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Ibn Khaldun on Economic Transformation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 April 2009

Dieter Weiss
Dieter Weiss
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, Freie Universität Berlin, Boltzmannstr. 20, 14195 Berlin, Germany.
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Extract

A number of Arab countries have been exposed to structural adjustment programs. Under the guidance of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, these programs are aimed at making various kinds of Arab socialist and mixed-economy regimes more “market-friendly,” a policy that started in the 1950s and 1960s in countries like Algeria, Tunisia, Syria, and Egypt. Considering the mounting social tension that results from continuing population growth, urban agglomeration, and unemployment, it would be naive to expect—with Fukuyama—an “end of history” as most countries try to adopt market regimes and to strengthen civil society and parliamentary democracy. As Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406) well knew, economic and social change is a never-ending process. In the search for viable and sustainable strategies it may be stimulating to consider the insights of this great scholar of the Arab world who wrote 600 years ago.

IBN KHALDUN'S SOCIAL SYSTEMS THEORY

Ibn Khaldun was born in Tunis into an influential clan of South Arabian origin with substantial influence in Islamic Spain and, after the fall of Seville in 1248, in north-western Africa. He was exposed to the turmoils of his time. He held his first position in 1352 at the court at Tunis at the age of 20 and then went on to high political, administrative, diplomatic, and judicial posts in the service of various rulers in the Maghrib, Spain, and Egypt.

Type
Articles
Information
International Journal of Middle East Studies , Volume 27 , Issue 1 , February 1995 , pp. 29 - 37
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1995

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References

NOTES

Author's note: This paper was presented at the Department of Near Eastern Studies, Princeton University, on 24 March 1994, while the author was John Foster Dulles Visiting Professor at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs.

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3 Here and following, the numbers in parenthesis refer to the volume and the page in Rosenthal's translation of the Muqaddimah cited in n. 2.

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To act consistently, therefore, we should facilitate, instead of foolishly and vainly endeavouring to impede, the operations of nature in producing this mortality; and if we dread the too frequent visitation of the horrid form of famine, we should sedulously encourage the other forms of destruction, which we compel nature to use. Instead of recommending cleanliness to the poor, we should encourage contrary habits. In our lowns we should make the streets narrower, crowd more people into the houses, and court the return of the plague. In the country, we should build our villages near stagnant pools, and particularly encourage settlements in all marshy and unwholesome situations. But above all, we should reprobate specific remedies for ravaging diseases.

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13 Weiss, Dieter, “Introducing Market Elements into a Socialist Economy: The Experience of Eastern Europe and the People's Republic of China,” L'Egypte Contemporaine 415–16 (1989): 42–44Google Scholar.

14 Cf. WorldBank, World Development Report 1991 (Washington, D.C., 1991), 145 fGoogle Scholar.

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16 Cf. World Bank, 145–46Google Scholar; Weiss, Dieter, Structural Adjustment Programs in the Middle East: The Impact of Value Patterns and Social Norms (Berlin, 1992), 12 fGoogle Scholar.