A082 - Ibn Tufayl

 

Ibn Tufayl
Ibn Tufayl (Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Tufayl) (Abubacer) (Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Tufail al-Qaisi al-Andalusia) (Abubacer Aben Tofail) (Abu Jaafar Ebn Tophail) (Ibn Tufail) (c. 1105, Guadix, Spain – 1185). Known in the West as Abubacer.  He was a noted Andalusian-Arab Muslim polymath: an Arabic writer, novelist, Islamic philosopher, theologian, physician, vizier, and court official. 

As a philosopher and novelist, Ibn Tufayl is most famous for writing the first philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, 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.

He was born in Wadi Ash (today Guadix), near Granada, in Spain, he was educated by Ibn Bajjah (Avempace).  He served as a secretary for the ruler of Granada, and later as vizier and physician for Abu Yaqub Yusuf, the Almohad ruler of Al Andalus, to whom he recommended Ibn Rushd (Averroes) as his own future successor in 1169. 

Ibn Rushd became Ibn Tufayl's successor after he retired in 1182.  He died several years later in Morocco in 1185.  The astronomer Nur Ed-Din al-Betrugi was also a disciple of Ibn Tufayl.

Ibn Tufayl’s mystical philosophy was presented in his novel Hayy ibn Yaqzan (Hayya ibn yaqzhan) (Walk on, you bright boy) where a boy (called Hayy {walk on!}) was brought up in isolation on an island.   All by himself, the boy investigates the universe, and he passes through several stages, each lasting seven years.  At the highest level the boy came to understand the ultimate nature of the universe; the emanations coming from the One that goes from level to level, how spirit takes material form, and how the spirit strives to reach up to the One.  The boy finally meets another human being, and when returning to the world of people, he understands that his ultimate understanding is the same as the revealed religion, but that not all can reach this highest form of understanding.   Moreover, Man is divided into three groups: (1) Those who can understand the highest truth by reason alone (very few); (2) those who can understand by the help of symbols of the religious revelation; and (3) those who accept the laws coming from the symbols of the religious revelation.  Hayy tries to enlighten people, but fails, and returns to his island.  The moral seems to be that each of these groups of people should accept their standing, and not strive for more.

Ibn Tufayl drew the name of the book and most of its characters from an earlier work by Ibn Sina (Avicenna).  Ibn Tufayl's book was neither a commentary on nor a mere retelling of Ibn Sina's work, but rather a new and innovative work in its own right.  It reflects one of the main concerns of Muslim philosophers (later also of Christian thinkers), that of reconciling philosophy with revelation.  At the same time, the narrative anticipates in some ways both Robinson Crusoe and Rousseau's Emile.  It tells of a child who is nurtured by a gazelle and grows up in total isolation from humans.  In seven phases of seven years each, solely by the exercise of his faculties, Hayy goes through all the gradations of knowledge.  The story of Hayy ibn Yaqzan is similar to the later story of Mowgli in Rudyard Kipling's The Jungle Book in that a baby is abandoned on a deserted tropical island where he is taken care of and fed by a mother wolf.

Iby Tufayl's Hayy ibn Yaqzan (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 Al-Risalah al-Kamiliyyah fil Siera al-Nabawiyyah (known as Theologus Autodidactus in the West) as a response to Ibn Tufayl's Philosophus Autodidactus.

Hayy ibn Yaqzan (Philosophus Autodidactus) 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, and 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.

A Latin translation of the work, entitled Philosophus Autodidactus first appeared in 1671, prepared by Edward Pococke the Younger.  The first English translation (by Simon Ockley) was published in 1708.  These translations later inspired Daniel Defoe to write Robinson Crusoe, which also featured a desert island narrative and was the first novel in English.  Ibn Tufayl's novel also inspired the concept of "tabula rasa" developed in An Essay Concerning Human Understanding (1690) by John Locke, who was a student of Pococke. 

Ibn Tufayl's work went on to become one of the principal sources of empiricism in modern Western philosophy, and influenced many enlightenment philosophers, such as David Hume and George Berkeley.  Hayy's ideas on materialism in the novel also have some similarities to Karl Marx's historical materialism.  Other European writers influenced by Ibn Tufayl include William Molyneaux, Gottfried Liebniz, Melchisedech Thevenot, John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, George Keith, Robert Barclay, the Quakers, Samuel Hartlib, and Voltaire.




Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Tufayl  see Ibn Tufayl
Abubacer see Ibn Tufayl
Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Tufail al-Qaisi al-Andalusia see Ibn Tufayl
Abubacer Aben Tofail see Ibn Tufayl
Abu Jaafar Ebn Tophail see Ibn Tufayl
Ibn Tufail see Ibn Tufayl