The Dynastic Cycle

Ibn Khaldun’s most disturbing idea is not that civilisations decline but that the mechanism of decline is internal to the mechanism of rise. A dynasty is founded by a group with intense asabiyyah—solidarity forged in shared hardship, kinship, and common fate. This group conquers, founds a state, and establishes order. But success changes them. With power comes wealth; with wealth comes settled comfort; with comfort comes the gradual replacement of the warrior’s solidarity by the courtier’s self-interest. Each generation is softer than the last until the state, however rich and elaborate it has become, is a shell—and a new cohesive group from the margins sweeps it away. Ibn Khaldun put the natural lifespan at roughly four generations or 120 years. The cycle is not a tragedy of misfortune but a thermodynamic inevitability: prosperity systematically destroys the trait that produced it. Artificial intelligence is, in this frame, the most powerful luxury ever invented—a technology that promises