The Princeton Encyclopedia of Islamic Political Thought

Ibn Tufayl (ca. 1105–85)

Abu Bakr Muhammad b. ‘Abd al-Malik b. Muhammad b. Tufayl was born in Wadi Ash/Guadix, northeast of Granada, sometime at the beginning of the 12th century. His writings reveal that he had an extensive education in jurisprudence, surgery and medicine, and astronomy. He was also widely read in poetry and philosophy and knew the works of Hallaj, Ibn Sina, Farabi, Ibn Bajja, and Ghazali. Two centuries after Ibn Tufayl’s death, Ibn al-Khatib wrote that he was “versatile in many arts.”

In 1148, the Almohad dynasty seized control of the Maghrib and Andalusia, and six years later, Ibn Tufayl became secretary and physician to the governor of Granada. Upon the accession of Abu Ya‘qub Yusuf to the Almohad caliphate (r. 1163–84), Ibn Tufayl joined his court in Cordoba as his physician and dearly cherished confidant. In 1182, he retired and was replaced by Ibn Rushd (d. 1198), whom he had earlier introduced to the intellectually inquisitive and learned caliph. Ibn Tufayl died in Marrakesh in 1185, having become so admired that Abu Ya‘qub’s son and successor presided at his funeral.

It was under the aegis of Abu Ya‘qub that Ibn Rushd produced some of his greatest philosophical works, at the same time that Ibn Tufayl wrote on astronomy, medicine, and philosophy. Ibn Tufayl’s writings on astronomy have not survived, but after his death, he was praised by Nur al-Din al-Bitruji (d. ca. 1204) in his Principles of Astronomy for having developed a cosmological theory that ran counter to Ptolemy’s. As a physician, Ibn Tufayl was remembered by Abu ‘Abdallah Muhammad b. al-Abbar (d. 1260), Ibn al-Khatib (d. 1374), and as late as Maqqari (d. 1631), although only his long poem on medicine (Urjuza fi al-Tibb) summarizing his findings survived; the manuscript was preserved at the Qarawiyyin Library in Fez, Morocco. Ibn Tufayl was also one of the great “philosophers of the Muslims” (falāsifat al-Muslimīn) according to ‘Abd al-Wahid al-Marrakushi (1185–ca. 1262). He wrote extensively on physics and metaphysics, ever seeking to harmonize philosophy (ḥikma) and theology (shari‘a) and Greek thought with Islamic law. Chiefly ascetical, a few samples of his poetry have survived in biographical accounts about him.

Marrakushi and Ibn al-Khatib, along with Maqqari, mentioned specifically Risalat Hayy ibn Yaqzan (Epistle of Hayy b. Yaqzan), on which Ibn Tufayl’s reputation rests. This short novella was probably written between 1177 and 1182 in response to a query by a “dear brother” or friend about the nature of the mystical experience that characterized “Eastern Wisdom.” Aimed against the formidable jurist Ghazali (d. 1111) and using a storyline from the Persian philosopher-physician Ibn Sina (d. 1037), Ibn Tufayl demonstrated that the human mind—represented by his protagonist Hayy b. Yaqzan, “Alive son of Awake”—without any theological or intellectual instruction, can attain the truth of enlightenment. At the same time, Ibn Tufayl emphasized that the same truth was available to those who sought it by religious revelation, either through interpretation (bāṭin) or through obedience to its apparent (ẓāhir) laws. Importantly for Ibn Tufayl, the mystical truth of enlightenment was similar in its origin and destination to the Qur’anic experience, thus explaining the harmony between “wisdom and the Islamic sciences,” as Marrakushi wrote.

Judging by the number of manuscripts of Hayy ibn Yaqzan that have survived, it was widely read throughout the medieval and early modern periods, not only in Arabic but also in various translations: in Hebrew (13th and 15th centuries), Latin (15th century), English (17th and 18th centuries), Dutch (17th century), and German (18th century). Other translations followed in the modern period. It was thanks to its Latin translation and publication in Oxford in 1671 by the English Orientalist Edward Pococke the Younger that it entered into Western thought—most famously through Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. From regions extending from Spain to New England, and from Oxford to Florence to Aleppo, Hayy ibn Yaqzan was the first literary Arabic text to leave its mark on early modern non-Muslim thinkers. By the beginning of the 21st century, it had been translated frequently into English and into various European and Asiatic languages.