أَعُوذُ بِاللّٰهِ مِنَ الشَّيْطَانِ الرَّجِيمِ۔

بِسۡمِ ٱللهِ ٱلرَّحۡمَـٰنِ ٱلرَّحِيمِ

In the name of ALLAH, the Most Gracious, the Most Merciful

Essay "The Fate of Empires" By Sir John Glubb

Sir John Bagot Glubb (16 April 1897 – 17 March 1986), also known as Glubb Pasha (كلوب باشا) and Abu Hunaik (by the Jordanians), was a British military officer. He served in France in the First World War from 1915 to 1918. In 1926 he left the regular army to serve the Iraq Government. He led and trained Transjordan's Arab Legion between 1939 and 1956 as its commanding general. Since retirement, he has published sixteen books, chiefly on the Middle East, and has lectured widely.

Sir John Glubb, a British Lieutenant General, spent 36 years commanding armies in the Middle East. He studied every major empire in recorded history and found something he didn't expect. An Essay "The fate of Empires and Search for Survival" was written by Sir John Bagot Glubb (1978) - Explaining the cycle of civilizations & empires in the last 3000 years. Much lessons can be learned from this 3000 years time span. He revealed that " Every single empire (Assyria, Persia, Rome, the Arabs, the Ottomans, Spain, Britain) lasted about the same length of time".

Sir John Glubb mapped out six stages that every empire passes through:

1. The Age of Pioneers — a poor, obscure people suddenly explodes with energy and courage

2. The Age of Conquests — disciplined military expansion

3. The Age of Commerce — wealth pours in, merchants replace warriors

4. The Age of Affluence — money replaces duty as the goal of life

5. The Age of Intellect — universities multiply, debate replaces action

6. The Age of Decadence — selfishness, frivolity, and collapse

The cycle is clockwork in its regularity. The Assyrians marched on foot and fought with spears. The British used artillery and ocean-going ships. Yet both empires lasted about 250 years. Technology changes. Weapons change. The human cycle does not. The pivot from greatness to decline is always the same moment:

Empires start to decline when money replaces honor as the ambition of the best young men.

In the Age of Conquests, boys are raised to be hardy, courageous, and truthful. Duty is drummed into their heads. Schools are intentionally rough with frugal eating and hard living.

The goal is to produce strong men, but when wealth arrives, the goal shifts from service to cash.

The transformation is almost invisible to the people living through it.

Education stops producing patriots ready to serve their country. Parents and students seek qualifications that command the highest salaries.

Students no longer attend college for learning and virtue, but for credentials that make them rich.

The Arab moralist Ghazali (1058–1111 AD) talked about this exact pattern; and here is what Al-Ghazali focused on regarding the state and society:

Political Context: Al-Ghazali lived during a period of political fragmentation (decline of Abbasid power and rise of Seljuks), which prompted him to prioritize stability and justice over rebellion.

Theo-democracy and Justice: He argued that the rise and fall of a nation depend on the ruler’s adherence to justice, law, and sharia. He emphasized that a sultan must protect faith and ensure stability.

Economic Morality: He warned that societies decline when they prioritize wealth over wisdom and when economic activity loses its ethical framework.

Focus on Inner Life: His seminal work, Iḥyāʾ ʿUlūm al-Dīn (The Revival of the Religious Sciences), focuses on spiritual and moral reform, rather than a cyclical theory of history.

Sir John Glubb read that and he recognized the pattern in his own society. Once affluence takes hold, defensiveness follows. The nation is too rich and too comfortable to fight, so it pays others to fight for it. And then the mind invents a justification; "We aren't afraid to fight. We simply consider it immoral." Next comes the Age of Intellect. In the Age of Intellect, universities multiply and debate replaces action.

The Athenians in decline spent their time doing nothing but telling or hearing some new thing. The Arab Empire measured the circumference of the earth with remarkable accuracy in the 9th century. Less than fifty years later, the empire collapsed.

Scientific progress did not save them. The most dangerous idea produced by the Age of Intellect: the belief that the human brain alone can solve the world's problems. It cannot! But Why?

Any organization or entity, from a bowling club to a nation, requires self-sacrifice from its members to survive. The idea that cleverness can replace duty is "foolish" and therefore, "selfishness" is bread overtly which leads to collapse every time. Then comes Decadence. And the symptoms are identical across every civilization. Sir John Glubb studied and highlighted s follows:-

- Defensiveness

- Pessimism

- Materialism

- Frivolity

- A weakening of religion

- The welfare state

- Internal political hatreds so intense that factions would rather destroy each other than save the nation.

The Byzantines spent the last fifty years of their empire fighting civil wars while the Ottoman Turks closed in around them. Glubb studied 10th-century Baghdad in its decline and said the descriptions could have been pulled from a modern newspaper. The break-up of the empire. The abandonment of sexual morality. Pop singers with guitars corrupting the young. Women demanding entry into every male profession. The government introducing a five-day work week during an economic crisis.

