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Was al-Maqrizi’s Khitat Khaldunian History? 137
eval Muslim thinker, in other words, a pre-humanist and inherently teleological
framework. This is the same framework Hayden White accused Ibn Khaldun of
adopting in his Muqaddima: an underlying fatalism in his conception of history
and a strong, rigid determinism in his theory of recurrent cycles, totally ignoring
the cultural milieu within which the two men were thinking and theorizing. 69
Al-Maqr\z\’s historical theorizing, however, deserves a more careful look than
the one it has received so far, one that can transcend the biases of our rationalizing
and thoroughly secularized and psychologized conception of history. 70 This
way, we may be able to better appreciate the intellectual and emotional conditions
under which this singular Mamluk historian reflected upon and wrote history.
71 His narrative structures, elaborate prose techniques, and even the religious
underpinnings of his arguments could then unveil their relative significance for
his history writing. The moralizing method, though derided by modern historians,
could then be seen for what it probably was: a potential critical apparatus
brandished by both al-Maqr\z\ and his master Ibn Khaldun as an incisive yardstick
against which actions and decisions of influential people are measured and
their consequences evaluated.
Bibliography
Primary Sources
Abu 0amid al-Quds\: K. Duwal al-islam al-sharifa al-bahiyya: wa-dhikr ma zahara li min hikam
Allah al-khafiyya fi jalb ta#ifat al-atrak ila al-diyar al-misriyya, Ulrich Haarmann and Subhi
Labib, eds., Beirut: al-Sharika al-Mutta1ida, 1997.
69 Hayden White, “Ibn Khaldun in World Philosophy of History (Review Article),” Comparative
Studies in Society and History 2 (1959–60): 110–25. For an interpretation that insists on the role
played by Ibn Khaldun’s historiographic and intellectual context (and by extension al-Maqr\z\’s)
in shaping but also in delimiting his theorizing see Aziz al-Azmeh, Ibn Khaldun: An Essay in
Reinterpretation (London, Frank Cass and Co., 1982), esp. 145–63; idem, Ibn Khaldun in Modern
Scholarship: A Study in Orientalism (London: Third World Centre for Research and Publishing,
1981), 67–149.
70 As we are reminded by Michel de Certeau, L’Écriture de l’histoire (Paris, Gallimard, 1975);
translated as The Writing of History by Tom Conley (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988),
19–55.
71 Two recent French books place Ibn Khaldun in his historical context and assess his work
accordingly, see Abdesselam Cheddadi, Ibn Khaldun: L’homme et le théoricien de la civilization
(Paris: Gallimard, 2006); Gabriel Martinez-Gros, Ibn Khaldun et les sept vies de l’islam (Arles:
Actes sud; Sindbad, 2006).