ASPECTS OF ISLAMIC POLITICAL THOUGHT:

AL-FA.RABI AND IBN XALDUN *)

by

Richard Walzer
Oxford

H ellmut Ritter zum 70. Geburtstage

I.

Political thought may concern itself with the ideal society, the perfect
state. It will not then overlook the realities of actual political circum-
stances and the various forms of existing states which are considered to
be deficient or utterly wrong, but those actual states will be judged
by the standard of perfection which the political thinker applies: they
will be considered by him merely as degenerate forms of the true and
perfect state and will serve mainly as a kind of springboard for developing
his constructive ideas. Plato's Republic and Plato's Laws and Plato's
Statesman are works of that kind. It is relevant in our present context
to be aware of the fact that Plato's political thought, based as it is on a
theory about reality as a whole, was not meant or understood as a
theoretical exercise in 'politics' but as a proposal to reform his native
city-state of Athens and other similar Greek states and thus, as he believed,
to restore the genuine Greek life. It is proof of his lasting greatness that
these ideas -like other views of his - turned out to be so suggestive and
fruitful that they were able to live on in different historical circumstances,
divorced from their native soil, and could be transferred to other civili-
sations and be applied to larger political entities than the Greek city-
states had been, to empires and to a universal world state.
* The editor of ,Oriens' has always been willing to accept contributions which
are neither strictly specialist nor written in an esoteric technical language. Hence
I may be forgiven for offering him, on this occasion, a paper in which I try to
throw some light on certain relevant aspects of Islamic political theory in a sim-
plified way. The paper was read to the Oxford Medieval Society in March 1962 and
meant to bring home to a wider audience of scholars that medieval Muslims views on
politics deserve more consideration than is usually granted to them. I am fully
aware of the summary nature of some of my judgements and hope that they will be
understood as a challenge to further and more serious discussions of an unduly
neglected subject.

40

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 Aspects of Islamic political thought 41

This aspect of Platonism was not popular with Plotinus and the later
Neoplatonists like Proclus who happened to be instrumental in trans-
mitting the Greek tradition of the study of Plato to the later centuries
of Byzantine civilisation and the Italian Renaissance. They emphasised
the religious and metaphysical aspects of Plato's thought as they under-
stood it, and laid exclusive stress on the salvation of the individual soul
through philosophy. Plato's political thought appeared irrelevant in this
context and, accordingly, they minimised its importance 1 • Hence it has
come about that our information about the development of Plato's view
of the perfect state in the philosophical schools of late antiquity is sur-
prisingly scanty. Our main witnesses are Cicero who wrote his De re
publica and the De legibus as the answer of a philosopher politician to the
supreme crisis of the Roman Republic in the first century B.C., the
emperor Julian, who attempted the restoration of the pagan Roman
Empire under the influence of his tutor Themistius with the help of
Plato's philosophy 2, and last, but by no means least, al-Farabi at the
beginning of the roth century in Baghdad-who undertook (though
only in writing) to renew the fading glory of the 'Abbasid caliphate by
refounding it on the pattern of the Platonic philosopher-king. This
little known trend of later Greek Platonism 3 had reached the Islamic
world before al-Farabi's days. Plato's Republic and Laws had already
been made accessible in Arabic translations (cf. EI 2, s.n. Aflatiin)-
whereas the contemporary Latin West was not acquainted with either of
them-and it is more than a reasonable guess to assume that the parti-
cular interpretation of Plato's political thought upon which al-Farabi drew
was extant in Arabic at the same time as well. But it was al-Farabi's
merit to realise how adequately this Greek tradition could be exploited
and used as providing an answer to the crisis of the caliphate which had
developed in his own day.
So much, in a preliminary way, about political theory as professed by
Plato and those like him, as the background to the impressive and daring
use which the Muslim al-Farabi made of it; he set out to adapt it to
circumstances unthought of by Plato, to a world which was as different
from the Greek way of life as it could possibly be: it was based on a holy
book vested with divine authority, the like of which the Greeks did not
know, and it was by no means as thoroughly urbanised and pacified as
the Greek world had been. But the Greeks knew also of a different kind

1 Cf. e.g. Porphyry, Life of Plotinus, 7. N. H. Baynes, Cambridge Ancient History

XII, p. 66o. Anonymus, Prolegomena 26 (p. 219, 24 ff. Hermann).
1 Cf. A. Rostagni, Giuliano l'Apostata (Torino 1920), pp. 29 ff., 376 ff. .
8 Cf. F. Rosenthal-R. Walzer, Plato Arabus II (London 1943), pp. XIII f., 17, 28.

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42 Richard Walzer

of political theory, based on an unbiassed view of empirical reality, which

is, for instance, to be found in books IV-VI of Aristotle's Politics. This
kind of study is obviously important for the statesman and practising
politician, and it will decline and fade away whenever there is no free
discussion of political topics possible - as appears to have been the
case in the autocratic Roman Empire during the first centuries of our
era. 1 Hence it is not as astonishing as appears at first sight that Aris-
totle's Politics was not read as a set-book in the Greek philosophical
schools during the centuries immediately preceding the Arabic con-
quest - whereas all the logical, physical and metaphysical and (though
to a minor degree) ethical lecture courses of Aristotle were keenly studied
and extensively commented upon. The earliest known adnotations of the
Politics are due to an nth century Byzantine scholar. 2 It quite agrees
with this state of affairs that we are nowhere told of an Arabic translation
of Aristotle's Politics (cf. EI2, s.n. Aristutalis) and that no Arabic reference
to its context can be traced apart from quotations either from an antho-
logy or from a different Greek work. 3 Greek political theory of this
type- based on concrete happenings in early Greek history which were
completely unfamiliar and obscure to the Arabs-was, very understand-
ably, never translated into Arabic, and, when the great 14th century
North African historian Ibn Xaldiin took up this line of political thought
and analysed political life and the structure of society and the rise and
decline of the power of states in the Islamic world, he followed an inde-
pendent approach of his own - although it is obvious that he is not unaware
of philosophical forms of argument, philosophical views and philosophical
terms. His subject is the reality of the Islamic world, the caliphate as a
union of spiritual and political leadership and the secular sovereignty
of kings, but considered less in abstract terms than in their manifestations
in Islamic history. He is very much concerned with the analysis of the
nomadic tribal society of the desert and its antagonism to the urbanised
life of the fertile lands, a problem scarcely mentioned by Plato and Aris-
totle or any Greek or Roman writer on political thought. But whereas
al-Fara.bi is ultimately convinced of the primacy of human reason and
philosophical truth, Ibn Xaldiin feels less sure, he is aware of the limits
of human reason and states frequently that man is unable to comprehend
1 Cf. W. Jaeger, Early Christianity and Greek Paideia (Cambridge Mass. 1961),

p. 124 n. 7.
2 Michael of Ephesus, cf. 0. Immisch's second edition of Aristotle's Politics

(Leipzig 1929), pp. XVI ff. and pp. 293-327. A. Dreizehnter, Textgeschichte der
aristotelischen Politik (Leiden 1962), passim.
8 Cf. F. Rosenthal, Muslim Concept of Freedom (Leiden 1960), p. 31 n. 74.

