The philosophy of urbanism according to Ibn Khaldun. The origin of environmental ruin is excessive luxury

Did the British historian Arnold Toynbee exaggerate when he described Ibn Khaldun's introduction, "It is undoubtedly the greatest work of its kind ever done in time and space!"

Reading the introduction in translation, especially the translation by Vincent-Mansour Monteil (Discours sur l'Histoire universelle), played a major role in alerting me to a number of things that I missed while reading the Arabic version, things that make the reader feel as if Ibn Khaldun is our contemporary, as the Moroccan thinker Mohamed Aziz Lahbabi says.

The face of modernity in the foreground lies not in its absence of intellectual postulates that are linked to ancient historical periods, but in the research psyche and intellectual ambition that makes it penetrate into the field of cosmic debate. It is with this consideration that Ibn Khaldun can be invoked in the debate among our contemporaries on topical issues, foremost among them the issue of the environment.

It is true that the question of the environment today has reached a degree of complexity that would not have been imagined by man in the pre-modern, pre-industrial and technological stages, but it is also no less correct to see that the solutions and answers to this question come not only from within the system that produced it, but from outside, from works such as the introduction, which the author wanted to be the sap of a civilized experience.

Ibn Khaldun says in his talk about teaching and learning that in the journey to seek knowledge and meet the sheikhdom more perfection in learning, the multiplicity of sheikhs has useful in "distinguishing conventions" and stripping science of them. In other words, the student of knowledge may get a confusion and think that (a) and (b) in mathematics are part of this science, even if he leaves with another teacher and finds him using (x) and (y), and thus makes the learner gradually realize that these terms are "parts of education and methods", and if he continues the journey, he can distinguish between the essence of the required science and the multiplicity of conventions leading to it.

The recipient, who has not practiced intellectual nomadism, as Kenneth White put it, and has not practiced travel between different cultural spaces, may also think that while listening to the terminology of ecological discourse today, he may think that he is facing a new discourse that is not connected to other times and places.

In fact, if he makes a distinction between term and science, as Ibn Khaldun put it, he realizes that this discourse is asking for an answer to a question that has already been asked, and will inevitably be asked in other cultural contexts: "How do we sustain grace?" Or "How do we consolidate the pillars of civilization and avoid falling into the pyramid and ruining urbanization?"

When contemplating the current ecological discourse, we find attempts to draw attention to what Ibn Khaldun calls signs of extinction, extinction, principles of damage, and the weakening of the conditions of states and civilization.

However, the difference between Ibn Khaldun's thought and contemporary ecological thought lies in the fact that the former, Ibn Khaldun's thought, emanates from a mind that has led contemplation in the context of the collapse of civilization to the conviction that "if the pyramid descends in the state, it does not rise", while ecological thought, in the face of the symptoms that mark the end of urbanization and the destruction of the earth, remains a thought that clings to the hope of pushing the causes of this ruin.

How to populate the earth?

Ibn Khaldun's urbanization theory is based on one central question, namely "How do we populate the earth?" or the world, a question that implies the existence of methods in this construction, some of which lead to destruction and destruction, and others that ensure the preservation of stability and goods.

In his quest to answer this question, Ibn Khaldun tries to extract the natural laws that govern urbanization, or the relationship of human society to the earth, the home of life, and in this attempt he draws from the culture of his time, especially from his established religious culture.

Ibn Khaldun argues that human society fluctuates between three phases: the Bedouin phase, which is the phase of beginnings, in which man remains attached to the ground, practicing the Golan and traveling in search of pasture;

Then the development of urban urbanization, which is the stage of achieving the end or end in the advancement, where man's links with the land are severed because of the excessive substitution of superfluities, or luxuries in our language today, in place of necessities and his keenness to obtain them in various ways and customs.

The terms urbanism, nomadism and civilization indicate that Ibn Khaldun does not seek meanings for human meeting other than the meanings prescribed in the Arabic language, so that we find that nomadism is linked in his intellectual format to the beginning, and that urbanization is linked to urbanization, and that civilization is linked to dying.

Urbanism is only open to the Bedouin sense, that is, it is a type of engineering pattern open to nature (Archi-nature), as some of our contemporaries promise, an urbanism that sustains stability and preserves the environment; or an urban urbanism that closes in to nature, an urbanism that marks the end of the model of urbanization.

In addition to these meanings, Ibn Khaldun, the jurist and cleric, the judge of the judges of the Malikis, seeks for the human meeting other meanings of revelation, and we find him asserting that this meeting, once it reached the stage of luxury, ended up in a pyramid that does not rise.

Whoever contemplates the Khaldunian text in this chapter will find in it an affirmation of the historical inevitability contained in the Almighty's saying, "If we want to destroy a village that we ordered luxurious, and they debauched in it, then it is right to say that we destroyed it" (Surah Al-Isra: 16), for the Lord's command here refers to a steady rule, that is, God's command dictates that whenever a person persists in luxury, he brings ruin and destruction.

Ibn Khaldun says in his talk about the symptoms of the pyramid that they "occur to the state of course and they are all natural things for it, and if the pyramid is natural in the state it was like the occurrence of natural things as the pyramid occurs in the animal mood and the pyramid in chronic diseases that can not be cured nor high because it is normal ..".

When we look closely at the introduction, we find that what leads Ibn Khaldun to explain the pyramid and the fall by natural determinism is the belief expressed by repeating the "Sunnah of God in their creation", that is, the Sunnah that links the corruption of the extravagant with the destruction of urbanization.

We stand here with Ibn Khaldun at one of the most important lessons learned from the introduction, a lesson that is useful in the debate on ways to preserve the environment in our current context. It is indisputable that today's ecological discourse has, more than any other, presented itself as a discourse based on the fight against corruption.

All the meanings of moral corruption that were previously recognized are disappearing in the face of what has become known as corruption committed against the environment. Isn't it natural that the standard-bearers of fighting corruption, which heralds the destruction of the environment and the depletion of life, appear on others who resist other types of moral corruption?!

Ecological discourse in the Western context has generally taken over the ethical discourse, but those who follow today's debate on the green transition will see that this discourse, while aimed at reform, stands at the limits of the search for new sources of clean energy to replace polluting energy, or at the limits of proposing alternatives to consumables.

This does not go beyond linking the problem of the environment to the luxury that Ibn Khaldun speaks of. It is as if we are in the mouthpiece of today's new environmentalists, especially politicians, who do not mind that man continues to gasp after naafil as long as the means of obtaining them are green. These superstitions have become necessities.

It is true that some evil is lesser than others, and that a sport like motor racing is easier to supply and less environmentally costly with electric cars than with ordinary cars. This applies to many human activities in today's cultural context.

It is no less true, however, that the concept of a clean alternative may become a justification for consumption and lavish behaviour. The idea of a clean alternative may distract the mind from thinking about ways to change the cultural and economic system based on luxury, and become one of the biggest drivers of reckless consumption.

There are currents, within the intellectual ecosystem, that sense the danger of falling into the traps of the liberal system, and these currents promote a number of statements hovering around the issue of luxury, such as "Sufficiency", "Sobriété", or "Décroissance", all of which have meanings such as sufficiency, vigilance and "economy in pursuit".

Upon investigation, we find that these currents stem from a hidden conviction that the Western model of development has exhausted its purposes and has become a harbinger of the destruction of urbanization. The solution for them is to stop the civilization of luxury. All of them, to varying degrees, draw from the thought of Henry David Thoreau.

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