PREVIOUS TRANSLATIONS
(1) The first complete translation of the Muqaddimah ever published was a Turkish version. In the year 1730 Pirizade Effendi (1674–1749) translated the Muqaddimah from the beginning through the fifth chapter. This Turkish text was published in Cairo in 1275 [1859],1 in a lithographed edition of 617 pages in large format; the translation ended on p. 522. On the remaining pages, the work was completed by a reproduction of the Arabic text based on the first Bulaq edition. A few pages on Ibn Khaldûn’s life serve as introduction, compiled by Ahmet Jevdet Effendi, later Pasha (1822–
95). The latter also translated the remaining sixth chapter of the Muqaddimah, which was published in Istanbul in 1277 [1860/61],2 accompanied by copious explanatory notes.
(2) A complete French translation, under the title of Prolégomènes historiques d’ Ibn Khaldoun, was published by William MacGuckin de Slane on the basis of Quatremère’s edition and with comparison of the Paris manuscripts used by Quatremère, the first Bulaq edition, and the Turkish translation (in part). The three volumes appeared in Paris in the years 1862, 1865, and 1868, as Vols. XIX to XXI of the Notices et Extraits des manuscrits de la Bibliothèque Impériale.
De Slane did an altogether admirable job of presenting a highly readable and, in the main, accurate translation of the work. The
“freedom” of his version has often been unjustly censured, for it was intentional, and a “free” translation is perfectly legitimate for a work with the stylistic character of the Muqaddimah. There are occasional mistakes of translation, some of them caused by the difficulty of the subject matter and the language, others of a sort that might easily have been avoided. Explanatory footnotes are sparse, and de Slane usually did not bother to indicate the sources for his statements. However, the concluding words of R. Dozy’s review of de Slane’s work still stand: “Rarely has so difficult a book been translated so well.”3
A photomechanical reproduction of de Slane’s translation was published in Paris in 1934–38, with a brief preface by G. Bouthoul.
Important corrections to the translation were provided by R. Dozy in the review by him which appeared in Journal asiatique, XIV6 (1869), 133–218. More recently, a number of valuable corrections were published by A. Bombaci, “Postille alla traduzione De Slane della Muqaddimah di Ibn Haldûn,” in Annali dell’ Istituto Universitario Orientale di Napoli, N.S. III (1949), 439–72.
For many years after the publication of de Slane’s translation, scholars, almost to a man, relied on it for their quotations from the Muqaddimah. The occasional exceptions have been noted in footnotes to this translation at the appropriate passages. Only in recent years have fresh translations of comparatively large sections of the Muqaddimah begun to be made.4
(3) In English, there are a few brief passages in R. A. Nicholson, Translations of Eastern Poetry and Prose (Cambridge, 1922).
Recently, a rather large selection of brief excerpts was published by Charles Issawi, under the title of An Arab Philosophy of History (London, 1950).
(4) The book by Erwin Rosenthal, entitled Ibn Khalduns Gedanken über den Staat (Munich and Berlin, 1932), consists largely of
excerpts from the Muqaddimah, in German translation. A large volume of selections in German translation was published by A.
Schimmel in Tübingen in 1951, under the title of Ibn Chaldun:
Ausgewählte Abschnitte aus der muqaddima.
(5) A short selection of Arabic passages with accompanying French translation was published by G. Surdon and L. Bercher under the title of Recueil de textes de sociologie et de droit public musulman contenus dans les “Prolégomènes” d’ Ibn Khaldoun,
“Bibliothèque de l’Institut d’Etudes Supérieures Islamiques d’Alger,” No. 6 (Algiers, 1951). The translators profess their particular concern for bringing out the basically juridical flavor of Ibn Khaldûn’s terminology.
THE PRESENT TRANSLATION
A work such as the Muqaddimah, modern in thought yet alien in language and style, may be presented to the modern reader in one of three ways. It may be translated as literally as the second language permits. The translator may go farther and use modern phraseology and style. Or, finally, the work may be recast and given the form it would have had it been written by a contemporary author in the second language.
If a translation is to impress the modern reader with the full worth and significance of the original, the last-mentioned approach would seem to be the ideal one. Realizing this, scholars have frequently chosen to publish selected and rearranged passages of the Muqaddimah. However, a complete rewriting in this manner, besides being hardly practicable, would almost necessarily produce a subjective interpretation of the Muqaddimah, and thereby obscure Ibn Khaldûn’s thought.