S. Pines, Scripta Hierosolymitana 9, 1961, p. 189.

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 Aspects of Islamic political thought 43

the ways of the divine providence which manifests itself in the ultimately
unfathomable vicissitudes of human history: he cannot venture very far
beyond the exploration of proximate causes, and his conspicuous origi-
nality of approach is ultimately limited to this field.
Before dealing more in detail with the political thought of al-Fara.bi
and Ibn Xaldiin-who appear to me, rightly or wrongly, to be the most
outstanding political thinkers in the Islamic world-let us look at the
two men more closely.

Al-Fara.bi, of Turkish origin, from North East Iran, lived in Baghdad,

the capital of the <Abbasid caliphs, and at the court of the Si<ite I;Iam-
danid ruler Saifaddaula in Aleppo as a private individual in modest
circumstances. He died as an old man A.D. 950/339 A.H. He did not
belong to the ruling aristocracy like al-Kindi, the most influential philo-
sopher of the preceding century, nor did he ever hold any political
office like Avicenna (who was born thirty years after his death}, nor did
he become a high official in the religious hierarchy as Chief Qa.9i like
Averroes in the 12th and Ibn Xaldiin in the 14th century. He is, in my
view, one of the most attractive Islamic philosophers and perhaps the
most attractive among them. He lived at a time when Islam was still
not definitely consolidated, the antagonism of Sunna and Si<a both
politically and theologically still undecided, and when many views were
still acceptable which would have seemed extravagant and almost here-
tical three hundred years later. 1 Like all Islamic philosophers he was
concerned with naturalising Greek thought in the Islamic world, and not
content merely to inform his contemporaries of the views held by foreign
thinkers belonging to a remote past. He was bent on reinterpreting the
whole of Islam in philosophical terms, and he even advised the reshaping
of the whole political organisation of the Muslim world in accordance
with the views of Plato, putting forward the idea of the philosopher king
as the only remedy for the troubled state of affairs. He explained his
views in different extant books which are all addressed to readers who
can follow a philosophical argument without being expert philosophers
themselves. The best is, in my view, the book entitled On the principles
of the views held by the inhabitants of the perfect state (or 'city' 1toALc;;? -
there is no general word for 'state' in classical Arabic), and my references

1 Cf. H. A. R. Gibb, An interpretation of Islamic History, Cahiers d'Histoire

Mondiale I (1953), p. 39 ff. passim. ·

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44 Richard W alze,

will be mainly to this particular work. 1 We may very well ask why the
Platonic view of the perfect state could appeal to a Muslim thinker like
al-Fara.bi-it just will not do to assert that it happened by chance. It
may be asked, at the same time, why this 'political' Platonism-which,
as I mentioned before was not considered favourably by the major
representatives of late Greek Platonism -was not popular with the Christ-
ians either: it had, indeed, little to say to people like St. Augustine,
who distinguished between a 'civitas temporalis' and a 'civitas caelestis'
and ascribed a real value to the 'civitas caelestis' only. Plato and the
Muslim prophet both envisaged a realisation of a perfect society here and
now, they were equally interested in this world and in the world-to-come 2 ,
and I believe that this is the reason why al-Fara.bi convinced himself
that Plato's attitude might appeal to a Muslim and be extremely useful
for the urgent reshaping of the caliphate and ultimately assure its defi-
nitive and permanent form. (On the later fate of al-Fara.bi's view
within Islam cf. chapter X in Sir Thomas Arnold's The Caliphate, Oxford
1924, and H. A. R. Gibb, Studies on the Civilisation of Islam, London 1962,
p. 144). It is significant in the same context that other works by al-Fara.bi,
the De intellectu and his impressive survey of the sciences, the De divisione
scientiarum, became known to the Schoolmen in the 12th century but that
none of his works which deal with the perfect state was ever translated
into medieval Latin (the Schoolmen did not come to know Plato's Republic
either, and Averroes' Paraphrase of Plato's Republic was not available in
Latin before 1539 (cf. below, p. 48 n. r). Christians brought up in the
Augustinian tradition were in no need of Plato's Republic or of its Arabic
variant.
Ibn Xaldiin was born in Tunis in 1332/732 and died in Egypt in 1406.
He was by no means a political reformer, and if he had been, he would
certainly not have chosen philosophy as the instrument of such a reform.
He did neither recognise the superiority of theoretical reason as al-Fara.bi
and Avicenna (though in a different way) had done nor would he have
conceived of philosophy as magistra vitae and as the high road to the
happiness of the individual and its social and political integration into
a perfect State (cf. e.g. Muqaddima VI 30). Apart from this, the caliphate
was practically non-existent in Ibn Xaldiin's days: it had not only, since
about the time of al-Fara.bi's death, i.e. since the middle of the rnth
century, lost all executive authority but had, since 1258, disappeared

1 I am about to finish a new critical edition of this work with an English trans-
lation and notes. The best translation available at present is by R. P. Jaussen,
Youssef Karam and J. Chlala (French-Cairo 1949).
• Cf. what Ibn Xaldiin, Muqaddima III 25, has to say about this topic.

