Ibn Tufayl

Ibn Tufail (c. 1105, Gaudix, Spain – 1185) (full Arabic name: Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Tufail al-Qaisi al-Andalusi أبو بكر محمد بن عبد الملك بن محمد بن طفيل القيسي الأندلسي) (Latinized form: Abubacer; Anglicized form: Abu Jaafar ebn Tophail) was an Andalusian-Arab polymath: an Islamic philosopher, physician, Arabic writer, novelist, and court official.

Life

Born in Guadix near Granada, 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 Averroës as his own future successor in 1169. Averroës later reports this event and describes how Ibn Tufail then inspired him to write his famous Aristotelian commentaries:

Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl summoned me one day and told me that he had heard the Commander of the Faithful complaining about the disjointedness of Aristotle's mode of expression — or that of the translators — and the resultant obscurity of his intentions. He said that if someone took on these books who could summarize them and clarify their aims after first thoroughly understanding them himself, people would have an easier time comprehending them. “If you have the energy,” Ibn Tufayl told me, “you do it. I'm confident you can, because I know what a good mind and devoted character you have, and how dedicated you are to the art. You understand that only my great age, the cares of my office — and my commitment to another task that I think even more vital — keep me from doing it myself.”

Averroës 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 Tufail.

Philosophus Autodidactus

Main article: Hayy ibn Yaqdhan

Ibn Tufail was the author of Ḥayy bin Yaqẓān, حي بن يقظان ("Alive son of Awake"), 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.

Ibn Tufail drew the name of the tale and most of its characters from an earlier work by Ibn Sina (Avicenna). Ibn Tufail's book was neither a commentary on nor a mere retelling of Ibn Sina's work, however, but 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 Émile. 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 graduations 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 in a deserted tropical island where he is take care of and fed by a mother wolf.

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

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.

Works

• Arabic text of Hayy bin Yaqzan from Wikisource
• English translations of Hayy bin Yaqzan (in chronological order)
  • The improvement of human reason, exhibited in the life of Hai ebn Yokdhan, written in Arabick above 500 years ago, by Abu Jaafar ebn Tophail, newly translated from the original Arabick, by Simon Ockley. With an appendix, in which the possibility of man’s attaining the true knowledg of God, and things necessary to salvation, without instruction, is briefly consider'd. London: Printed and sold by E. Powell, 1708.
  • Abu Bakr Ibn Tufail, The history of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, translated from the Arabic by Simon Ockley, revised, with an introdroduction by A.S. Fulton. London: Chapman and Hall, 1929. available online (omits the introductory section)
  • Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzān: a philosophical tale, translated with introduction and notes by Lenn Evan Goodman. New York: Twayne, 1972.
  • The journey of the soul: the story of Hai bin Yaqzan, as told by Abu Bakr Muhammad bin Tufail, a new translation by Riad Kocache. London: Octagon, 1982.
  • Two Andalusian philosophers, translated from the Arabic with an introduction and notes by Jim Colville. London: Kegan Paul, 1999.
  • Medieval Islamic Philosophical Writings, ed. Muhammad Ali Khalidi. Cambridge University Press, 2005. (omits the introductory section; omits the conclusion beginning with the protagonist's acquaintance with Asal; includes §§1-98 of 121 as numbered in the Ockley-Fulton version)

See also

• List of Arab scientists and scholars
• Early Islamic philosophy
• Arabic literature

References

• P. Brönnle, The Awakening of the Soul (London, 1905)
• This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Ibn Tufail". [[Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition|Encyclopædia Britannica]] (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. {{cite encyclopedia}}: URL–wikilink conflict (help)

External links

• Ibn Tofail in "History of Philosophy in Islam", by T.J. de Boer, 1904, at sacred-texts.com
• About Ibn Tufail
• About Ibn Tufayl's view of education implicit in his work Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, by Silvio Sergio Scatolini Apostolo, at Webislam http://english.webislam.com