The introduction to a universal history, in which Ibn Khaldun sets out a theory of society: how nomadic solidarity founds dynasties, how dynasties build cities, and how cities grow luxurious and decline. Its fourth chapter is devoted to towns and their building.
Ibn Khaldun (1332–1406), a statesman and scholar who served rulers from Granada to Cairo, argues that cities are the work of dynasties: only royal authority can command the labour needed to build them, and a city’s fortunes follow those of its rulers. In the chapter on towns he tells the founder what to look for. The site must be protected against attack (on a steep height, or surrounded by a river or the sea), and it must have healthy air, sweet water close at hand, pasture for animals, farmland and woodland for fuel and timber. Towns founded without these, he observes, soon fall into ruin.
He adds that great monuments are built by great dynasties and that no single dynasty can finish what it begins; that crafts multiply with the size and prosperity of a town; and that building itself is a craft of the settled life, which he describes with its tools and materials.
The book, part by part
I Chapter IV: countries and cities
Why dynasties build cities; the conditions of a good site; monuments and their builders; the decline of towns.
Rules: Where to found a city