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 Aspects of Islamic political thought 45

almost completely. 1 To speculate about its reform had thus become a

mere academic exercise, and such an attitude would scarcely have agreed
with the robust realistic common sense which is so characteristic of
Ibn Xaldiin's mind. Things had still been different when al-Farabi
conceived his idea of restoring the caliphate through philosophy. More-
over the values recognised by lbn Xaldiin are the religious standards
whose validity was no longer contested. Ibn Xaldiin, then, not pretending
to be a reformer, analyses the basic conditions of Islamic life with a mind
open to facts as a keen and shrewd observer. His results, to be studied
in some sections of the 'Prolegomena', meant as an introduction to his
universal history-de omni re scibili-and almost grown into an inde-
pendent work of its own, will serve as a key to past history and are able
to help the practising statesman towards a better judgment and a better
appreciation of present day events. The book contains, it is true, much
material derived from Greek philosophy and various Greek sciences, and
it is, in its intention and its method, pervaded by the Greek spirit. But
its object and many of the main terms used are different. AI-Farabi
could employ terms translated from the Greek which could be understood
in a general sense without being applied to specific Islamic conditions.
He even seems, intentionally, almost completely to have avoided Is-
lamic terms in the book On the views held by the inhabitants of the perfect
state, since he considered its contents universally valid, and so valid
also for non-Muslim city-states or empires. The position is different in
lbn Xaldiin, who is as deeply steeped in the religious and legal traditions
of Islam as in philosophy. But, above all, Greek political terms and Greek
political thought, as applied to the Muslim world by al-Farabi, must
have appeared inadequate to Ibn Xaldiin. He was aware of the fact
that Greek political thought could help to explain only a part of the
forces which were active within the world of Islam. Greek political
thinkers were concerned with urbanised societies and major or minor
states which were based on agriculture and trade. lbn Xaldiin knew the
very essence of bedouin life as well and described it with understanding
and impressive clarity. He understood-I know of no parallel in Greek
litterature-the interplay of bedouin and city life in a grneral way as
well as in the details of past history and present <lay events, and made
city life, for the early Greeks the highest achievement of civilisation,
appear in a new and much less favourable light. He had to find new
terms or to change old ones in order to describe his new experience and
his new insight, terms which have, in their turn, proved also to be of
1 Cf. e.g. H. A. R. Gibb-H. Bowen, Islamic Society and the West I (London 1950),
p. 131 ff.

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 Richard Walzer

general value, and to be applicable to circumstances quite different from

lbn Xaldiin's range of knowledge and experience. 1 That a work so tho-
roughly Islamic in outlook remained, in spite of the many general 'socio-
logical' observations which it contains, completely unknown to the West
until the 19th century is not surprising, quite apart from the fact that
the gap between East and West had considerably widened since the 13th
century when most of the Arabic-Latin translations were made. But it
appealed to the Osman Turks who had a vigorous political life of their
own and could appreciate the quality of lbn Xaldiin's observation out of
their own experience.
3
I may, before I start discussing al-Farabi's views in more detail, say
just in passing a word about Avicenna and his attitude to political
thought. Al-Farabi considers philosophy as universally valid. It expresses
truth in abstract thought, whose contents are the same everywhere
and do not change from nation to nation or rather from religion to religion.
Religion conveys the same truth to philosophers and particularly to
non-philosophers (who make up the majority) in symbolical form, and
these symbols are not universally recognised but vary from land to land.
Hence the philosopher may lay down the truth not only in metaphysics
but concerning political 'associations' as well, and that is what al-Farabi
actually did. But Avicenna differs from al-Farabi in so far as he identifies
Islam and philosophy. 2 Philosophy is, then, for him a theoretical science
only, and politics and ethics are not treated in his great philosophical
encyclopaedias since everything in this sphere of life is fully and com-
pletely provided by Islam as based on the Qur>an and developed by the
traditionalists and the doctors of the law and the speculative theologians
of Islam. Avicenna is thus, as regards his attitude to Greek political
thought, half way between al-Farabi and lbn Xaldiin, and considers
it to be the business of the Holy Law of Islam to lay down the foundations
of society.
4
It is obvious to every reader of al-Farabi's Principles of the views
held by the inhabitants of the perfect state that the sections concerned
with the perfect state and the degenerate states presuppose more than
just a thorough study of the text of Plato's Republic and Plato's Laws

1 Cf. H. Ritter, Irrational Solidarity Groups, Oriens I, 1948, pp. 1-44. H. Trevor-
Roper, Historical Essays (London 1957), p. 24 ff.
2 This needs further elaboration. Cf. for the time being R. \Valzer, Greek into

Arabic (Oxford 1962), pp. 218 f., 248 ff.

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 Aspects of Islamic political thought 47
and other Platonic dialogues. This is after all not astonishing-there
is an interval of more than 1200 years between Plato and al-Farabi,
and during these centuries Plato was constantly read and explained.
Al-Farabi's source is lost but we can, if we are not unduly hasty, recon-
struct it from this and other works of his. His immediate source is, I
believe, to be looked for in the 6th century Alexandrian school, which
also provided him with the tradition of Aristotelian study which he
adopted. But the greater part of al-Farabi's version of Plato's politica
thought is of earlier origin and is connected with the elevation of Plato
to the rank of a perfect philosopher and with the rising tide of Platonism
which we can observe from± 100 B.C. onwards. I have reasons to relate
al-Farabi's ultimate source to the so-called middle-Platonic school
which we know best in the second century A.D. But this particular
variation of Platonism did not disappear with the advent of Plotinus
and Porphyry in the third Christian century-as we learn from some other
evidence and from this and other works of al-Farabi. The attitude of
these Greek scholars to Plato's political thought (and to Plato's thought
altogether) is similar to the line followed by the Aristotelians in the days
of the Roman Empire. No contradictions between different works are
recognised, Plato is the author of a coherent and closed system, all his
by no means mutually consistent statements are made to conform to
each other. Changes in political circumstances and in the general philo-
sophical situation are taken into due account. What we find in al-Farabi
becomes historically understandable if we look at it in this way. It goes
without saying, I believe - and there are many comparable cases in al-
Farabi's writings - that he does not reproduce his Greek source in full but
restricts himself to those topics which he considers to be especially
relevant to his purpose. I propose, then, to survey rapidly what al-
Farabi has to say and to note, wherever possible, the application he
intends to be made to Islamic conditions of his own day. If al-Farabi's
Greek source gave any examples from past or contemporary Greek history
-which is, after all, not unlikely-al-Farabi did not reproduce them,
and he provided only a very few Islamic examples instead.
There are four particular Arabic books to be mentioned in this context
which must be used in expanding al-Farabi's view of Plato's ideal State:
his three extant works On the Philosophy of Plato 1 and On Plato's Laws 2
and The Aphorisms of the Statesman 3 , and Averroes' Paraphrase of Plato's

1 Plato Arabus II (London 1943), edd. F. Rosenthal et R. Walzer (with Latin

translation, introduction and notes).
2 Plato Arabus III (London 1952), ed. F. Gabrieli (with Latin translation).
3 The Fuful al-Madani of Al-F. (Cambridge 1961), ed. D. M. Dunlop (with

