Ibn Tufail’s Hayy Bin Yaqzan
IBN TUFAIL
Full name:
Abu Bakr Muhammad bin Abdul-Malik bin Muhammad bin
Tufail al-Qaisi al-Andalusi
Title:
Ibn Tufayl
Abubacer Bin Tofail
Abu Jaafar Bin Tophail
He was born in 1105 in Wadi Ash Guadix (near Granada),
Andalusia and died in1185 Marrakech (aged 79–80).
IBN TUFAIL
Era: Islamic Golden Age
Region: Al-Andalus
Jurisprudence: Sunni Islam
Main interests: Early Islamic philosophy,
Literature, Islamic medicine.
IBN TUFAIL
- He was an Andalusian Muslim polymath:
a writer, novelist, Islamic philosopher, Islamic
theologian, physician, vizier, and court official.
- Wrote the first philosophical novel, which was also
the first novel to depict a child in a desert island.
Hayy bin Yaqdhan
(Philosophus Autodidactus)
LIFE
- He was educated by Ibn Bajjah (Avempace).
- He served as a secretary and physician for Abu
Yaqub Yusuf, the Almohad king, to whom he
recommended Ibn Rushd (Averroës) as his
own future successor in 1169. Ibn Rushd who
wrote the Aristotelian commentaries.
- The astronomer Nur Ed-Din Al-Bitruji was also
a successor of Ibn Tufayl.
- Ibn Tufail was the author of Ḥayy bin Yaqẓān
Son of the Awake), also known as Philosophus
Autodidactus in the West.
Alive,
- A philosophical and allegorical novel inspired by
Avicennism and Sufism, and which tells the story of an
autodidactic feral child, raised by a gazelle and living
alone on a desert island, who, without contact with
other human beings, discovers ultimate truth through a
systematic process of reasoned inquiry.
Hayy ultimately comes into contact with civilization and
religion when he meets a castaway named Absal.
PHILOSOPHERS' RESPONSES
Ibn Tufail's Philosophus Autodidactus was written
as a response to al-Ghazali's The Incoherence of
the Philosophers.
In the 13th century, Ibn al-Nafis later wrote the AlRisalah al-Kamiliyyah fil Siera al-Nabawiyyah
(known as Theologus Autodidactus in the West)
as a response to Ibn Tufail's Philosophus
Autodidactus
NEED TO KNOW:
Hayy Bin Yaqdhan had a significant influence on both Arabic
literature and European literature, and it went on to become an
influential best-seller throughout Western Europe in the 17th
and 18th centuries.
The work also had a "profound influence" on both classical
Islamic philosophy and modern Western philosophy. It became
"one of the most important books that heralded the Scientific
Revolution" and European Enlightenment.
The thoughts expressed in the novel can be found "in different
variations and to different degrees in the books of Thomas
Hobbes, John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Immanuel Kant."
TRANSLATIONS
A Latin translation of the work, entitled
Philosophus Autodidactus, first appeared in
1671, prepared by Edward Pococke the
Younger.
The third English translation (by Simon Ockley)
was published in 1708.
These translations later may have inspired Daniel
Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe.
The story of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan takes place on an island
uninhabited by human beings.
Philosophers were of the opinion that he was born
spontaneously when the mixture of elements reached an
equilibrium state, making it possible for this mixture to receive
a human soul from the divine world.
Traditionalists believed that he was the son of a woman who
chose to keep her marriage to her relative, Yaqzan, secret from
her brother who ruled a neighboring island and did not find any
man qualified to marry his sister.
After feeding Hayy well, she put him in a box and threw it into
the waters, which took him to the uninhabited island.
A deer who had just lost her son and was still
experiencing the feelings of motherhood heard
Hayy's cries.
She suckled him, protected him from harmful things
and took care of him until she died when he was
seven years of age.
The deer's death transformed Hayy's life from one of
dependency to one of exploration and discovery.
In an effort to find out the reason for the deer's
death, he dissected her with sharp stones and dry
reeds.
Noticing that every bodily organ has a proper
function and that the left cavity of her heart was
empty so that, the source of life must have been
in the cavity.
Then, he continued to investigate other parts of
nature: animal organs, their arrangement, number,
size and position, as well as the qualities that
animals, plants and inanimate things have in
common.
Through continued reasoning he grasped the
concepts of matter and form, cause and effect, unity
and multiplicity, as well as other general concepts
concerning the earth and the heavens.
Asking himself whether the world is eternal or
produced in time.
Then, he was led to the conclusion that there exists a
Necessary Being who is the Creator of all other
beings.
In the opposite island, there lived two men,
namely Salaman and Absal. They both are very
faithful to the religion, by practicing their religious
rituals and reading religious texts.
Absal liked to isolate himself from the world,
whereas Salaman interested to involve in community
in order to practice the religion.
Because of their difference in thought, Absal
decided to go to the opposite island and spent his
time alone in worshipping the Absolute Truth.
Returning to Hayy, At the age of 50, when he had not
communicated with anyone except himself, he met Absal.
Absal realized that Hayy did not have an idea of any
language so, he tried to teach him to speak and
communicate in order to make him aware of knowledge
and religion.
Also, Absal introduced Hayy to his culture and people.
Asal informs Hayy about Quranic conceptions of God, His
Angels, prophets, etc.
Hayy accepted Asal’s explanations as truths.
Then he followed Asal to his island in the hope of reforming
the people there.
Hayy endeavors hard to enlighten the masses through pure
concepts .
At the end, he finds these concepts are proved to be too difficult
for the masses to understand.
Both men returned back to their isolated world and
continued searching their ecstasies until they met
their ends.
ALLUSION TO THE STORY OF MOSES
There is an island governed by a king who has a beautiful
sister. Although the sister is old enough to get married, the
king would not allow her because he could not find
someone fitting.
But the sister loves one of her relatives named Yaqzan and
marries him secretly in accordance with the customs of the
community. They name their child Hayy.
In order to keep their marriage secret and to prevent their
child from getting killed, they find the following solution:
the mother puts him in an ark, and brings it to the coast.
ALLUSION TO THE STORY OF MOSES(CONT)
This narration resembles in many ways the story
of the birth and growing up of Moses as occurs in
the Qur’an.
As is known, when Moses was born, the Pharaoh
has a dream in which he sees a male child born in
that years oust him.
Then he decides to have all the male children of the
Israelites who are born that year killed.
So Moses mother, in order to save her newborn,
puts him in an ark and casts him at night into the
dark waters of the Nile.
TO SUM UP
Without the help of tradition and revelation, man
can attain knowledge of the natural world and
reality and, through this, to knowledge of God.
Even if God has not revealed Himself through His
prophets, He would have been discovered by
scientists and philosophers through their studies of
nature, the human self and the universe.
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