Hayy Bin Yaqdhan: Ibn Tufail

Copyright © 2000 by J.M. Budd.

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Contents

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

THE FIRST POSSIBLE CAUSE OF HAYY’S GENESIS

THE SECOND POSSIBLE CAUSE OF HAYY’S GENESIS

FURTHER EXPLANATION OF THE FIRST POSSIBLE CAUSE OF HAYY’S GENESIS

THE FORMATION OF THE MAIN ORGANS OF THE HUMAN BODY

HOW HAYY BIN YAQDHAN WAS REARED

THROUGH HIS OBSERVATIONS AND EXPERIENCE HAYY COMES TO FEEL THAT HE IS BETTER THAN THE ANIMALS

HAYY BIN YAQDHAN PONDERS OVER THE DEATH OF THE GAZELLE

HE DECIDES TO CUT THE GAZELLE’S CHEST OPEN AND LOOK FOR THE DAMAGED ORGAN

HIS DISCOVERY OF FIRE AND THE USE HE MAKES OF IT

HE PONDERS ON SPACE AND THE STARS

HE PROBES THE SECRETS OF THE UNIVERSE

HOW HE ARRIVED AT TANGIBLE TRUTHS THROUGH INDUCTIVE INVESTIGATION

THE ROAD TO HAPPINESS

THE STORY OF HAYY BIN YAQDHAN, SALAMAN AND ASAL

EPILOGUE

NOTES

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Many thanks to Asadullah Yate for the translation of the quote from al Junaid on page 32.

Most of the passages from the Holy Quran are taken from A. Yusuf Ali’s translation.

TRANSLATOR’S INTRODUCTION

The author

Abu Bakr Mohammed bin Abdul Malik bin Tufail al Qaisi was born in Wadi Ash (now Guadix) east of Granada between 495 AH and 505 AH (around the beginning of the twelfth century). As his last name—al Qaisi—indicates, he was descended from the line of Qais, so he belonged to the northern Arab group which traces its ancestry back to Ishmael, son of Abraham.

In his youth Ibn Tufail studied philosophy and was strongly influenced by the Andalusian philosopher Abu Bakr bin al Sayegh, (more commonly known in Arabic as Ibn Baja, and in the West as Avempace), who may have been his teacher. He also studied religion, jurisprudence and medicine and distinguished himself in all these fields.

He was a judge and doctor of medicine in Granada, and was later vizier and chamberlain at the Granada court. In 549 AH (1154) his relationship began with the Almohade dynasty and he was appointed chamberlain to Abu Said bin Abdul Mu’min, Prince of Ceuta and Tangier. In 558 AH (1163) he became personal physician to the Almohade Sultan Abu Ya’qoub Yousuf in Marrakesh—a position he continued to occupy until he retired in 578 AH (1183) and was succeeded by his pupil, the philosopher Ibn Rushd (Averroes).

Ibn Tufail and the Sultan were drawn together by a common love of philosophy and learning, and the years he spent in the Sultan’s palace were almost certainly the most important of his life.

After Sultan Abu Ya’qoub Yousef’s death in 580 AH (1184) Ibn Tufail became the loyal companion and confidant of his son, Sultan Abu Yousuf Ya’qoub, who attended his funeral when he died in Marrakesh in 581 AH (1184).

Hayy bin Yaqdhan

Hayy bin Yaqdhan (Alive, son of Awake) is Ibn Tufail’s only surviving work apart from a few brief writings on medicine and astronomy. It summarises his own ideas and also encapsulates much of the philosophical and scientific thinking of his age in clear, direct language.

A theme which runs through the story, and which Hayy discovers during the course of his mental and spiritual development, is the unity of nature and, by extension, the impossibility of isolating the reality of creation from the reality of the Creator. This principle was recognised by Pythagoras, as well as the Chaldeans and the priests of ancient Egypt. Muslims—who see it as central to their belief system—have traditionally understood it through two channels: ‘aql (the intellect) and naql (Revelation; most notably the Holy Quran, the Hadith—the sayings of the Prophet—and fitra—an instinctive belief in the One God and a disposition towards whatever is right and natural). Revelation and the intellect are mutually complementary, though at times they were seen as being in conflict, particularly by those who regarded philosophy as the enemy of faith.

Risalat Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan by Ibn Sina (d. 1037) was written in the century before Ibn Tufail’s story. It is an allegorical tale in which the sage Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan appears to the spiritual aspirant as an angel and shows him how to navigate through the cosmos of symbols to the domain of light.

