Lessons from Ibn Khaldun for pandemic times

One of the most important things that the (modern or postmodern) world we live in instills in us is that the reality we live is excessively peculiar to us. This illusion of peculiarity and difference is undoubtedly related to the modern human being's excessive self-admiration. The admiration we show toward a brilliant idea or work that we can see as we go further back comes not from admiring them but from our not admiring ourselves, because we have become unable to attribute intellect, intelligence or an advanced idea to the people of old.

Our relationship with knowledge, instead of teaching us our real position on earth, increases our admiration of ourselves, our arrogance and therefore our ignorance. We think that having much more information, accumulating so much knowledge, will serve to make us different from others. Thus we fall into complete heedlessness of the famous Socratic wisdom. In the words of Âşık Yunus, we are rapidly drifting away from the consciousness that knowledge is nothing but knowing knowledge itself, and therefore knowing oneself.

When this is so, we cannot connect the reality we live in to history either. When we say history, we are not speaking only of what we live through with the accumulation and influences we have brought from history. Above all, we are speaking of the dimension of recurrence, that what happens to us has happened to those before us.

Is not this, in fact, precisely the edifying part of history? Just as in this world we are not alone in our own history, not the only example of our kind, so throughout history we are not the only example among the many peoples who lived what we are living; many peoples like us have come and gone.

Historicity is knowing how they lived what we are living, what kinds of reactions they gave and where they arrived. That is, dwelling not on the aspects that separate and differentiate us from the people of the past and present, but on the experiences that, on the contrary, make us common. Otherwise historicist thought, by emphasizing almost entirely the difference and originality of our own time, does nothing but exalt, spoil and push beyond its limits the human being, the exact opposite of what it claims.

Ibn Khaldun makes an attempt that makes history current by dwelling on the aspect of human existence that does not change throughout history. By modeling the cities, states, civilizations and lifestyles that human beings have produced, he tries to identify and set forth the laws to which their rise and fall are subject. Ibn Khaldun, who characterizes the laws he identifies as the sunna in God's creation, describes the similarity among the experiences that human beings have produced at different times as "as water resembles water."

Seen from this angle, we read that the manner in which the epidemic we live through at the peak of globalization has come upon our lives is also, aside from its global scale, not peculiar to our time, but in addition Ibn Khaldun treats the effects epidemics have played in history within this divine Sunna framework. Thus it is understood that he thinks the emergence or spread of epidemics is not at all coincidental. In a paragraph where he explains the causes of the increase in deaths, we read the following about not only the effect but the consequences of epidemics:

"... As we pointed out above, there are certain causes of this that come about through the effect of famine. Besides this, with disorders and the disruption of the order of the state, with sedition and rebellions multiplying, the country is turned upside down, murderers multiply or plague appears. Contagious diseases spread, very often, because the country's prosperity has reached a high degree, from the multiplication of dampness harmful to health and of rotten things that spoil the air. When the air that is required for the living creature's nourishment and life is spoiled, this spoiling affects the human temperament. When the spoiling of temperaments is strong, the lung falls ill. Each of these invites plague diseases; the source of these diseases is the lung. Even if the spoiling of the air is not to a strong degree or in a large proportion, foul smells increase manifold, and with the increase of foul smells fevers multiply in temperaments, bodies fall ill and perish. The cause of these events occurring is that the state has reached the end of its natural life and prosperity has reached a high degree. It is clear that this prosperity stems from the state's treating its subjects with compassion and governing the country well at the time of its first founding, and from the lightness of taxes."

Ibn Khaldun explains that human societies are exposed to these epidemics periodically, again in connection with what they live through. In particular he establishes a relationship between epidemics and the zodiac signs, and a link between periodically recurring epidemics and the aging and weariness of states. Under the heading "On the Increase of the Country's Prosperity in the Last Days of the State and on the Widespread Prevalence of Destructive Diseases and Famines," he explains the following:

"... They call this conjunction cycle the 'Great Conjunction.' The Great Conjunction points to great affairs and important events such as the change of dynasties and the passing of the state from one people to another. The Middle Conjunction points to the appearance of those who prevail and of those who aspire to the state. The Small Conjunction points to the emergence of rebels and the ruin of cities.

Among these conjunctions, every thirty years, the 'conjunction of the two ill-omened ones' (the two ominous planets, Saturn and Mars) occurs in the sign of Cancer. This is called the Rābi' (the fourth conjunction period). The sign of Cancer is the sign of fortune of the world, and during this approach Saturn grows heavy and Mars sinks. This indicates that sedition will arise, wars will occur, blood will be shed, rebels will appear, soldiers will rise up, and calamities such as plague and famine will be experienced. The continuation or ending of this situation varies according to the degree of felicity or ill omen in the other celestial bodies at the moment of the approach of Saturn and Mars."

These relationships are of course not so easy to imagine with today's reason in relation to the epidemic we are living through. But even so, do these lines not prompt us to think about the consequences of which of our behaviors have exposed us to our own epidemic calamity?

Note: The quotations from the Muqaddimah are taken from the Halil Kendir translation that Yeni Şafak gave as a gift to its readers (2004) and from the Zakir Kadiri Ugan translation (1996) published by MEB publications.