Sir John Glubb wrote: "The resemblance of all the details was breathtaking." The so-called heroes of a declining nation are always the same. The athlete. The singer. The actor. The word "celebrity" comes to mean a comedian or a football player, not a statesman or a general. Glubb noted that in both Rome and Britain, the public became obsessed with sports and entertainment while their empires rotted from within. Gladiatorial games. Chariot races. Sound familiar?

During decline, with survival on the line, you would expect political factions to unite. The opposite happens. Internal hatreds intensify. Rival parties stop treating each other as honorable opponents and start treating each other as enemies to be destroyed. The pattern is ancient and it accelerates as the empire weakens. Then the soul gives out.

Sir John Glubb wrote; "The citizens of such a nation will no longer make an effort to save themselves, because they are not convinced that anything in life is worth saving." Every great nation believed its dominance would last forever. Rome. Baghdad. Britain. Each assumed their success was the product of inherent racial or cultural superiority. This self-assurance made them lazy. They hired foreigners to do the hard labor. They hired mercenaries to fight their wars. They assumed progress was automatic and would continue without effort.

The US citizens today are assured that "The standard of living will keep rising." No one asks what it costs to maintain it. The average American empire, if you start the clock at 1776, is now 250 years old. Right on schedule. Every symptom Glubb identified is visible. The obsession with celebrity. The political factions tearing each other apart. The belief that cleverness alone can save us. The endless debates that produce no action. The frivolity. US citizens are living inside the pattern.

(though you might push the American Empire out 80 or so years, to just before the Civil War)

Sir John Glubb noticed something else as well. In every age of decadence, while the majority surrendered to selfishness and despair, a remnant refused. Some of the greatest saints in history lived in times of national collapse. They raised the banner of duty and service against the flood. Seeds of revival are sown in the worst soil. The cycle is not a death sentence. But reversing it requires what most people in a decadent age refuse to do. Stop worshipping money and comfort. Ignore the celebrities. Raise strong children. The ship is enormous and the rudder small, but someone has to start turning the wheel.

The rise and fall of empires is a cyclical historical process driven by the acquisition and loss of resources, military strength, and administrative competence. Empires, such as the Roman, British, and Ottoman, often rise through economic advantages and strategic innovation, only to decline due to overexpansion, economic instability, and political stagnation.

The Essay "The Fate of Empires" By Sir John Glubb discusses the need to study history from a global perspective over long periods of time to understand patterns and avoid past mistakes. It argues historians mainly focus on short periods in single countries, and introduces the concept of studying empires' rise and fall to learn lessons that can help solve modern problems.

In another pioneering work "The Rise And Fall Of Nations" by Ruchir Sharma demystifies the drivers behind political, economic, and social change. Shaped by his twenty-five years traveling the world, and enlivened by encounters with villagers from Rio to Beijing, tycoons, and presidents, Ruchir Sharma’s The Rise and Fall of Nations rethinks the "dismal science" of economics as a practical art. Narrowing the thousands of factors that can shape a country’s fortunes to ten clear rules, Sharma explains how to spot political, economic, and social changes in real time. He shows how to read political headlines, black markets, the price of onions, and billionaire rankings as signals of booms, busts, and protests.

Yale University historian Paul Kennedy in his 1987 book "The Rise and Fall of the Great Powers" says that "Imperial overstretch, also known as imperial overreach, describes the situation in which an empire extends itself beyond its military-economic capabilities and often collapses as a result. The common saying in the East, famously analyzed by the 14th-century Arab historian Ibn Khaldun, is that empires or dynasties typically last for four generations. This cycle is often cited as lasting approximately 100 to 120 years. The in-famous state of chosen people of God "Israel" twice lasted less then 80 years.

Ibn Khaldun explained in his work, The Muqaddimah, that family prestige and dynastic power rarely outlast four generations due to a decline in asabiyyah (social cohesion/group solidarity):

First Generation (The Builder): Possesses the "desert toughness" and cohesion to establish the empire through sacrifice, struggle, and shared purpose.

Second Generation (The Transitioner): Experienced the struggle through their parents, but begins to transition from a nomadic to a sedentary lifestyle, focusing on consolidation.

Third Generation (The Follower): Relies entirely on tradition and is content with luxury, losing the ability to defend the empire personally.

Fourth Generation (The Destroyer): Squanders the legacy entirely, losing all sense of the discipline, duty, and solidarity that built the state, leading to its collapse.

Historical analysis suggests that to prevent collapse, an empire or a nation must actively fight overconfidence, wealth inequality, and excessive debt. A country with democratic dispensation or kingship may find solution against the cyclic nature of decay by "violent-forceful public rise" revolution at the end of "Stage Three" (as stated above) to wipe out the top strata bureaucratic and cultural hegemon and "clean the slate" without harming the productive apparatus of Empire / Nation.