“May God strengthen you—I have longed to meet you for thirty or forty years.” The interpreter, ‘Abd al-Jabbār, asked, “And why is that?”
I replied, “Two reasons: the first is that you are the supreme sovereign of the universe and the ruler of the world, and I do not believe that there has ever been a ruler like you among men from Adam until this era. Verily, I am not the type of individual who merely speaks about things based on conjecture, for I am a scholar and I will explain why I say this: Sovereignty exists only because of group solidarity (‘asabiyya), and the greater the number in the group, the greater is the extent of sovereignty. Scholars, in the past and the present, have agreed that the most populous groups among human beings are the Arabs and the Turks. Surely you know how the sovereignty of the Arabs was established when they became united in their religion in following their prophet [Muhammad]. As for the Turks, their rivalry with the kings of Persia and the seizure of Khurasan from the latter by their king, Afrāsiyāb, is evidence of their royal origin. None from among the kings of the earth—not Khusraw, nor Caesar nor Alexander nor Nebuchadnezzar—is comparable to them with regard to the extent of their group solidarity (‘asabiyya). As for Khusraw, he was the leader of the Persians and their king, but the Persians fall utterly short of the Turks! As for Caesar and Alexander, they were kings of the Greeks [al-rūm], but again the Greeks cannot be compared [in terms of their greatness] with the Turks! As for Nebuchadnezzar, he was the chieftain of the Babylonians and the Nabateans, but what a difference between these nations and the Turks! This constitutes a clear proof of what I have maintained concerning this king [Timur].
Ibn-Khaldun met Timur after the (partial) surrender of Damascus. His report on their meetings is clearly self-serving. But since he lived to tell it, it can't be wholly false. Timur clearly though Ibn-Khaldun's knowledge of Egypt and North Africa would be useful to any would-be-future conquest. Interestingly enough, Ibn Khaldun reports on how he supplied him with detailed information (which surely could have been interpreted as an act of treason back home).
In the passage quoted, Ibn Khaldun offers a glimpse of his own political science. Timur's power is due to the group-solidarity (I like 'group cohesion')* and favorable demographics that can support his large army. There are, in fact, multiple ways toward such group-cohesion (recall this post). One means toward such cohesion -- and it is really notable that Timur uses this example at once -- is religion and when properly directed it allows for the great success of (to nod to Machiavelli) armed prophets.
I am going to assume the religiosity of Ibn Khaldun, but that's compatible with having a functional analysis of religion.+ Clearly Ibn Khaldun implies that part of Muhammad's skill is the ability to shape group cohesion. (Part of the trickiness of Ibn Khaldun's account is that [recall] group cohesion can make a people receptive to a leader, but also that good leadership can generate group cohesion.) But it's also notable that Muhammad and his followers got lucky that the Arab population was so large (on the significance of population size in Khaldun, recall this post).
This is not to deny that Ibn Khaldun takes providence seriously. For he embeds his flattery ("the supreme sovereign of the universe and the ruler of the world") in a providential prophecy grounded in astrology (which is the bit after I cut off my quote). My purpose here is not to debate whether Ibn Khaldun believes in prophecy and astrology, but rather to show that he treats it as something highly functional within religion. Several of the greatest astrologers he invokes are in fact themselves preachers ("the mosque-preacher of the city of Constantine, Abū ‘Alī ibn Bādīs, who was an authority in the astrological sciences") and metaphysians including Ibn Khaldun's own teacher Muhammad ibn Ibrāhīm al-Ābilī.**
The point of the astrology is not just to predict the rise of Timur. But he uses these astrological forecasts, also to convey a brief version of Ibn Khaldun's account of the military superiority of the rough nomadic tribes over civilized, sedentary peoples. Ibn Khaldun's speech would have resonated with Timur and his retinue because they had just conquered Damascus!
I don't mean to suggest that Ibn Khaldun is an instructing Timur on the art of politics. Unlike, perhaps the (intended?) reader of Ibn Khaldun's account, Timur is clearly not in need of it. Rather I think Ibn Khaldun is aiming to convey to Timur that he understands and respects the source of Timur's power and that his (Ibn Khaldun's) celebrity itself warranted. But most amazingly, the point of inserting Timur into a providential-prophetic narrative, is to encourage Timur to think he may be able, if not surpass, then at least near-equal the achievements of the prophet.
That's sufficient for my present purposes. But here's a brief concluding thought: I would love to find out if Machiavelli somehow read Ibn Khaldun's autobiography. Because structurally this move is Machiavelli's at the end of The Prince. He tries to make De Medici believe that he can equal Moses as redeemer of Italy.
*Ibn Khaldun's ‘asabiyya is a notoriously tricky concept to translate. What Ibn Khaldun says about it makes me think of sympathy in the traditional sense (of a sort Hume uses when trying to explain national character).
+This is clearly indebted to Al-Farabi and Ibn Rushd as Muhsin Mahdi noted.
**Recent scholarship tends to underplay Ibn Khaldun's debt to philosophy, but this overlooks that Ibn Khaldun repeatedly draws attention to it (despite his explicit criticism of some forms of speculation [recall also]).
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