The second approach to translation was what de Slane attempted. It, too, has pitfalls. One is the danger of distorting the
author’s ideas by modernizing them, and thereby attributing to him thoughts that were utterly foreign to him. Moreover, a work dealing with a great variety of subjects, and the Muqaddimah is certainly such a work, depends to a great extent in its formal and intellectual organization upon the threads of association that the author’s particular terminology and way of expression provide.
The drawback of any completely literal translation is obvious: it may easily be incomprehensible to the general reader. Further, a literal translation often entirely perverts the literary character of the original. It is transformed from a literary product using the normal and accepted forms of its own language into a work rendered strained and unnatural by not conforming to the style of the language into which it was translated.
The present translation was begun in the belief that a mixture of the literal and modernizing types of rendering would produce the most acceptable result. Yet, it must be confessed that with each successive revision, the translator has felt an irresistible urge to follow ever more faithfully the linguistic form of the original.
The literalness of the present version is intended to reduce to a minimum the amount of interpretation always necessary in any translation. The reader unfamiliar with the Arabic original ought to be encumbered by no more than an unavoidable minimum of subjective interpretation. Moreover, Ibn Khaldûn’s particular terminology, which he evolved with great pains for his “new science,” had to be preserved as far as possible; to some degree, it must have impressed his contemporary readers as unusual.
Therefore, at least the outstanding terms, such as ‘umrân, ‘aṣabîyah, badâwah, were preserved in the translation by rather artificial loan renderings (“civilization,” “group spirit,” “desert life or attitude”).
This involved the occasional occurrence of expressions such as
“large civilization.” But any other procedure would irrevocably have destroyed the essential unity of Ibn Khaldûn’s work, which is one of its main claims to greatness.5 For the sake of literalness, an
attempt has been made to translate passages that are repeated in the original, in identical or nearly identical words, in the same fashion each time. However, since such repetitions occur frequently in the text of the Muqaddimah, the attempt probably remained unsuccessful, or, at best, only partly successful. Some modernizing tendency remains in the translation but it chiefly affects syntactical and stylistic features, and only very rarely the vocabulary.
Ibn Khaldûn’s contemporaries praised the literary quality of the Muqaddimah highly. Ibn Khaldûn himself, in a poetical dedication of his History, used rather exuberant language in speaking of the linguistic perfection of his work:
I tamed rude speech. It may be said that Refractory language becomes in (my work) amenable to the words I utter.6
This self-praise was, of course, a routine authors had to follow in the past when the advertising methods of the modern publishing business were as yet unknown. But others chimed in with their praise. The style of the Muqaddimah was said to be “more brilliant than well-strung pearls and finer than water fanned by the zephyr.”
It was called a “Jâḥiẓian” style, reminiscent of the verbal fireworks of al-Jâḥiẓ, the celebrated model of good Arabic style.7 All these testimonies may have been rather perfunctory; still, they certainly have some basis in fact. It is true, as has often been remarked, that Ibn Khaldûn did not always adhere strictly to the accepted norms and rules of classical Arabic, which were artificial to him and remote from the speech habits of his time. But Ibn Khaldûn’s long, rolling, involved sentences, his skillful and yet restrained application of rhetorical figures, and his precise use of a large, though not farfetched, vocabulary make it indeed a pleasure to read the Muqaddimah, or to hear it read aloud.8
However, the modern translator’s agreement with such positive appraisals of the linguistic and stylistic qualities of the Muqaddimah
is somewhat forced. For, alas! all the factors that enhance the beauty of the work in its original language and justified the admiration of Ibn Khaldûn’s contemporaries, are so many thorns in the translator’s flesh. His long sentences have constantly to be broken up into smaller units, and the cohesiveness of the author’s style is thereby loosened. In keeping with a common stylistic feature of Arabic speech, Ibn Khaldûn could repeat pronouns through whole pages, thus confronting his translator with the task of supplying the appropriate nouns. Ibn Khaldûn also was extremely fond of a threefold parallelismus membrorum, another source of embarrassment to the translator. The ordinary twofold parallelism, well known from the Bible, is difficult enough to translate, an imitation of the threefold one practically impossible.
