HISTORY is a discipline widely cultivated among nations and races. It is eagerly sought after. The men in the street, the ordinary people, aspire to know it. Kings and leaders vie for it.
Both the learned and the ignorant are able to understand it. For on the surface history is no more than information about political events, dynasties, and occurrences of the remote past, elegantly presented and spiced with proverbs. It serves to entertain large, crowded gatherings and brings to us an understanding of human affairs. (It shows) how changing conditions affected (human affairs), how certain dynasties came to occupy an ever wider space in the world, and how they settled the earth until they heard the call and their time was up.
The inner meaning of history, on the other hand, involves speculation and and attempt to get at the truth, subtle explanation of the causes and origins of existing things, and deep knowledge of the how and why of events. (History,) therefore, is firmly rooted in philosophy. It deserves to be accounted a branch of (philosophy).--Ibn Khaldun, Foreword, The Muqaddimah translated by F. Rosenthal.
Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) starts his great work by distinguishing between what we may call an exoteric spectacular or popular history from a more esoteric philosophical history. Because it is entertaining and aims to o Ibnffers insight ("understanding") and rule of thumb advice ("proverbs"), spectacular philosophy successfully appeals to high and low audiences. It concerns itself with the rise, spread, and fall of political empires (dynasties).
Ibn Khaldun implies, but does not say that philosophical history is an elite enterprise aimed at the few with the (explicit) aim not so much to entertain, but to provide a (boring albeit) resolutely causal in the traditional Aristotelian sense enterprise, providing the formal, material and final causes of events. It has a wider scope of interest not limited to the rise and fall of dynasties. Ibn Khaldun suggests that philosophical history is not aimed at policy. It may, in fact, be the case that thereby ir can focus on getting causes right.
As an aside, Ibn Khaldun's insistence that philosophical history goes beyond the surface of the events (discussed by spectacular history) and penetrates by grasping the hidden causes of things to the inner meaning of history would echo to Islamic readers not just the practices of the self-styled Islamic philosophers (Al-Farabi, Ibn Sinna, Ibn Rushd [recall and here]--all of whom he is familiar with), and the great ('philosophical') Islamic critic of these, Al-Ghazali (recall and here), but as all these authors did not tire of stressing, the Qu'ran itself (starting with 3:7). They all argue that there is a Quranic injunction to know the Quran's and nature's inner meaning. That is to say, Ibn Khaldun asks his readers to understand philosophical history as the study of the unfolding of history as being on par with the grasp of the inner meaning of revelation (and nature).
Ibn Khaldun treats philosophical history with respect. But he does not pretend that it's disinterested stance without being subject to incentives and without high interest can be maintained fully. As he notes explicitly, there is also a market for his kind of research: "Dynasty and government serve as the world's market place attracting to it the products of scholarship and craftsmanship alike." (This point is repeated a few times in the book.) That is, he invites the reader to reflect on the fact that he is aware of the market for his ideas.
Also, it is worth noting that Ibn Khaldun incorporates plenty of elements from spectacular history (he has plenty to say about rise and fall of dynasties, he entertains, etc.) And while I do not have a definitive opinion on the matter, I would not reject the idea that Ibn Khaldun offers a third species, a synthesis between the two kinds of history. For he claims that his book contains both "unusual knowledge and familiar if hidden wisdom." But it would be a mistake to miss the polemical elements of his enterprise.
In particular, among Ibn Khaldun's explicit aims of his own history is to encourage a reformation of attitudes toward tradition and toward's the belief in the permanence of any (political) society. As he says, after reading his work the reader will wash his hands of any blind trust in tradition. He will become aware of the conditions of periods and races that were before his time and that will be after it.
Now, it is tempting that the promotion of critical attitude toward tradition generates uncomfortable questions about his attitude toward the traditions of Islam (many of which enshrined in or grounding Law). Some other time I return to this issue (in the context of his fascinating treatment of prophecy), but I close with a more narrow point: another way to understand spectacular history is that it just is what we would call a society's ideology or civil religion; it provides a shared understanding of and guidance to the political world a society has inherited from the past. While it is not, in principle, incompatible with the truth, it does not aim at it (and so need not be truthful). That is to say, Ibn Khaldun recognizes that his philosophical history can destabilize existing political self-understandings while, simultaneously, being of potential use to those willing to pay the price for causal knowledge of political affairs.
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