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 Richard Walzer

Republic 1, which is probably based on the same Greek text which became
known to al-Fara.bi.
Plato's call for the philosopher-king is to be understood as a serious
attempt at reform. Its possible application is widened by al-Fara.bi from
a city-state and from an intentionally small community to an umma, a
'nation', I suppose something of the size of the hellenistic states or of
the Roman or the Persian empires, and beyond that to a community
which comprehends the whole habitable world. I have no exact parallels
in Greek texts but such a conception of a world state does not seem to
me to be alien to later Greek thought (it is not the same as the universal
state of the Stoics). 2 There is no difficulty in applying a conception like
this to the historical circumstances of the 10th century as known to the
Arabs, say, the world of Islam, the Byzantine Empire, India ... all
societies based on a common religious creed. The ruling power can only
be exercised by a monarch whether in the case of perfect or of faulty
states. 3 The qualities with which the ruler of the perfect State is to be
credited are in the first instance philosophical: he must have undergone
a philosophical training in what is considered true philosophy. 4 The
perfect ruler has, secondly, prophetic powers of supernatural insight,
which are however subordinate to his philosophical perfection. This
cannot be derived from the middle books of Plato's Republic but a Platon-
ist could well find evidence for it in the Phaedrus and the Timaeus; more-
over an interest in suprasensory powers and divination is common to
most Greek philosophers and is on the increase in late Antiquity in
general. 5 The philosopher must, in addition, be an accomplished 'orator',
he must be able to translate what he knows into effective and convincing
speech and thus be in a position to work adequately on the imagination of

English translation, introduction and notes). The work as-Siyasiit al-madaniya is

also to be mentioned. It covers, roughly, the same ground as the Principles of the
Views etc. and is available in a posthumous translation by F. Dieterici: Die Staats-
leitung von Al-Farabi (Leiden 1904). I do not refer to works by al-Fara.bi which
have not been translated into a European language.
1 Averroes' Commentary on Plato's Republic (Cambridge 1956), ed. E. J. F.
Rosenthal (with English translation, introduction and notes).
2 Cf. the well known passage of Plutarch, De A lexandri fortuna aut virtute

ch. 6 and Jaeger, Early Christianity, pp. 30 and II9 n. 14.

3 This is not surprising in the days of the Roman Empire. For the monarchical

principle in Islam cf. Gibb-Bowen, Islamic Society and the West I, p. 29.
4 This is in the case of al-Fara.bi-and, presumably, in the case of the Greek
author whom he follows-no longer Plato's theory of Forms nor other Platonic
tenets but, with the exception of political theory, Aristotelian-peripatetic philo-
sophy with a tinge of Neoplatonism.
5 Cf. E. R. Dodds, The Greeks and the Irrational (Berkeley 1951), pp. 236 ff.

283 ff.; R. Walzer, Greek into Arabic, p. 206 ff.

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 Aspects of Islamic political thought 49

non-philosophers. A Platonist may draw support for this from the

Phaedrus and the spurious Clitopho 1 and refer to the beautiful proems of
some books of the Laws. The ruler must also be legislator and educator
at the same time, "he must have the power to lead people to felicity by
teaching them to perform the actions through which felicity is obtained."
Al-Farabi's Platonist evidently understands, rightly in my view, Plato's
Republic and Laws as being complementary, the one more concerned with
the rulers the other with the ruled; he does not envisage the possibility
that they may reflect different attitudes of Plato's mind at different
times of his life. 2 The philosopher-ruler should also be of good physique
and be able to shoulder the task of war, if war is forced upon him. 3
This all amounts to a sensible systematisation and further development
of Plato's ideas. The same judgment may be applied to the survey of the
inferior forms of the perfect state, which al-Farabi describes next, and
which are again conceived completely in the Platonic spirit though
without any exact parallel in Plato's own works. A ruler may have all
the qualities just mentioned but be lacking in prophetic power and thus
among other deficiencies due to this lack be unable (unlike the prophets) to
translate philosophical abstract truth into symbols which impress the
imagination of the common man and which establish different religions
which are described as conveying truth in the form of symbols. 4 He
will however have the same superior intellectual qualities as his prede-
cessor and thus remember intimately what the philosopher-prophets have
laid down as law and custom: whenever there is no precedent recorded
he will be in a position to find out new law, in the spirit of the first ruler.
The same could also be achieved when a philosopher and a politician
(who would have all the non-specifically philosophical qualities) worked
together. Should this prove to be impractical the perfect state could be
run by a team of persons each of whom would display one of the qualities
required. But it would be disastrous if there should be a government
without philosophy altogether.
This scheme can also be derived from Plato but will, again, have been
worked out by later Platonists. Al-Farabi most probably identified the

1 Cf. Plato Arabus II, p. 22f., 27 f. Philo, De Josepha 268.

2 I fully agree with the view put forward by Glenn R. Morrow, Plato's Cretan
City (Princeton 1960), p. 577 ff.
3 Cf. Clemens Alexandrinus, Strom. I, XXVI 167, 2 (vol. II rno Staehlin). Ac-

cordingly the emperor Julian aims at imitating the pattern of the philosopher-
emperor Marcus and the warrior Alexander, ad Them. 253 A. Cfr. Rostagni, Giuliano
l'Apostata, p. u8 n. I.
' Cf. R. Walzer, Galen on Jews and Christians (London 1949), pp. 44 f., 60 f.,
Greek into Arabic, pp. 2II ff.
Oriens 16 4

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50 Richard Walzer

pre-Islamic prophets and Mul_iammad with the philosopher-prophets of

his book and the four orthodox caliphs, early idealised in the Muslim
tradition, with the philosopher-kings who had no prophecy. Not recog-
nising, as it appears, any caliphs after the first four, al-Fara.bi is obviously
in close agreement with contemporary thought, cf. H. A. R. Gibb, Studies,
p. r44. He will have understood both Umayyads and <Abbasids as fictitious
caliphs. The two other stages mentioned in the Greek source seem to have
been understood as practical proposals by al-Fara.bi. What they meant in
al-Fara.bi's Greek source cannot be said with any certainty: the team of five
rulers with different capacities could have been developed out of the noc-
turnal council of Plato's Laws 1 ; that philosopher and king should act in
agreement had been envisaged by Plato himself and became a common
prescription in Hellenistic times. As late as in the 4th century A.D. the
philosopher Themistius (whose commentaries on Aristotle the Arabs came
to know quite well) tells his disciple, the emperor Julian, that philosophy
and politics should never be divorced, and mentions to him philosophers
in the days of the Romans who acted as advisers to emperors. 2
It may be even more interesting to look at those cities which the
unknown Platonist and al-Fara.bi who follows him cannot commend.
They may throw light on the realities of Greek and Roman life as well as
on the Muslim scene in al-Fara.bi's days, although there is a certain
danger that the classes and subdivisions of states may have been thought
out in accordance with abstract categories and do no correspond to any
political reality. It is, on the whole, quite remarkable, how far the results
of Greek thought can actually be applied to Islamic conditions.
There are ignorant 'cities' which do not know what real felicity is
and are satisfied to know goods which appear as such to superficial
minds and are wrongly set up by them as standards of the good life. 3
Al-Fara.bi has much to say about these 'ignorant' cities and seems to
me to go far beyond Plato in this respect. He omits any reference to
actual states but in spite of this these pages are a valuable contribution to

