The Grand Critic of Ibn Khaldūn: Ibn Al-Azraq and His Ideal Sultanate

Ibn al-Azraq (d. 896/1491) was a renowned Andalusian jurist (faqīh) and statesman who lived during the final period of the Nasrid emirate of Granada. His most famous work, Badāʾiʿ al-Silk fī Ṭabāʾiʿ al-Mulk (Unprecedented Lines about the Nature of Political Rule), is a political treatise that builds upon Ibn Khaldūn’s (d. 808/1406) social theory (Ꜥilm al-Ꜥumrān). In The grand critic of Ibn Khaldūn Elena Şahin critically analyses the major aspects of Ibn al-Azraq’s political thought.
In this contribution on the field of the history of Islamic political thought, Elena Şahin demonstrates that while Ibn al-Azraq integrates the thrust of Ibn Khaldūn’s approach, Ibn al-Azraq’s work should be regarded as part of a larger conversation amongst various scholars, engaging, for example with the Andalusian jurist al-Shāṭibī’s (d. 790/1388) theory of Maqāṣid al-Sharīʿa. Widening the analysis of Ibn al-Azraq’s work illuminates that Ibn al-Azraq’s political theory was in opposition to that of Ibn Khaldūn, and thus gives us a better understanding of the dynamic debates within Andalusian political thought.