Sometimes, one word or phrase may do as a translation of all three members, but more often than not, the threefold parallelism can only be broken up into seemingly redundant phrases. Another stylistic feature is a kind of inversion by means of which later elements of a story are given first, and the earlier elements are given later, in a sentence introduced by “after.” This can be brilliant in Arabic but is most often unpalatable in modern English translation (although it would have been somewhat more acceptable in another age, in the eighteenth century, for instance).
The large number of parentheses (in the translation) is the result of the need for clarifying stylistic changes. These parentheses have been used in order to indicate to the reader that in these passages the translator has added something that is not literally found in the Arabic text. They may be disregarded, and the text enclosed by them should be considered an integral part of the context. In a few cases, however, the words in parentheses serve another purpose, namely, that of explaining the preceding words.
In the choice of explanatory footnotes the translator has more leeway. Ibn Khaldûn’s own ideas and the way he expressed them offer no particular difficulties to the understanding. But the
numerous passages where technical details are discussed or earlier authors are quoted sorely try the translator’s knowledge of words and things. Incidentally, Ibn Khaldûn himself is on record as admitting that he did not quite understand the text he copied [at 2:224 and 3:183 of the 3-volume unabridged edition]. Like many other Arabic works, the Muqaddimah contains some passages where it obviously was much easier for the author to copy his source than it is for the translator to find out the meaning of the text copied. In general, where the translator has succeeded in understanding Ibn Khaldûn’s text correctly, very little in the way of added explanation is necessary.
However, historical understanding and interpretation of the work pose greater problems. The Muqaddimah was composed nearly at the end of the intellectual development of medieval Islam, and the work covers practically all its aspects. A well-nigh incalculable number of notes and excursuses would be required if one were to comment on the historical significance of Ibn Khaldûn’s statements and put each of them in proper perspective. Nearly a century ago de Slane felt that he could provide unlimited notes and explanations to his translation (cf. his introduction, p. ii), but he refrained from doing so for the sake of brevity. In the end, he did very little indeed in the way of annotation.9 Since his time, the material that has a sound claim to consideration in the notes has grown immeasurably. A hundred years ago, very few printed Arabic texts existed, and nearly all the pertinent information was still buried in manuscripts. Even nowadays, when a good part of Arabic literature has become available in printed form, it is often necessary, in connection with the Muqaddimah, to refer to manuscripts. In fact, our knowledge has outgrown the stage where the historical problems of a work like the Muqaddimah, considered in its entirety, can be elucidated by means of footnotes. The important task of interpretation must be left to monographs on individual sections of the text, a scholarly labor that has been
attempted so far only on a very small scale.10 In the notes to this translation, the major problem has been one of selection, that of providing references that give the fullest possible information in easily accessible form.
In some respects, it has been possible to be briefer than de Slane.
Nowadays, many of Ibn Khaldûn’s examples from political history no longer require comment, nor, from the point of view of modern historiography and sociology, does the acceptability of Ibn Khaldûn’s historical interpretations have to be argued.11
A reference to C. Brockelmann, Geschichte der arabischen Literatur, where authors and works of literature are concerned, makes it possible to dispense with further references, save, perhaps, for very recent bibliographical material, which has been carefully examined before inclusion. The Encyclopaedia of Islam and that splendid time-saving tool, the Concordance et Indices de la tradition musulmane, were also, in many cases, considered sufficient as guides to further study.
Apart from obvious references of this kind, and a certain amount of necessary philological comment,12 the selection of notes has been guided by one dominant consideration. Works that Ibn Khaldûn himself knew, knew about, or may reasonably be supposed to have known or known about, have been emphasized. Knowledge of Ibn Khaldûn’s sources is of immeasurable assistance in better understanding his historical position and significance. While a very small start in this direction could be made in the footnotes to this translation, I am convinced that this kind of comment should be given preference over any other.
When I had completed my version, I compared it with the previous translations as carefully as possible, giving particular attention to de Slane’s. I have not considered it necessary to acknowledge de Slane’s help whenever I have corrected mistakes of my own. Nor have I felt it necessary to signal passages where I think de Slane erred. The reader ignorant of Arabic may be slightly
puzzled when he observes the divergencies, often considerable, between this translation and that of de Slane. Nonetheless, my hope is that he will put greater reliance in the present translation, although its recent origin, of course, is no guarantee of its correctness.
