Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Tufail al-Qaisi al-Andalusi

Background

Ibn Tufail was born in 1105 in Guadix, Spain, belonging to the Qays Arab tribe.

Education

Ibn Tufail received a good training in philosophy and medicine, and is said to have been a pupil of Ibn Bajjah.

Career

Ibn Tufail became secretary to the governor of Granada, and later physician and vizier to Abu Yaqub Yusuf, the Almohad caliph. He died at Morocco. His chief work is a philosophical romance, in which he describes the awakening and growth of intellect in a child removed from the influences of ordinary life. Its Arabic title is Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, also known as Philosophus Autodidactus in the West, a philosophical romance 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. He determines that certain trappings of religion, namely imagery and dependence on material goods, are necessary for the multitude in order that they might have decent lives. However, imagery and material goods are distractions from the truth and ought to be abandoned by those whose reason recognizes that they are distractions. Hayy ibn 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.

Achievements

• As a philosopher and novelist, Ibn Tufail is most famous for writing the first philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, also known as Philosophus Autodidactus in the Western world. As a physician, he was an early supporter of dissection and autopsy, which was expressed in his novel.

Works

More photos

• book

  • The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan

    (The Improvement of Human Reason - Exhibited in the Life o...)

  • Ibn Tufayl's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale

    ( The Arabic philosophical fable Hayy Ibn Yaqzan is a cla...)

  • Hayy Ibn Yaqzan

    (71 pages, translated by L. E. Goodman with 91 page Introd...)

References

• Classical Arabic Philosophy: An Anthology of Sources
• The Spirit of Islam: A History of the Evolution and Ideals of Islam
• The World of Ibn T?ufayl: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on H?ayy Ibn Yaqz??n (Islamic Philosophy, Theology and Science. Texts and Studies)