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Tufail, Ibn

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Ibn Tufail (c. 1105, Gaudix, Spain – 1185) full 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 (Latinised form: Abubacer). Andalusian Arab Muslim philosopher, physician, 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 successor when he retired in 1182. He died in Morocco.

Ibn Tufail was the author of Ḥayy bin Yaqẓān, حي بن يقظان ("Alive son of Awake"): a philosophical romance and allegorical tale of a man who lives alone on an island and 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 Absal. He determines that the 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.

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.

The astronomer Nur Ed-Din Al Betrugi was a disciple of Ibn Tufail.

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)

External links

References

P. Brönnle, The Awakening of the Soul (London, 1905)
This article incorporates text from the Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition article "Ibn Tufail", a publication now in the public domain.

This biographical information was gathered from the Ibn_Tufail page, courtesy of the Wikipedia project.