Falsafah Sejarah Ibnu Khaldun: Kajian Tentang Dasar Falsafah Ilmu Budaya

by Muhsin Mahdi, Amilah Awang Abd Rahman (Translator)

Adakah sains sejarah dan budaya mewujudkan kebanjiran falsafah, atau bidang ini sebenarnya yang ketandusan asas falsafah?

Buku ini cuba merungkai permasalahan ini melalui kajian yang dilakukan oleh mungkin satu-satunya pemikir agung yang memberikan penekanan terhadap permasalahan sejarahdan budaya, yang juga telah menemukan sains yang khusus untuk menanganinya, berdasarkan falsafahPlato dan Aristotle serta pengikut Islamnya.

Buku ini merupakan kajian pertama tentang Ibnu Khaldun yang bukanlah untuk membela sains sosial moden mahupun kemodenan pemikiran Ibnu Khaldun, sebaliknya merupakan analisis dan intepretasi yang teliti terhadap karyanya. Buku ini memfokuskan tentang kajian terhadap prinsip sains budaya Ibnu Khaldun yang baharu, dan menjelaskan tentang inti pati prinsip ini dengan berlatarbelakangkan Falsafah Islam dan Klasik.

"Muhsin Mahdi melambangkan paduan yang luar biasa bagi ikatan sempurna hasil gabungan bahasaArab dan sejarah Islam serta pengetahuan falsafah zaman pertengahan yang mantap.”- WALTER J. FISCHEL, Journal of Near Eastern Studies

Genres: History, Philosophy, Islam, Nonfiction, Religion, Academic

315 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1964

About the author

Muḥsin Mahdī (Arabic: محسن مهدي) (June 21, 1926 - July 9, 2007) was an Iraqi-American islamologist and arabist. He was a leading authority on Arabian history, philology, and philosophy. His best-known work was the first critical edition of the One Thousand and One Nights, in 3 volumes.

He was born and raised in the Shiite pilgrimage city of Kerbala, Iraq. After finishing high school in Baghdad, he was awarded a government scholarship to study at the American University of Beirut, where he earned both a B.B.A. and a B.A. in philosophy. He taught for a year at the University of Baghdad before coming to the United States in 1948, where he earned an M.A. and Ph.D.(1954) at the University of Chicago. Here he studied at the Oriental Institute under Nabia Abbott and began his lifelong exploration of political philosophy under the guidance of Leo Strauss. His wrote his dissertation on Ibn Khaldun. After two more years in Baghdad, Mahdi returned to Chicago, where he taught in the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations from 1958-1969. At Harvard University (from 1969 until his retirement in 1996),as James Richard Jewett Professor of Arabic, he served as director of the Center for Middle Eastern Studies and also as Chairman of the Department of Near Eastern Languages and Civilizations.

Mahdī was versed in medieval Arabic, ancient Greek, medieval Jewish and Christian philosophy but also modern Western political philosophy. Grounded in the methods of critical editions of manuscripts developed by European scholars for the ancient and medieval texts, he tried to establish the same standards in the fields of Arabic philology and philosophy. He devoted much of his career to searching for manuscripts wherever his travels took him. He is especially known for the recovery, edition, translation and interpretation of many of the works of Alfarabi. With Prof. Ralph Lerner at Chicago and Prof. Ernest Fortin at Boston College, he co-edited Medieval Political Philosophy, a path-breaking sourcebook that includes selections in translation from Arabic, Hebrew and Latin texts.

Reviews

[Phillip Fuller · Rating 3 out of 5]

Ibn Khaldun was one of the first historians and social scientist who studied how civilizations rise and fall using reason. This scholar came to the conclusion that civilizations fall due to a moral decline due to a love of luxury and a descent into immorality. Ibn Khaldun's remedy against decadence is an obedience to divine Law that he saw as essential for the survival of society. This is self evident because he was a hardline Islamist in his role as a judge in Egypt. What he failed to observe in history was the role of climate change and invasions as agents of destruction. Many civilizations have died due to drought, depletion of resources, and invasions by conquering hordes. Disease is also a factor in the fall of civilizations because it can kill off huge populations and cause a collapse. This book was interesting and Ibn Khaldun is a great thinker but there is more to the end of civilizations than just moral decadence.

[Shafiq Razak Rajan]

This book is useful for two reasons: 1. You haven’t read any of Ibnu Khaldun’s works, and you want a good starting point before you plough into the real text, or 2. You simply want to know the gist of his work, and won’t mind reading someone else’s interpretation of it. Either way, Ibnu Khaldun’s Philosophy of History, written by Muhsin Mahdi, seems to be fulfilling both expectations.

The book begins by providing us with the historical background surrounding the life of Ibnu Khaldun; his childhood, education, his career in North African and Andalusian politics, his successes (there’s just a few of them), his failures (a lot) before his eventual retirement from political life to compose Kitab al-Ibar (from which the Muqadimmah is actually the first part of a very long book). As a statesman, Ibnu Khaldun had mixed results, and his legacy is nonexistent. But it is as a philosopher (or a sociologist?) that Ibnu Khaldun’s legacy is unquestionable.