No traces survive of the original manuscript of Salaman wa Absal (Salaman and Absal, called Salaman and Asal in mostversions of Ibn Tufail’s Hayy bin Yaqdhan)—another allegorical story which forms part of the same narrative cycle. However, one of Ibn Sina’s pupils—Abu Ubaid al Khawarizmi—describes it as a morality tale.

In Ibn Sina’s version Salaman and Absal were half-brothers. Salaman’s wife fell in love with Absal but failed in her attempts to seduce him. Then, after plotting unsuccessfully to cause his death in battle, she finally succeeded in having him poisoned by her servants. Salaman, while mourning the death of his brother, learned the truth through a dream and forced his wife and the servants to drink the same poison.

There is also a version of Hayy Ibn Yaqdhan by Suhrawardi in which the author describes the bliss experienced by those who have succeeded in entering into communion with their Creator after divesting themselves of worldly desires and the trappings of material life.

Ibn Tufail’s Hayy bin Yaqdhan was translated into Hebrew in 1349. E. Pocock’s Latin version alongside the original Arabic text—known as the Oxford Edition—was published in 1671 and was later translated from Latin into English versions by George Ashwell and George Keith. Simon Ockley produced the first English translation from the Arabic in 1708 and over the next two hundred years translations were published in French, Russian, Dutch, German and Spanish. The story has also been translated into Persian and the other major languages of the Islamic world.

The most recent English translation before this one was by Dr. Riad Kocache in 1982.

Many critics say that Hayy bin Yaqdhan was as much a model for Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719) as the real-life castaway Alexander Selkirk was, and he has even been claimed as the inspiration for Edgar Rice Burroughs’s Tarzan books. However, while it is certainly quite possible that Defoe may have read Ockley’s English translation, the differences between the two stories are far deeper and more fundamental than their few similarities.

Robinson Crusoe was no stranger to human society when he became marooned, but an adult from a well-to-do European family, and the skills he acquired on his island were all used to help make living in the wilderness as comfortable and as much like his old life in the civilised world as possible. Moreover, although like Hayy he discovered God in his solitude, unlike Hayy he was conventionally pious rather than truly spiritual, his piety resulting from a combination of gratitude and guilt—gratitude for his deliverance from death, and guilt for his past sins and his negligence towards the formal religion he was taught as a child.

The story

Every child is born on the fitra and it is his parents who make him a Jew, a Christian or a Magian.

Hadith (Saying) of the Prophet Muhammed (SAAS)

Hayy bin Yaqdhan is the story of a man who reaches the age of fifty before coming into contact with another human being. However, despite his isolation, his intuition and innate intelligence enable him to learn first about himself, then about the animal kingdom, then the material world, then the movements and nature of the cosmos, then the existence of God. Finally, he discovers truths about the nature of God and the Ultimate Reality which mirror those revealed to mankind through the messengers and prophets.

*     *      *

Before Hayy makes his appearance the author speculates on how he came into the world. Two possibilities are considered. One is that he was formed on an equatorial island when a bubble of viscous, fermenting mud became charged by the «Spirit,» which «flows unceasingly from Allah—the Sublime, the Almighty—and may be compared to sunlight, which flows constantly onto the world.»

When the spirit attached itself to the mud, the resulting entity developed into a human baby, which emerged onto the surface of the island when the outer shell of its mud womb dried and cracked. After a time the baby became hungry and began to wail. Its cries were heard by a nearby gazelle who had lost her young.

The other possibility is that Hayy was the child of a secret marriage between the sister of the arrogant ruler of a nearby island and a man called Yaqdhan. To hide the fact from her brother, the sister placed her baby in a chest at dead of night and entrusted it to the waves.

The sea carried the chest over to the other island and deposited it in a sheltered thicket on the shore. After a time the baby became hungry and began to wail. Its cries were heard by a nearby gazelle who had lost her young.

At this point the two versions of the baby’s origin merge and the story of Hayy bin Yaqdhan begins.

*     *      *

The gazelle adopted Hayy as her own and Hayy grew up to regard her as his mother. Yet as the years went by, he gradually discovered that he was different from the animals on the island. At first he felt inferior when he saw they were stronger and faster than him, and that they had natural weapons like horns, spurs and tusks, as well as natural coverings like fur, hair or feathers, while he was naked, unarmed, physically weak and a poor runner.

However, as he approached the age of seven, he discovered that he was in fact superior to them, because he had hands. These enabled him to make clothes for himself out of leaves, palm fronds, skin and feathers, and also to use sticks as weapons.

In time the other creatures came to fear him and