'Asabiyya and the dynastic cycle: does a three-generation rise-and-fall pattern govern the lives of dynasties?

Ibn Khaldun, answered from the texts and cited to the page.

The position in brief

'Asabiyya — the group feeling that binds a tribe or a coalition into one acting body — is the engine of dynastic formation. Where it is strong, conquest is possible; where it weakens, the dynasty cannot defend itself, and a fresh group with intact 'asabiyya replaces the exhausted one. The pattern across the generations is observable. The founders of a dynasty have 'asabiyya tempered by the hardship of badawa (desert life); their sons inherit the political authority but lose the sharpness of the conditioning; their grandsons grow up in the hadara of court luxury and have neither the solidarity nor the willingness to bear hardship; by the fourth generation the 'asabiyya is wholly dissipated, the dynasty depends on hired mercenaries and the loyalty of strangers, and the kingdom falls to a new tribe with its own fresh group feeling.12

The Almoravids, the Almohads, the Hafsids, the Marinids, the Nasrids — the dynasties of my own time and the centuries preceding it — exhibit the pattern.3

Sources

  1. We have stated ® that the duration of the life of a dynasty does not as a rule extend beyond three generations. The first generation retains the desert qualities, desert toughness, and desert savagery. (Its members are used to) privation and to sharing their glory (with each other); they are brave and rapacious. Therefore, the strength of group feeling continues to be preserved among them.
    The Muqaddimah, Vol 1, pp. 468–469
  2. The dynasty then often splits into two or three dynasties, depending on its original strength, as we The Disintegration of Dynasties have stated." People who do not share in the group feeling of (the dynasty) take charge of its affairs, though they obey the people who do share in the group feeling of (the dynasty) and accept their acknowledged superiority. This may be exemplified by the Arab Muslim dynasty.
    The Muqaddimah, Vol 2, p. 145
  3. Its place is taken by the inner circle of clients and followers who enjoy the favors and benefactions of the ruler. A (new) group feeling is derived from them. However, (this new group feeling) does not have anything like the powerful grip (of the other group feeling), because it lacks direct and close blood relationships.
    The Muqaddimah, Vol 2, pp. 144–145

Where the argument is made

  • The Muqaddima Ch. II (on Bedouin civilization and 'asabiyya) and Ch. III (on dynasties, the caliphate, kingship)
  • particularly Ch. II §§ 7-21 on the genealogy of 'asabiyya, the role of group feeling in conquest, and the necessity of 'asabiyya for any sustained political authority
  • Ch. III §§ 11-17 on the natural life-span of dynasties, the four generations, and the decay of group feeling under the comforts of settled rule. Kitab al-'Ibar (the universal history) for the empirical materials — the Almoravids, the Almohads, the Hafsids, the Marinids, the Nasrids of Granada, the Berber tribes of the Maghreb

How the argument was received

The doctrine is empirically grounded in the dynasties of the Maghreb and al-Andalus that I studied directly and held office under. I have not made the claim that the cycle generalizes to every theater of human history; I did not have firsthand access to the Chinese, Indian, or Latin Christian materials in the depth that would warrant such generalization. The science of 'umran requires that one test the pattern against the materials; where I tested it, the pattern held; where I did not test it, I made no claim. The cyclical doctrine is offered as the law I have found, in the records available to me, governing the dynasties I have observed.