In the second chapter, Philosophy and the Law, the author illustrates on how Ibnu Khaldun tries to reconcile his Islamic belief in writing a philosophical treatise on history. He rejects the usage of pure rationality in theology, and instead, advocates a seperation between theology and the natural sciences. In the former, knowledge can only be attained by transmission, and in the case of Islam, transmission of the prophetic wahyu through the Quran and hadiths. In the latter, knowledge are attained through the senses, such as observation, experimentations, logic etc. Ibnu Khaldun disagrees with philosophers who tries to attain metaphysical knowledge through philosophy, as this causes a lot of confusion. Instead, Ibnu Khaldun contends that philosophy is subordinated under the Law, and its teachings should be made available to only a few learned scholars to avoid deviance. And these few learned scholars, according to Ibnu Khaldun, are to be the guides of their respective communities while fully adhering the words of the Law. Since a Utopian community is practically impossible, the scholars should be contented to act as ‘doctors’ who try to cure whatever social or spiritual illnesses that arise, on needs basis – this is Ibnu Khaldun’s view of a philosopher’s role in his society.

In the third chapter, the author maps Ibnu Khaldun’s principles in developing his new science of culture. For Ibnu Khaldun, the role of this so-called science of culture is limited. Its purpose is to simply rectify historical reports. Any historical report that is nonsensical is refuted, while those that are plausible is accepted. Although it has an auxiliary role, this science of culture is able to theorize on how a civilization is created, developed before eventually declines into oblivion. It tries to determine factors that shape historical events, the recurring patterns of human culture. Despite its humble ambition, the science of culture actually gives birth to a crude version of a modern day science: Sociology.

In the next chapter, The Science of Culture, the author simply provides a condensed version of Ibnu Khaldun’s sociological findings. Although conceived in the fourteenth century, Ibnu Khaldun’s theory on how a civilization is built from smaller tribes is quite sophisticated, given that (perhaps) archaelogy is not even a proper discipline in his time. He deftly describes on how small, primitive tribes, whose cohesion is based on natural solidarity among blood relations, eventually have to use other forms of social cohesion as these tribes grew bigger to form cities/states. Thereby, another force of social cohesion is needed, and that force is religion. A belief in certain Laws and figures is needed to glue large groups of people together.

Ibnu Khaldun also observes that the history of civilizations follow a definite pattern, that of birth, growth and finally, decay. Its birth and growth are characterized by periods in which its members are not too well-off, yet they are strongly motivated by their desire to conquer more power and riches. Its decadence, meanwhile, comes when its members are satisfied with whatever they have, and are unwilling to make the necessary sacrifices for further growth and stability. As a result, corruption becomes rampant, taxes are raised beyond the means of the common people, and foreign mercenaries are used for security. In the end, the usual cocktail for destruction: poverty, hunger, uprising, treachery, invasion by foreign armies etc. Thus, that’s how Ibnu Khaldun views the pattern of human civilization.

Muhsin Mahdi’s book is certainly illuminating for anyone wanting to be better acquainted with Ibnu Khaldun’s work. However, for me, one of its shortfalls is that the author rarely quotes the primary text in this book. He did quote from Ibnu Khaldun, albeit sparingly. This weakness becomes glaring when the author contends that Ibnu Khaldun purposely provides double meaning in certain texts by hiding certain clues, or using certain cues, so that the initiated reader (those of scholarly background) will be able to extract an extra meaning (or perhaps the intended meaning?) when other readers may fail to do so. Nonetheless, Muhsin Mahdi didn’t provide us with an example of such text. Maybe it is up to us to discover it by ourselves if we go through the primary text?

The author also rarely provides a thorough critique of Ibnu Khaldun’s ideas in light of modern sociological findings. Then again, it is perhaps too ambitious for a 200 pages book, and it is not the author’s intention.

For someone who’s never read any of Ibnu Khaldun’s work, I don’t have the authority to say whether this work succeeds in providing a succinct summary of Ibnu Khaldun’s life and work. However, based on my first reading, this book does provide a starting point for me to explore more of Ibnu Khaldun’s work. But, should that fail to happen for whatever reason, I’d be content with knowing him through this book.

Anyway, I do recommend it for anyone looking for a decent muqadimmah to The Muqadimmah.

[Julia Simpson-Urrutia · Rating 5 out of 5]

I used this book 30 years ago for my Master's thesis. It was invaluable, well written, and I keep it to this day on my shelf for reference. Thank you, Mr. Mahdi.

[Naele]

عواملی که دولت را به وجود می اورند خودشان مانعی در راه رشد ان می گردند.

[Elyesse SFAYHY · Rating 4 out of 5]

Point d’orgue dans l’étude du comportement des peuples de la Méditerranée, berceau de la civilisation. Précurseur de la théorie du cycle des nations où, la puissance souveraine, connaitra fatalement une chute.

Très bon registre englobant la bureaucratie, religion, ethnologie, économie, politique et la spiritualité.

[Hilman Firdd]

good

[Jaffar Abdullah · Rating 5 out of 5]

Agak mencabar memahami buku ni..