1 But cf. Glenn R. Morrow, Plato's Cretan City, p. 573 ff.

1 Cf. Julian, ad Them. 265C (Arius Didymus, Thrasyllus, Nicolaus of Damascus,
Musonius Rufus!). Rostagni, Giuliano l'Apostata, p. 139 n.
3 There exists also a) the 'criminal city' whose kings and citizens know everything
one can learn from philosophy, like the people of the perfect state but act delibe-
rately against their better knowledge; b) the city which has deliberately changed
from excellence to wickedness; c) the 'erring' cities which are somehow misguided
(«!J,otp-ra.vouaL - cf. also I. Goldziher, Muhammedanische Studien I, p. 225). These
'erring' cities are said to follow a kind of pseudo-revelation and to hanker exclu-
sively after felicity in the world beyond. They represent a very interesting problem
which is however irrelevant to the purpose of this paper. Cf. R. Walzer, Greek into
Arabic, p. 224 ff.

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 Aspects of Islamic political thought 51

political thought. The 'ignorant' cities- 'ignorant' has obviously a special

connotation for an Islamic reader 1 - are divided according to the wrong
conceptions of felicity which they pursue as their aim in life. They remind
us of Plato's Republic VIII/IX but they are arranged in a different way
and described in purely abstract terms. One has not the impression that
they are the result of keen and fresh observation but rather derived from
books; and, contrary to Plato and Aristotle, the author knows monar-
chies only, no other form of state being even mentioned (cf. above p. 48, n.
2). There is the state which is satisfied to provide the bare necessities of
life and whose inhabitants help each other in order to survive (cf. Plato,
Rep. II 369b; Rosenthal, Averroes' Commentary III 13,3). Another
state-state meaning always the king and his people-seeks material
wealth and external goods only, called the state of meanness (na#la/
&ve:).e:u8e:p(oc). Plato and Aristotle mention oligarchy and plutocracy
under this head and point to Sparta, Crete and Carthage-examples which
were obsolete in the days of the Roman Empire and could not mean
anything to an Arab. Another type of 'ignorant' state recognises the
enjoyment of sensual pleasures as the highest aim in life: this would
actually be the next stage in a Platonising description in a rising scale
of values, after bare necessity and external goods. Al-Fara.bi mentions
the Arabic bedouins and the Turks as examples 2 -what a long way there
is from al-Fara.bi to Ibn Xaldiin!-Averroes (who follows al-Fara.bi)
substitutes the Almoravides instead (Rosenthal, Commentary III 2, 5).
But al-Fara.bi (and his Greek predecessor) is, like a modem student of
politics, most concerned with those states which seek power and recog-
nition (xpa.-ror;Jtagallub and TL(J.~/ karama) for their own sake: the timocracy
of Plato (who again thinks of Sparta). Al-Fara.bi mentions again the
Arab Bedouins and the Turks under this head 3, Ibn Rusd Mu <awiya, the
first Umayyad caliph. 4 Last comes democracy, described-on lines fami-
liar from Plato's Republic-as a state in which unlimited freedom is
given to everybody-a thoroughly bad state. Plato thought of the
Athenian democracy of his day, Averroes mentions Cordova. 5 Had
al-Fara.bi any contemporary example in mind?

1 Cf. I. Goldziher, Muhammedanische Studien I, p. 219 ff.-but the meaning

'barbarous' has become obsolete in al-Fara.bi's days.
1 Siyasat, p. 73, 5 Hyderabad (p. 87 Dieterici).
8 Cf. n. 2. H. Ritter, Al Ghasali, Das Elixir der Gluckseligkeit (Jena 1923) p. 34.

' Rosenthal Commentary III 9, 13. Cf. al-Fara.bi, De intellectu 2 (Bouyges).

1 Rosenthal Commentary III 15, 13. He may have thought of the Republican
phase in Cordova's history, the rule of the three Jauwarites from 1031-1070 (S. M.
Stern). The tyrants of Plato's Republic are the rulers of the criminal state (cf. above
p. 50, n. 2) in al-Fara.bi's arrangement.

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 Richard Walzer

Al-Farabi devotes another chapter to the different forms of political

associations which follow the aims of 'ignorant' rulers, especially of
those concerned with power. What he reports-again, clearly, on the
authority of the Ancients-can be applied to a perfect state as well, I
mean that all (or almost all) the forms of community he mentions could
change into perfect states once they were made to accept the correct
views which are provided by philosophy. Al-Farabi's Platonist goes far
beyond Plato in this chapter. It is unlikely that he may draw on Aristo-
tle's lost work On Justice. 1 For there are features in it of which Aristotle
could scarcely have been aware and whose presence, in my view, can
be more easily understood if one assumes that they are of later origin.
The basic creed of one of the two groups of 'ignorant' states is that
there is permanent war, in the universe as well as among animals and
men, that the world is dominated by disorder and strife and that only
the strongest survive who succeed in subduing others. No means to achieve
this aim are disallowed. The representatives of the second group uphold
peace, universal peace among men as their aim and reject the aims
followed by those who believe in the right of the strongest as being contra-
ry to human nature. But since they merely want security and the estab-
lishment of an affluent society, they are to be ruled out as well.
Two classes are again to be distinguished among those who believe in
the right of the strongest. There are those who are deliberately opposed
to every kind of association; they cooperate in cases of extreme need only
and once the emergency has passed they separate again and look at
each other with hostility and hatred. But this is a view suitable for
animals and beasts of prey (ar-ra>y as-sabu'if'rp61toc, 8YJpLwa'Y)c,} and not
for human beings, who are not made to live alone. Greek thinkers were
interested in this case. 2 Al-Farabi mentions elsewhere, no doubt from a
Greek source, that such beastlike people live in the uttermost southern
and northern regions of the habitable world. 3
The other class-those who are convinced of the need for permanent
forms of association-can again be subdivided in two sections: those who
succeed through their superior physical strength and the excellence of
their weapons in subjugating a great number of people whom they can
use afterwards in every move they consider; and those who hold that
true cooperation can only be achieved by a permanent bond, by
1 Cf. P. Moreaux, .A la recherche de l'Aristote perdu. Le dialogue sur la justice
(Louvain-Paris 1957)-who, as he kindly informed me, cannot find any trace of
Aristotle's dialogue in al-Fara.bi.
8 Cf. e.g. H. Fuchs, Augustin und der antike Friedensgedanke (Berlin 1926) p.