Rendering proper names is a minor problem in all translations from the Arabic, as here. Arabic proper names can easily be transcribed, and the method of transcription employed here needs no special comment. However, foreign proper names, and especially place names in northwestern Africa (the Maghrib), make for complications. European place names, Spanish ones most notably, have been translated into their accepted English or current native form. Place names from the East are given in transcription, except when a generally accepted English form exists. There may, however, be differences of opinion as to what constitutes a generally accepted English form. Thus, some of the proper names as well as generally known Arabic terms retained in the translation have been deprived of their macrons or circumflexes, while others, with perhaps an equal claim to such distinction, have been left untouched; as a rule, preference has been given to accurate transcription. With a very few exceptions, place names from northwestern Africa have been given in what may be considered the most widely used and acceptable of the various French forms;
usually, a transcription of the Arabic form has been added. In the case of Berber names, we will know how Ibn Khaldûn pronounced them, once a study of the manuscripts of the ‘Ibar has been made.
For the time being, we know his pronunciation only in those cases where the manuscripts of the Muqaddimah and the Autobiography indicate it, and his pronunciation has, of course, been followed. In modern scholarly literature, there seems to be little agreement on the finer points of the transcription of ancient Berber tribal and personal names.
Much more might be said about technical details arising out of the present translation. However, if they were wrongly handled, mere knowledge of that fact would not repair the harm done to, nor, if they were correctly applied, increase by itself the usefulness of, the translation of what has been called with little, if any, exaggeration, “undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind that has ever yet been created by any mind in any time or place.”13
* Excerpted from pages cvii to cxv of Franz Rosenthal’s introduction to The Muqaddimah: An Introduction to History, by Ibn Khaldûn (3 vols., Pantheon Books, 1958). Where the Rosenthal’s introduction cross-referenced portions of text not included in the present edition, a clarification has been given in square brackets. In
addition, the original footnotes 153 to 165 have been renumbered 1 to 13 for ease of reading.
1 F. Babinger, Die Geschichtsschreiber der Osmanen, pp. 282 f., mentions an edition (Bulaq, 1274) of 626 pp. I have no further information about it. M. Mostafa Ziada refers to a Turkish
translation of the Muqaddimah made for Muḥammad ‘Alî of Egypt [?]. Cf. Middle Eastern Affairs, IV (1953), 267.
2 According to Babinger, this is the third volume of a complete edition of the Turkish translation, begun in 1275 [1858/59]. I am familiar only with the volume containing the sixth chapter. For the work on the ‘Ibar by ‘Abd-al-Laṭîf Ṣubḥî Pasha (1818–1886), published in Istanbul in 1276 [1859/60], cf. Babinger, pp. 368–70.
3 In Journal asiatique, XIV6 (1869), 218.
4 For early partial translations, see [Rosenthal, translator’s introduction to The Muqaddimah, 1:c].
5 It seems regrettable, and in some ways definitely misleading, that it was not possible to give a uniform translation to such commonly used words as nasab “descent, pedigree, lineage, family,” sirr
“secret,” fann “branch,” and many others. In quite a few cases, as, for instance, in the case of sulṭân “government, authority, ruler, Sultan,” it may seem advisable to add the Arabic at each occurrence.
I decided against such a procedure, and only very rarely will the reader find an Arabic word added in brackets in the text of the translation.
6 Cf. Autobiography, p. 240, l. 10.
7 Cf. F. Rosenthal, A History of Muslim Historiography, p. 419 (n. 7).
8 See [Rosenthal, translator’s introduction to The Muqaddimah, 1:lxviii f.]
9 See p. [xxviii], above.
10 Cf., for instance, the article by Renaud quoted [in vol. 3], n. 616 to Ch. VI. For earlier attempts in this direction by S. van den Bergh, J.- D. Luciani, and H. Frank, see nn. 1, 263, and 454 to Ch. VI.
11 The total number of “mistakes” of one kind or another in the Muqaddimah is astonishingly small. Vico’s La scienza nuova, by comparison, is full of wrong and outdated statements; cf. the translation by T. G. Bergin and M. H. Fisch (Ithaca, N. Y., 1948), p.
VIII. Naturally, Vico was handicapped by his age’s predilection for learned information. The desire to show off one’s learning led to committing many blunders, but also prepared the soil for a
tremendous growth of true learning, such as the prudent and staid civilization of Ibn Khaldûn would never have contemplated.