كيف ابتدع ابن خلدون علم العمران
هشام محمود عليوانIbn Khaldun differs from his predecessors historians as he moved from the stage of
a simple narration of the past events, frequently without verification, to postulate rules
for History which are related to the nature of human societies and its requirements.
From this perspective, Ibn Khaldun laid the foundations of the science of Umran to
be the supervisor of history science and its codification. But the invention of a new
science, without sufficient arguments, to replace the traditional rules of history, was
not easy to accept from contemporary Ulama. Thus, there was a need to legitimize
this science, which led Ibn Khaldun to start from the nearest science to him, which is
the Political jurisprudence as he was also a faqih and judge. On the way to his goal, he
modified some of the conditions of the Imamate to be legitimated. This modification
identify specially his understanding of the Islamic political theory at his time. The
Shawqa (military strength) concept, which is coined by Al-Juwaini three centuries
before, has been replaced by the concept of Asabiya invented by Ibn Khaldun, both
terms from the same field (politics) and has the same goal, which is the power configuration,
and the legitimization of it.
However, Ibn Khaldun did not approve his debt to Al-Juwaini, but rather ignored it
completely in his Muqadima. In contrary, Al-Mawardi was mentioned by Ibn Khaldun
though he did not address the concept of the Shawqa, as Al-Juwaini did. Instead,
Ibn Khaldun claimed that the science of Umran which inspired him. However, the
evidences and the clues showed the most likely source was especially Al-Juwaini
work (Ghiathi).