166 n. 2; pp. 17 ff.

3 Siyasat, p. 58 Hyderabad (p. 71 Dieterici).

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 Aspects of Islamic political thought 53
mutual affection (ta"f,,abub/(f>r."A(oc) and concord (i•tila//oµ6voLoc). The term
<a$abiya for this irrational feeling of solidarity does not occur before
Ibn Xaldiin. I think that al-Farabi as well as his predecessor would
hold that all these States which are based on very different foundations
could be turned into perfect States supposing that they could exchange
their false aims into the aims of true philosophy and would in particular
refrain from continuous wars of conquest.
Such a community can be based on common descent 1 and the strength
of the feeling of solidarity by which it is pervaded will depend on the
time which has elapsed since: if the common ancestor lived a long time
ago, the bond will tend to weaken and, eventually, snap altogether, and
mutual hostility will take its place-which will be overcome when over-
whelming attacks from outside endanger the survival of .everybody.
Examples from earlier Greek history come easily to mind. Applications
to the circumstances of the Islamic world are equally obvious.
The same verdict is valid for the two forms of community mentioned
next: (a) those based on kinship resulting from intermarriage between
two peoples or tribes, (b) those who share the same original sovereign,
who brought them together in the first instance and made them powerful,
so that they became rich or obtained any other good which ignorant
people wrongly assume to be a real good. 2
Another type of association is based on sworn treaties of alliance.
Such leagues, formed both for attack and defence, are quite well
known in Greek history, and an Arabic reader had obviously no
difficulty in illustrating this point by recalling similar instances known
to him.
The city-state is not mentioned at all in this context, although one of
the forms of the 'perfect association' has been qualified as a city-state
before. Has it become merely a relic from the past, celebrated in Plato's
thought? There are few autonomous independent city-states in the
Hellenistic world, and next to none within the Roman Empire 3, nor
were there ever any within the world of Islam. 4 Instead we are now
informed about 'nations' and are told which elements constitute their

1 Cf. for this and the following sections Theophrastus Ile:pl e:60-e:~e:(ac;; as re-
ported by Porphyry, De Abstinentia III, 25 (p. 150, 29 ff. Nauck).
2 Cf. e.g. the colonisation of Cyrene and Pindar Pythien 4 (R. W. B. Burton,
Pindar's Pythian Odes, Oxford 1962, p. 151 f.)
8 Cf. A. H. M. Jones, The Greek city from Alexander to Justinian (Oxford 1940),

passim.
4 Medieval Muslim culture was above all an urban culture but the cities never
achieved political autonomy. Cf. Gibb-Bowen, Islamic Society and the West I,
p. 276.

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54 Richard Walzer

unity. It is similarity of character (taken, I think, to be the result of

education and common history), a similar natural bent and a common
language. There are many such nations, bound by concord of their
members and permanently engaged in cold or hot war with similarly
constituted nations. This is a problem which neither Plato nor Aristotle
ever had to face but which was bound to arise in the centuries after them.
It is not difficult-and perhaps not necessary-to show that these are
also Greek ideas and that the Arabs could appreciate this kind of thought
as well. Needless to repeat that the nation described here is not the
'perfect' nation. The fact that the difference of language is so conspic-
uously mentioned points, independently, to a Hellenistic origin for this
definition of a nation. 1
I skip a few quite fascinating pages of al-Farabi in which he describes
the world view of these 'war-states' more in detail, showing their con-
tempt of natural and legal justice, terms they use exclusively to hide
their selfish intentions and describing their clever use of piety as a cloak
for their lust of power and domination.
All these ideas certainly remind us of Plato's Gorgias or Republic I, but
they seem to go beyond the arguments with which we are familiar from
4th century B.C. writers on politics. I am inclined to assume that al-
Farabi's sober and unemotional survey is an echo, however faint, of a
violent philosophical attack on an unjust way of life which had become
prominent at a later period. I suspect in fact that it may be traced back
to the criticism of the Roman Republic by the Platonist Carneades,
expressed in a speech delivered in 156 B.C. in Rome and reported in very
great detail in the third book of Cicero's De re publica. 2 It was very
popular with later Christian writers against Rome. The pages of al-Farabi
just discussed seem to indicate that its results were incorporated into the
teaching of politics in the later Academy.
The other possibility envisaged by al-Farabi is not a state of permanent
war but rather an organised world-peace. What he actually describes is
wrong, in his view, because the peace-state in question is only concerned
with security and material well-being; but it could be changed into a
perfect world-state. He argues on the following lines: Beings like men
who belong to the same species, namely man, have to cease fighting each
other; for they are bound together by insaniya, &v8pw1t6't"t)c;, common

1 Cf. the passages mentioned by M. Pohlenz, Die Stoa II (Gottingen 1949),

p. 23. H. Fuchs, Augustin, p. 12.
1 Cf. H. Fuchs, Der geistige Widerstand gegen Rom in der antiken Welt (Berlin

1938), pp. 3 ff., 28 ff.; W. Capelle, Griechische Ethik und romischer Imperialismus,
Klio 25 (1932), pp. 86 ff.

