Hayy ibn Yaqzan: The Improvement of Human Reason

About this book

On an uninhabited island near the equator, a baby boy, Hayy ibn Yaqzan, 'Alive, son of Awake', is raised by a gazelle. When she dies he opens her body to find what has left it, and from that moment he reasons his way alone through natural science and philosophy, to the nature of life, the heavens and the soul, and finally to the existence of a single Creator, whom he comes to know through contemplation. Only then does he meet another human being, Absal, who has come from a neighbouring island where religion is practised through laws and symbols.

Context and significance

Ibn Tufayl (about 1105–1185), a physician and philosopher at the Almohad court in Marrakesh who introduced Ibn Rushd to the caliph, wrote this philosophical tale in Arabic in the twelfth century. Translated into Latin in 1671 and into English soon after, it fascinated European thinkers of the Enlightenment and has been compared to Robinson Crusoe. This is Simon Ockley's English translation of 1708.

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