Ibn Khaldun Refutes Some anti-Israel Claims Made by Arabs

Ibn Khaldun [d. 1406] was the last of the great Arab-Muslim intellectuals. I could add, "the last in the Middle Ages." But this would be superfluous, since he was the last one period. There has been no Arab intellectual who has made any contribution of major worldwide significance to science, whether the natural sciences or the humanities, since his death. Let me know if you find anyone.

His contribution was to formulate a sociology of historical change which could be studied with profit by historians, sociologists, and political scientists to this day. He is remarkable in the way that he foreshadowed later developments in Western historiography, sociology, economics and political science, just as Leonardo da Vinci foreshadowed later developments in technology and physics.

In the quotes below, Ibn Khaldun refutes two big lies of pro-PLO propaganda today, which are curiously finding a reception in the West as well. One oft-repeated lie is that the Jews are not a nation or people but merely a religious group, and they --Arab-Muslims-- respect other religions, blah, blah, blah, but cannot agree to Zionism which holds that the Jews are a historical people. What they really mean is that they want Jews to continue to be perpetually humiliated dhimmis in the Muslim state, as Jews were for more than a thousand years. And that Jews as dhimmis have no right to rule a state.

Ibn Khaldun's major work is considered to be his Prolegomena [forewords] to the Study of History. Charles Issawi excerpted passages from this work and I have put relevant ones below:

For although certain peoples have a common ancestry, e.g., the Arabs, the Jews, and the Persians, other peoples are distinguished by the regions they inhabit. . .
[Ibn Khaldun, An Arab Philosophy of History, ed. Charles Issawi ( London: John Murray 1950), p 50; Prolegomena, Part I, Third Foreword]

For a long time, Arab propagandists tried to minimize the length of Israelite/Jewish rule in the Land of Israel to "400 years." Now they try to totally eliminate any Israelite/Jewish rule or presence in Israel ever. Ibn Khaldun refutes this, as does the Quran.

In the East, however, crafts have established themselves since the days of ancient Persian, Babylonian, Egyptian, Israelite, Greek and Roman rule.
[Ibid., p 55; Prolegomena Part 5, chap. 21]

Arguing that the presence of tribes with a strong tribal spirit makes conquest difficult, he gives the example of the Israelite conquest of Canaan:

This made it very difficult for the Israelites to establish and secure their rule. . .
[Ibid., p 113; Part 3, chap. 9]

He also confirmed the Quranic teaching [Sura 5:12, 20-22, inter alia] that God had promised the Holy Land to the Jews. Here he sees the land promised to the Jews as all Syria, Bilad ash-Sham in Arabic, although the Bible generally specifies the Promised Land as Canaan, only a part of Syria in the broad sense used by the Greeks and later by the Arabs.

An illustration of this is provided by the Israelites when Moses, peace be upon him, urged them to conquer Syria, assuring them that God had decreed that they should be victorious.
[p 60; Part 2, chap 19]

Hence, the denials nowadays by Arab and pro-Arab spokesmen --for the PLO/PA in particular-- that the Jews had ever ruled or were ever even present in the Land of Israel before modern Zionism, are simply lies not supported either by the Quran or by traditional Arab historiography. For the Quran, see the previous essay on this blogsite.

It is of interest for those concerned with very ancient history, the history of the early Biblical period, that he identifies the Amalekites [b'ney `Amaleq] as Arabs.
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Coming: More poems of Zion, the Jews' status in Jerusalem before Zionism, etc.