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 Aspects of Islamic political thought 55

humanity (cf. e.g. Cicero, De officiis III 24). They may try to overcome
other species like animals by taming those which can be domesticated
and destroying beasts of prey. There alone force may be used. This is the
general Stoic and Peripatetic view of later centuries. 1 Trade and every
exchange of goods must be regulated by voluntary agreement. This is
the natural behaviour of men: whoever fights for the sake of fighting
and power is in an abnormal and unnatural state.
I have no doubt that these ultimately Stoic ideas which al-Farabi
reproduces here were meant in his source as a picture of the Roman
Empire and the pax Romana as it may have appeared to a Platonic
philosopher who believed in Plato's ideal state and Plato's philosopher-
king. We have sufficient parallels to show that such a criticism of the
Roman Empire and the Pax Romana was not uncommon. 2 Is it too far-
fetched to look for al-Farabi's author within the circle of Themistius
who prepared the emperor Julian to restore the pagan empire on the base
of Plato's religious and political philosophy? He failed, and St. Augus-
tine's contempt for the secular state and conception of the City of God
won the day. Are we not right in admiring al-Farabi for proclaiming the
message of Plato to the world of Islam, which is so utterly different from
the world of the Greeks? He too lived like the late Romans in a highly
developed civilisation, which embraced a very wide area of the world
known to him.
5
Ibn Xaldiin lived almost four centuries after the days of al-Farabi
and the first serious impact of Greek thought on Islamic life. The days
had gone when one could conceive the idea of improving Islam both in
its religious and secular aspects by understanding it in Greek terms and
by using Greek natural theology as a means of bringing Islam to its most
perfect form. The original impulse of Islam had reasse~ed itself powerfully
at all levels of life (cf. above p. 43 n. I). But although the superiority of phi-
losophy was no longer proclaimed-Averroes had been fighting a losing
battle, and his attitude is no longer as straightforward and unambiguous
as the stand taken by al-Farabi-one cannot fail to observe that the
impact of philosophy on Islamic thought is none the less considerable.
If we look at Ibn Xaldiin's political thought, it is obvious that he is
familiar with the Greek analysis of political entities and has digested it

1 Cf. J. Bernays, Theophrastos' Schrift uber Frommigkeit (Berlin 1866), p. 99.

Hence the vegetarian Porphyry cannot be al-Fara.bi's source.
1 Cf. Fuchs, Augustin, pp. 47, 107 n. 4, 197. Pliny, Nat. Hist. II u7; XIV praef.
2 f.

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 Rickard Walzer

thoroughly: but he is no longer content to accept for example the

Greek classification of human associations of smaller and larger size,
like tribe, village, city-state, empire and world-state as final truth,
or to abide by the descriptions of power states or luxurious cities of
the type to be found in al-Fara.bi. He actually takes to task Aver-
roes-whose philosophy he had summarised in a work of his youth 1 -
for having been unaware in politics of anything but urbanised life, as
it existed in Muslim Spain in his day, and for having neglected the
special features of tribal life which make up such a considerable part of
the political reality of Islam throughout the centuries (Muq. II 13).
The originality in this new approach of his is beyond doubt. Al-Fa-
ra.bi's style is clear and sober, impressive and not unpleasant, but
abstract to the extreme. lbn Xaldfin, it is true, also writes in an abstract
style and disdains to express himself in artistic prose which so many
Arabic writers mastered to perfection. But all the keen vitality and
alertness of his mind is expressed in his style as well. To quote Sir Hamil-
ton Gibb: "He is lively, direct, colourful, brilliantly imaginative, ex-
uberantly eloquent. His ideas stream out in long cascades, sometimes
indeed tumbling into excited incohesion, but for the most part held to-
gether by a taut and beautifully modulated structure of prose, controlled
by precise and refined mechanisms of coordination and subordination,
and articulated with a trained elegance that gives to every word the
exact degree of emphasis required by the argument." (Speculum
35/1960, p. 139). He is everywhere full of new ideas. He not only dis-
covered bedouin life for political thought-his analysis is full of shrewd
and correct observations which are still the delight of sociologists-he also
saw city life and sedentary life as conditioned by periodical inroads from
the desert, and found in this interplay of bedouin and urbanised life
the key to a comprehensive understanding of eight hundred years of
Muslim history as a whole. He was well aware of the economic factors
and went, if I am not mistaken, beyond the Greeks in this field also. He
thoroughly understood the importance of the religious element in the
actual events of Islamic history, and demonstrated how thoroughly
'religious' and 'political' forces are intertwained. He provides a master
key to the understanding of the Islamic world and Islamic history which
has proved extremely useful for us. The key may not open every door,

1 Cf. Mu}J.ammad b. <Abdallah ibn al-Xatib in his History of Granada, as quoted

by al-Maqqari, Nafo. a/-!ib IV 11 (F. Rosenthal, Ibn Kkaldun, The Muqaddima,
New York 1958, p. XLIVand n. 41). I think it unlikely that lbn Xaldiin did not
deal with the philosophical works of Ibn Rusd, although this is not unambiguously
expressed.

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 Aspects of Islamic political thought 57

but it opens many. It just blurs the real issue if one compares his emphasis
on power with Machiavelli. 1 The importance of the factor of power had
been deeply felt by Greek and Muslim thinkers before, and to isolate
this particular topic is, in my view, just wrong quite apart from the
fact that lbn Xaldiin nowhere worships power for power's sake. Nor
is it adequate to classify lbn Xaldiin as a sociologist; it is certainly
justifiable to single out sociological sections of Ibn Xaldiin's for
Muqaddima for separate discussion but we must be fully aware of the
fact that we may then present his thought in a manner which he would
hardly recognise as his own.
I am inclined to think that one may in a sense compare Ibn Xaldiin
with Aristotle. One could easily use Aristotle's Ethics (and also other
treatises of his) as an introduction to Greek values and to the Greek way
of life. Such a procedure will not always and everywhere be completely
adequate, but the salient features will none the less stand out impress-
ively. 2 In a similar way the political sections of Ibn Xaldiin's Prole-
gomena can be used as a guide to the understanding of the Muslim world
and of Islamic history, and it has actually been used for this purpose
by leading historians of our own day. Obviously we have to take Ibn
Xaldiin's particular prejudices into due account as we have those of
Aristotle. Neither Aristotle nor Ibn Xaldiin lives at the beginning of the
civilisation to which they belong, they can both look back to centuries of
history. Ibn Xaldiin becomes, in reflecting on the experiences of past and
present history, aware of the forces which have made Islam great, which
have been instrumental in producing changes and new development, of
those which are likely to lead to improvement and those which are certain
to guarantee defeat and destruction. He seldom ventures beyond the
limits of the vast Islamic territory. But since he is a serious and powerful
thinker many results of his learning and his wise judgment are as uni-
versally valid as Greek political ideas and can be considered as a per-
manent contribution to the progress of political thought.
This is obviously not the occasion for giving a full analysis of the
political thought to be found in lbn Xaldiin's Prolegomena. It is surpris-
ing that such an analysis has, to the best of my knowledge, never been
published. It would mean for instance describing the argument in detail,
explaining his method of reasoning, showing his background in religious,
legal and philosophical tradition and examining the way in which he
uses his written historical sources. Sweeping generalisations are no
1 Cf. E. I. J. Rosenthal, Political Thought in Medieval Islam(Cambridge 1958),
p. 84 ff. But cf. H. Ritter (above p. 46 n. 1) p. 2 ff.
2 Cf. e.g. C. M. Bowra, The Greek Experience (London 1957) passim.

