Ibn Khaldun believes that dynasties, just like human beings, have a natural life span. While an individual geneally lives for around 120 years, the life span of dynasties isaround three generations. Ibn Khaldun said:
In the opinion of physicians and astrologers, the natural life span of individuals is one hundred and twenty years … Within the same generation, the duration of life differs according to the conjunctions. It may be either moreor less that one hundred and twenty years … The life span of a Muslim lasts between sixty and seventy years… The same applies to the life span of dynasties. Their duration may differaccording to the conjunctions. However, as a rule no dynasty lasts beyond the life span of three generations. A generation is identical with the average duration of the life of a single individual, namely forty years, the time required for growth to be completed and maturity reached.
Ibn Khaldun then went on to describe the nature of each generation of the dynasties:
The first generation retains the desert qualities, desert toughness and desert savagery … The strength of group feeling continues to be preserved among them. They are sharp and greatly feared. People submit to them …
… Under the influence of royal authority and a life of ease, the second generation changes from the desert attitude to sedentary culture, from privation to luxury and plenty, from a state in which everybody shared in the glory to one in whch one man claims all the glory for himself while the others are too lazy to strive for glory, and from proud superiority to humble subservience … People become used to lwoliness and obedience …
… The third generation, then, has (completely) forgotten the period of desert life and toughness, as if it had never existed … Luxury reachesits peak among them … Group feeling disappeared completely … People forget to protect and defend themselves and to press their claims … until God permits it to be destroyed, and with it goes everything it stands for …
As one can see, we have there three generations. In the course of these three generations, the dynasty grow senile and is worn out. Therefore it is in the fourth generation that(ancestral) prestige is destroyed.
(Quotes source: The Muqaddimah, translated by Franz Rosenthal (2005), p. 136-137)
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