Neo-Platonism in Ibn Khaldūn's Poetics

Abstract

Abstract This article analyses the presence of Neo-Platonic ideas in the poetics of Ibn Khaldūn's (1332–1406). It particularly focuses on the sixth part of the Muqaddima, in which Ibn Khaldūn presents the Arab-Islamic system of knowledge. I argue that Ibn Khaldūn analyses poetry in terms of a peculiar kind of knowledge and that his views on poetry are largely dominated by a Neo-Platonic paradigm, deriving from Avicenna's Psychology and Sufism. I focus on four topics: the “weak” rational position of poetics among the sciences of logic; the rhetorical norm of muṭābaqa (“conformity” between “words” and “ideas”, and between “speech” and the “requirement of the situation”), the musical norm of talāʾum (appropriateness of note combinations) and the notion of poetical “models” (uslūb; pl. asālīb). My conclusion is that the Muqaddima provides the modern reader with a precious longue-durée overall view of pre-modern Arab-Islamic poetics.