Eighth to the Sixteenth Century - Rashid Islamic Center

Primary Sources • 251—4 —Abu Bakr Muhammad bin Tufayl, Hayy ibn Yaqzan,ed. L´eon Gauthier, Beirut, 1936, pp. 70–78, translatedby Yashab Tur.Born around 1100 in Wadi Ash, a small town northeast of Granada,Abu Bakr bin Abd al-Malik bin Muhammad bin Muhammad binTufail al-Qaisi (known to the Muslim world as Ibn Tufail and to theLatin West as Abubacer) was a man of many gifts. He practiced andtaught medicine, and was a philosopher, a mathematician, a poet,and a man of great imag ination. He was a teacher of Ibn Rushd, anadvisor and court physician first in Granda and later at the court ofPrince Abu Sa‘d Yusuf, Sultan of the Muwahidin in Morocco, wherehe died in 1185.His masterpiece, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan (Living the Son of the Awake), isan imaginative tale of an infant who is cast ashore upon an equatorialisland because his birth has to be concealed. He is suckled by a doeand spends the first fifty years of his life without contact with anyhuman being. His solitary life, which is presented as consisting ofseven stages of seven years, is full of reflections on nature amidstcontinuously emerging new needs which must be met in order tosurvive. Through his reflections and in the very process of fulfillmentof his needs, Hayy is led to such profound concepts as soul and itsCreator. This intellectual apprehension of truth is followed by anexperiential realization of Reality.Soon after this leap, Hayy comes into contact with another humanbeing, a spiritually endowed man by the name of Asal who arrives onthe island in search of solitude to contemplate the ultimate nature ofthings. Hayy and Asal find congenial companionship in each otherand realize that they have both arrived at the same Truth, each in hisown way. Asal tells Hayy about how human society is structured andthis produces in Hayy a desire to go to other human beings and showthem the real nature of life. A ship arrives in due course of time andthey both leave their solitary life for the island where Asal lived andwhere his friend, Salaman, rules. Hayy preaches to Asal’s community,but in time realizes that the truth he has acquired must be acquiredby each human being in his or her own personal manner; it cannot