in the non-West was a primitive residue that would vanish with its modernization, the Muslim world in particular. Paradoxically, modernity has caused a resurgence or a revival of religion, including Islam. As an alternative approach to this Western-centric stance and while focusing on Islam, the paper argues that religion is not a thing of the past and that Islam has its visions of international relations between Muslim and non-Muslim states or abodes: peace, war, truce or treaty, and preaching (da’wah).

Teaching the West and the World from the Massachusetts Framework

1998 ◽  
Vol 180 (1) ◽  
pp. 67-78
Author(s):  
Paul Gagnon
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Science Curriculum ◽  
World History ◽  
Student Assessment ◽  
The West ◽  
The Social ◽  
Curriculum Framework ◽  
Massachusetts History ◽  
Common Problems ◽  
Selection Of

This article summarizes how teachers may implement the Massachusetts History and Social Science Curriculum Framework as they design and teach courses in Western civilization and world history. It discusses the integration of history, geography, and the social sciences, together with suggested approaches to common problems such as the balance between Western and world studies, selection of main topics and questions, professional development, student assessment, and challenges teachers may confront.

scholarly journals From Durkheim to Czarnowski: Sociological Universalism and Polish Politics in the Interwar Period

2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-187
Author(s):  
Joanna Wawrzyniak
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Interwar Period ◽  
World History ◽  
East Central Europe ◽  
East Central ◽  
Specific Location ◽  
Universal Principles ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Great War ◽  
International Social

The Durkheimian School of sociology was one of the most comprehensive programmes ever developed in the social sciences. This article contributes to those accounts of the School that discuss its intergenerational, interdisciplinary and international transformations after the Great War. From this perspective, the article presents the case of a Polish scholar, Stefan Czarnowski (1879–1937), whose early work on the cult of St. Patrick in Ireland became one of the Durkheimian classics on social integration. In the interwar period Czarnowski argued against race studies and anti-social concepts of culture and called for sociologically grounded comparative world history ordered around the notions of class and work. More generally, Czarnowski’s reconfiguration of Durkheimian universal principles in the specific location of East Central Europe calls for a deeper historicisation of the Durkheimian School as a movement in international social sciences.

scholarly journals The Origin of Management Ideas in Sociology in Chinese Society at the Turn of the 19th and 20th Centuries

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 116-142
Author(s):  
Evgeny Kremnyov
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Chinese Society ◽  
Western Science ◽  
The Qing Dynasty ◽  
New Science ◽  
Chinese Nation ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Sociological Thought ◽  
Sociological Approaches ◽  
Management Issues

n the beginning of the 20th century, China faced the need to look for new ways of development and, like other countries, turned towards the resources provided by social sciences in the attempt to comprehend and interpret this experience. This article reviews and analyzes Chinese sociological thought of the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, focusing on management issues. The subject of this work is the genesis of management ideas in sociology in Chinese society. The material for the study comprises the works of thinkers, publicists, and political figures of that time who set themselves the task of applying sociological theories to the development of the country. The main problem discussed in the article is the ratio of Western and native Chinese views and ideas in sociological approaches to the study of managerial processes in China. The analysis of materials from that time shows three different tendencies in the formation of management ideas in sociology; identifying the prerequisites for a new science to be used in traditional ideas about management, demonstrating the predominance of Western science over Chinese traditional sciences, and the attempts at synthesizing the first two tendencies. The conclusion of the article is that, by the time of the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, the nascent management ideas in sociology in China were a heterogeneous fusion of Western and traditional Chinese concepts, and was closely related to other sciences such as political science, sociology, philosophy, etc. During this period, traditional ideas that were largely distinguished by speculation and ideology bore the function of an ideological “shield” to preserve the integrity of the Chinese nation in the context of the growing influence of Western powers on Chinese society.

Islamicate Cosmopolitanism from North Africa to Southeast Asia

2018 ◽  
pp. 30-52
Author(s):  
Bruce B. Lawrence
Keyword(s):  
Southeast Asia ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Cultural Difference ◽  
State Power ◽  
Ethical Reflection ◽  
Ibn Khaldun

Lawrence introduces the idea that ‘Islamicate cosmopolitans’ engage in moral introspection to fashion a genuine orientation of openness to religious-cum-cultural difference. Drawing from the work of Marshall Hodgson, Lawrence argues that these cosmopolitans carried a specific conscience, a conscience that precedes Islam yet was reshaped by the Quran and ethical reflection within Muslim empires. The chapter then explores two renowned pre-modern thinkers, the scientific polymath Abū Rayḥān al-Bīrūnī and the legal scholars Ibn Khaldūn, as exemplars of a universal ethos with an Islamicate accent. Yet, Lawrence also acknowledges how notions of cosmopolitan justice could nevertheless sustain coercion by directing Muslim commitment to state power through concepts such as the medieval ‘circle of justice’.

Building a global scientific community

2020 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-122
Author(s):  
Stefan Bargheer
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
Latin America ◽  
Eastern Europe ◽  
North Africa ◽  
Scientific Community ◽  
European Research ◽  
Research Perspective ◽  
Social Sciences And Humanities ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Social

The three volumes reviewed in this essay assemble over 40 case studies written by more than 50 contributors that trace the development of the social sciences and humanities in Europe (East and West) and a number of countries in Latin America, North Africa, and East Asia. Two of these volumes grew out of the European research project ‘International Cooperation in the Social Sciences and Humanities’ (INTERCO-SSH); the third volume extends the focus of this project to Eastern Europe. A particularly innovative aspect shared by all contributions is the application of a transnational research perspective.

A Bedouin Principle of Freedom for the Risorgimento d’Italia: Michele Amari Integrates Ibn Khaldūn with Vico’s filologia

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 76-96
Author(s):  
Markus Messling
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
State Of The Art ◽  
Classical Model ◽  
The State ◽  
Model Case ◽  
Ibn Khaldun ◽  
Giambattista Vico ◽  
New Science ◽  
Human Choice ◽  
History Of

Abstract In the New Science (1744), Giambattista Vico defined filologia as “the doctrine of all the institutions that depend on human choice” of the mondo civile. When nineteenth-century European nationalism was on the rise, supported by narratives of cultural homogeneity and specificity, philological comparatism was the state-of-the-art and it, often, legitimated the obsessions with the purity of origins and genealogies. Italy, characterized by internal plurality and its Mediterranean entanglements, is a model case. Whereas many discourses of the Risorgimento aspired to shape a new Italian nation after the classical model, Michele Amari’s History of the Muslims of Sicily (1854–1872) marked an astonishing exception. For him, going back to Islamic-Sicilian history, its literary, rhetorical and linguistic culture, meant to resume, on a higher level of incivilmento (Vico), what had been obscured by cultural decline: the spirit of freedom and equality, which Ibn Khaldūn had attributed to the Bedouins and their dynamics in history.

Urban Life in Pre-Colonial North Africa

1976 ◽  
Vol 27 (1) ◽  
pp. 1 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Stambouli ◽  
A. Zghal
Keyword(s):  
North Africa ◽  
Urban Life
Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document