Ibn Tufayl

Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Ṭufayl was born in Guadix, in al-Andalus, in the first decade of the 12th century (Britannica gives 1109/1110) and died in Marrakesh in 1185 or 1186. He served as physician and adviser to the Almohad ruler Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf; according to a well-known account, he introduced the young Ibn Rushd to the caliph.

His philosophical tale Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (“Alive, Son of Awake”), written around 1175, follows a child who grows up alone on an island and, through observation and reasoning, discovers the order of nature and ultimately the divine. The story explores the relationship between individual reason, revealed religion and society. Translated into Latin in 1671 as Philosophus Autodidactus, it attracted wide interest in early modern Europe.