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58 Richard Walzer

substitute for interpretation. The notes added to the recent American

translation by Prof. F. Rosenthal of Yale constitute an extremely
valuable and useful start in this direction.
What I think worth mentioning in particular is, apart from Ibn
Xaldiin's appreciation of bedouin life as a permanent source of the
regeneration of cities and states, his understanding of the importance of
organised religion as a determining factor in history. I shall just refer to
Muq. II 27: "The Bedouin Arabs will never be united under a permanent
rule (mulk) unless this union is steeped in the dye of religion such as is
provided by prophets or saints or brought about by a religious event of
overwhelming strength". Religion (din) is not understood by him as a
secondary approach to truth through symbols as it is by al-Farabi nor
is it considered as a convenient means of keeping the populace at bay
as al-Farabi's power-politician thought. Ibn Xaldiin is a faithful Muslim
himself and he knows the inward strength of religious ideas from his own
experience. 1 You will not find anything even remotely similar in Machia-
velli's Prince, and the comparison of Ibn Xaldiin and Machiavelli is out
of place in that respect also. No Greek student of politics was able to
speak about religion with a similar force of conviction and to show its
role in various historical situations as appropriately as he did.
Next I should like to point to his rehabilitation of tribal solidarity,
the •a$abiya, which Muhammed had rejected as an obstacle to Islam
which was to overcome tribal divisions and jealousies and rivalries since
every Muslim is equal in the sight of God. The word •a$abiya is as un-
translatable as so many other Greek and Arabic words and modem
abstract sociological terms like 'a collective group united by a sense of
solidarity' and 'the irrational feeling of solidarity' lack the particular
flavour of the original language (cf. Speculum 35, p. 140 f.). First, the
•a$abiya's importance within the tribal unit is shown exhaustively-but
its application goes far beyond mere tribal life: or, if you prefer to express
it in this way, factors apparent and first observed in tribal life are strong
and influential outside a tribal society as well, and are of an almost
universal validity. I quote again merely a few headings (III 6): "A
religious movement without •a$abiya can never prevail". (III 2): "Political
power of a strong ruler can dispense with •a$abiya for some time", but
it will break down eventually and be thrown over altogether by other
people united by an unadulterated •a$abiya which may be strengthened
by a new religious impulse as well. Ibn Xaldiin gives examples from
1 I am quite aware how much this attempt to understand Ibn Xaldiin owes
to H. A. R. Gibb, The Islamic Background of Ibn Khaldun's Political Theory,
BSOS VII, 1933, p. 23 ff. (now reprinted in Studies p. 166 ff.).

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 Aspects of Islamic political thought 59

major and minor events in Islamic history, but it is not difficult to apply
his views to history throughout and to events of the present day. One
of the most impressive applications, in my view, of the factor of <a$abiya
to a more general topic is to be found in III 28, where he treats at length
the change of the caliphate, the spiritual and secular authority, into the
mere secular sovereignty of kings, not as an issue of political theory but
in a masterly survey of Islamic history as a whole and a thoroughly
adequate interpretation.
This chapter seems also to me to illustrate very well both Ibn Xaldii.n's
dependence on an old and partly non-Islamic tradition and the highly
original way in which these ideas were applied to new and unheard of
issues of his own day. Thus a fresh approach gave new meaning to a tradi-
tion which appeared to have been already completely absorbed as a
commonplace of moral philosophy. In III 28 (cf. also III 25) Ibn Xaldii.n
uses the terms gaq,ab ('irascibility' 'spirited soul' '0uµ6~') and sahwa
(desire, em0uµ(llC) for the irrational faculties within the human soul, and
thus, like many Muslim writers on moral philosophy, ultimately follows
Plato's trichotomy of the soul (cf. Walzer, Greek into Arabic, p. 221;
p. 171 n. 1). These irrational faculties are in themselves neither good
nor bad but they can become useful only when acting under control. 1
Neither Plato nor Ibn Xaldii.n-nor al-Farabi or Miskawaih-ever set
out to argue away irrational emotions and desires, they tried to explain
them and to give them their proper place. They did not contemplate
eradicating them altogether but subordinating them to a higher prin-
ciple. In the case of Plato and his Greek and Muslim followers this
higher principle was represented by human reason and philosophical
knowledge, which had eventually turned into an almost dogmatic
acceptance of a natural theology. This unconditional pride in human
reason was, as we have seen, no longer valid for Ibn Xaldiin, who had
exchanged it for divine authority and the revealed Holy Law. But other-
wise his analysis of the irrational factors is the same, and his attitude
to the irrational in general does not change: he can even point to the
Prophet himself as a shining example for the importance of justified
anger and wrath. Moreover, he can apply the appreciation of the irrational
conveyed to him by the philosophical tradition to the <a$abiya, the
irrational feeling of solidarity which pervades the tribal force; and this
gives it a new and permanent value. Once understood and appreciated
from the point of view of the authority of the Holy Law, it can be used

1 Cf. E. R. Dodds, Plato and the Irrational, Journal of Hellenic Studies 64 (1944),
pp. 16 ff. The Greeks and the Irrational (cf. above p. 48 n. 5), pp. 207 ff.

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60 R. Walzer, Aspects of Islamic political thought

as an important element in any analysis of Islamic life as a positive force

of the first order, indispensable for understanding the structure of orga-
nized society. In the same way power, a force based on the irrational
force of gar!,ab (6uµ6c;}, can become subordinate to higher authority and
then be accepted as a constitutive element of political life, and 'kingship',
in itself a morally indifferent consummation of an irrational feeling of
solidarity and lust for power, tum into theocratic kingship-the idea of
the philosopher-king offers no solution for Ibn Xaldiin-and thus into
an element of life which a Muslim can unconditionally appreciate on
religious grounds. The same attitude towards the Greek legacy can be
observed in many other sections of Ibn Xaldiin's Muqaddima.

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