The space of nomads: notes from a geographical reading of Ibn Khaldun

Abstract

Ibn Khaldun's (1332-1406) Al-Muqaddimah aims to explain the causes of state formation and collapse. The author sought a general rule to explain these dynamics, although he was particularly concerned with the Maghreb. What interests us is not the explanation of the decline of the Maghreb in the late Middle Ages, but the attempt to explain the current problems (the decline of cultivated land, the decline of most cities, the fragmentation of states, etc.) by a contemporary who offered an explanation based on the same geographical background: the contrast between two types of life, a conceptual tool that would be consecrated many centuries later by the contributions of Vidal de la Blache (1845-1918) and his geographical school.