Lessons from Ibn Khaldun for Covid-19

The Covid-19 epidemic that has befallen humanity came upon our lives, from the very first moment, on a global scale in dimensions never experienced before. Although we have gradually begun to get used to it, the death rates recorded in a single day because of the epidemic reach numbers not recorded even in the greatest wars or disasters. Worse, the deaths that never pause are on the verge of being taken for granted as a routine of life unless they reach one of our own relatives and hurt us. Yet at the same time these deaths, over time, take a very significant part of the human population from among us.

The interesting thing is that similar events occurred in the countless epidemics throughout history, and with the deaths caused by epidemics the population profiles of societies changed, states, cities and societies sank, new states were founded, but these changes, or the effect of epidemics in these changes, were hardly recorded, or if recorded, were forgotten and ignored.

The effect of the Spanish flu at the end of the First World War is in fact indisputable. While it was happening it suddenly generated more of an agenda than the war, but later no one even remembered it. Yet even the almost sudden end of the war came about under the effect of this epidemic. Had a major name of world sociology such as Max Weber died in a war, perhaps his death would not have been forgotten, but few remember that he died of the Spanish flu. In my article in the book "Anatomy of the Global Epidemic: The Future of Human and Society" (2020), published by the Turkish Academy of Sciences (TÜBA), I tried to dwell at length on the possible reasons and meanings of this contradiction.

On these silent, unnoticed effects of epidemics on the transformation of social structures throughout history, it may be interesting in this respect to note the assessments of Ibn Khaldun, one of those who had the ability to look at history from above and make generalizations of his own, on a plague that he himself and his family lived through in the 14th century. Ibn Khaldun, who lost his own parents and most of his family in this plague, while trying to make sense of the events and changes lived in his own time, that is, at the end of the 8th (14th in the Gregorian calendar) century, speaks of how the conditions of the Maghreb had completely changed, how the Arab tribes that had been coming since the 5th (11th) century had defeated the forces of the old inhabitants, the Berbers, and taken all their lands from their hands and shared what remained in their hands with them, and how this situation continued until the plague spread in the prosperous places of the East and the West. This rapid current or change was evidently stopped at once by the epidemic. Ibn Khaldun expresses what followed thus:

"This plague, which diminished the numbers of nations, destroyed the people of that age and wiped out many of the beauties of prosperity. Striking at an age when decline and power had reached their last limit, this plague shrank the lands of states and made them fall from strength. The sharp edges of swords were blunted, it weakened their strength and dominion, led them toward dispersal, turned their conditions upside down, and with the diminishing of population the prosperity of the earth declined. Cities and homes of the arts were ruined. Roads and their districts diminished and became uncertain. Districts and shelters were left empty. States and tribes grew weak. Those who lived on it changed. I see even the countries of the East as having endured these calamities in proportion to their prosperity. It was as if the tongue of existence cried out to the world: 'May your name and fame sink and wither!' and the world, submitting to this command, quickly withered. God inherits the earth and those on it, that is, the earth and all the creatures living on it perish; only God does not perish.

After all conditions changed as a result of a calamity of this kind, it was as if the whole world had changed. It was as if a new creation, a new development and a new world had emerged. After this calamity that changed creation, the conditions of regions, individuals and nations, and their customs, habits, beliefs and sects, we became convinced that in accordance with these changes there was a need in our age for someone to write a work for his own time following the method of al-Mas'udi (the author of the history book called Muruj al-Dhahab, H. 330). So that the historians who come after us may take this work as a model for themselves."

Ibn Khaldun is famous for regarding history generally as a power race or circulation of nations and rulers, and for trying to study the dynamics beneath it and to bring out the historical laws to which this circulation is subject. It appears that he felt an effect of the epidemic that rendered void even all of this theoretical approach of his at once.

The epidemic is, to be sure, like a punishment for founding cities recklessly and without calculation, without sufficiently regarding nature and man, but at the same time it gives great edifying lessons to those who remain, by sinking and withering the name and fame of man and swiftly rendering meaningless the entire umran (civilization) that man has accumulated.

Nothing we accumulate on earth, own, and for whose sake we devour one another and smash one another, belongs to us in fact. Let alone what we have accumulated, we are not even the owners of our own bodies. When our health deteriorates, we realize that within us there exists a body outside our control, one that does not belong to us. Neither that body nor the millions of processes inside it are under our control, so what are we claiming?

What Ibn Khaldun said about the plague is of course not limited to this, but in sum it is more than worth listening to, in these very days. After all, the title of his book is a "Muqaddimah" for "Lessons."