Bedouins and sedentaries (*badawa* vs *hadara*): are nomads better than settled peoples, or worse?

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

The position in brief

The question "are Bedouins better than sedentaries, or worse?" is not the question my text is answering. It is the wrong dichotomy. Bedouins and sedentaries each possess what the other lacks. Bedouin life (badawa) conditions 'asabiyya: shared hardship produces solidarity, simple religion produces piety, the absence of luxury produces austerity of habit and the willingness to bear arms.

These are real goods. Sedentary urban civilization (hadara) produces the arts, the crafts, the sciences, the refinements of building and dress and food, the institutions of learning and government — the flowering of human capacities possible only where surplus and security permit them. These are also real goods. The two are not on a single scale.

They condition different virtues and produce different goods. The dynastic cycle is the consequence of their succession, not the privileging of one over the other. The Bedouins conquer because 'asabiyya is intact; the sedentaries produce civilization because 'asabiyya has been spent.¹ Both are necessary moments in the cycle; the science is the science of the cycle, not the moral ranking of its phases.²³⁴

Sources

1. Thus, they can more easily be cured than sedentary people. Moral Superiority of the Bedouins This is obvious. It will later on TM become clear that sedentary life constitutes the last stage of civilization and the point where it begins to decay. It also constitutes the last stage of evil and of remoteness from goodness. It has thus become clear that Bedouins are closer to being good than sedentary people.

   The Muqaddimah, Vol 1, p. 379

2. Surdon and L. Bercher, Recueil de textes de Sociologie (Algiers, 1951), pp. 7-57. Both Bedouins and sedentary people are natural groups. T. 2? SHOULD BE KNOWN that differences of condition among people are the result of the different ways in which they make their living.

   The Muqaddimah, Vol 1, p. 373

3. He thus becomes dependent upon a protective force to defend him. He then usually becomes corrupt with regard to his religion, also. The (luxury) customs and his subservience to them have corrupted him, and his soul has been colored by (luxury) habits,' as we have stated. There are only very rare exceptions.

   The Muqaddimah, Vol 2, pp. 325–326

4. The particular group (practicing that craft) is colored by it. As the days follow one upon the other, and one professional coloring comes after the other, the craftsmen become experienced in their various crafts and skilled in the knowledge of them.

   The Muqaddimah, Vol 2, pp. 315–316

Where the argument is made

• The Muqaddima Ch. II in its entirety, especially §§ 3-6 (Bedouin civilization is the origin of all civilization), §§ 7-10 (the Bedouins are closer to the good than sedentaries, and the cause), §§ 24-28 (the Arab Bedouin and their capacity for civilization)
• Ch. IV on settled urban civilization, the arts and sciences and crafts that flower only in hadara, and the moral conditions of urban life

How the argument was received

The text holds both poles in real tension. The "Bedouins are closer to the good" passages have been cited as proof of nomad-romanticism; the passages on the necessity of hadara for the arts and sciences have been cited as proof of urban preference. Both sets of passages are in the Muqaddima; the apparent contradiction is the doctrine. The historiography on this question has tended to collapse the tension in one direction or the other; that collapse is the misreading.