Ibn Khaldun as Critical Cosmopolitan

Abstract

Cosmopolitism is neither a personal life style, nor a universal understanding on ethics, nor a global political institution. It is rather a "cosmo-polis" world-view. What we mean by "cosmo- polis" is a universal “gemainschaft” of citizens. Up to now, Ibn Khaldun’s real value as a doctrinaire of ciritical cosmopolitics hasnot been put forward. The distinctive feature of Ibn Khaldun’s cosmopolitan view is his effort to determine the interference points between the urbanized elits of Egypt, Maghreb, and Andalusia, which were competing with each other. More precisely, the most essential difference of Ibn Khaldun and his generation’s cosmopotical elits was their harmony with literature. Ibn Khaldun invented terms such as “asabiyyah” “umran” and “badawiya” on various layers of meaning. Additionally, he assigns a central role to religion and religious norms, values, and institutions in the cosmopolitan vision of humankind.