Injustice heralds the ruin of civilization.

The phrase first appears in the preamble to Book One of the Muqaddimah, where Ibn Khaldun introduces the new science he proposes: the science of human civilization. Some of its questions, he notes, are already touched on in passing by other scholars. Jurists, explaining the purposes of the law, say that adultery confuses lineages, that murder destroys the species, and that injustice heralds the ruin of civilization. He then quotes the words of the Persian high priest to King Bahram, son of Bahram, as reported by al-Mas‘udi: there is no wealth without a flourishing land, and no flourishing land without justice.

Later, Ibn Khaldun made the phrase the title of a whole chapter, in the part devoted to dynasties and royal power. Attacks on people’s property, he explains, take away their hope of earning a living: they stop working, markets empty, and civilization declines. Injustice is not only confiscation: every unlawful demand and every forced labour is injustice too.

Ibn Khaldun finished the first version of the Muqaddimah in 1377, in retreat at the castle of Ibn Salama, in present-day Algeria, and kept revising it for years.

Muqaddimah, Book I, preamble; also the title of a chapter of the same book, 1377

Original text checked word for word in the work; the translation is by quotesay.

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