1 Introduction

Although prose fiction is not very prominent in medieval Arabic literature, famous exceptions, such as the Thousand and One Nights, have traversed the centuries that elapsed since their composition, leaving their mark on modern Western culture. Translations of these works are at the root of modern and contemporary popular adaptations, in diverse modes of artistic expression, from literature and music to paintings and cinema. Needless to say, Walt Disney’s Alladin or Rimsky Korsakov’s Scheherazad are very different from their medieval namesakes, and indeed they make no claim of being faithful to the story that inspired them. Another example of similar versatile literary longevity is Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān. Captivating the Western imaginaire, it engendered such modern classics as Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Rudyard Kipling’s The Jungle Book. Defoe’s Robinson and Kipling’s Mowgli were both inspired, directly or indirectly, by translations of the same work: Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān (“The Living, son of the Awake”), composed by the Andalusian Abū Bakr Ibn Ṭufayl (d. 581/1185).¹

The tale of Ḥayy and his companions Salāmān and Absāl is also extant in other medieval versions – authored by Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq (d. 873), Avicenna (d. 428/1037), Šihāb ad-Dīn as-Suhrawardī (d. 587/1191), Naṣīr ad-Dīn aṭ-Ṭūsī (d. 672/1274), Ibn an-Nafīs (d. 687/1288), and ʿAbd ar-Raḥmān Nūr ad-Dīn Jāmī (d. 898/1492) – that differed from Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy as much as the Western modern ones did. The following pages will focus on the literary relationship between Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy and Avicenna’s (the latter being ostensibly the immediate source of inspiration of the former), and on the philosophical implications of this literary relationship. As I will argue, while Ibn Ṭufayl borrowed Avicenna’s protagonists and framework, he eliminated the figure of the guiding sage, thus breaking sharply not only from Avicenna but also from the conventions of the literary genre that served as his model, the initiation story. This paper is primarily dedicated to presenting this dramatic, yet hitherto under-estimated, change, and to examining possible explanations for Ibn Ṭufayl’s revolutionary move.

2 The Oriental Ḥayy

Initiation stories, a widespread genre of edifying tales, appear in different cultures under various garbs: folkloric, religious, or philosophic. Several such tales circulated in the Near East in Late Antiquity: The Hymn of the Pearl and early translations of the Buddha legend are but two of the more famous examples.² Other tales, sometimes adaptations of material inherited from Indian, Persian, Greek or Syriac literature, were added with the arrival of Islam. One can mention here the tale of Ḏū l-Qarnayn (an Arabic version of the Alexander romance), or the Ismāʿīlī The Master and The Disciple.³

The Sage, who guides the young man in his quest for wisdom, constitutes an essential element in this particular brand of initiation tales.⁴ The Sage’s guidance allows the initiate to overcome his shortcomings and to transcend his obvious and immediate experience in order to attain profound knowledge, at once esoteric and salvific. The young man’s role is that of a seeker, although he may not be immediately aware of his quest, and may at times be distracted from it. Like in Socratic dialogues, the seeker’s role, if at all, is limited to asking questions, which the Sage refines, corrects and answers.⁵ It is the guiding Sage, often a figure enveloped in an aura of mysteriousness, who has the active role; he instructs, admonishes, rebukes and sometimes even punishes the seeker. In some literary contexts, the role of guiding is not assigned to a single identified person, and he may be replaced by several people (e.g. the king and his emissaries) or appear in a figurative representation (e.g. the call of overflying birds). But in practically all these initiation stories the guidance principle is external to the person of the seeker.

The names of Ibn Ṭufayl’s protagonists appear in such Arabic tales quite early.⁶ Their earliest attested appearance in Arabic is in The Story of Salāmān and Absāl, the translation of which from the original Greek into Arabic is attributed to Ḥunayn b. Isḥāq.⁷ But the most famous precedent for Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy is surely Avicenna’s “stories.” Although the purpose of the present paper is to discuss the philosophical ideas embedded in these literary compositions, we must first briefly summarize the stories themselves. In Ḥunayn’s story, the Sage is the vizier Iqlīqūlās,⁸ who teaches the King Harmānūs “all the hidden sciences.” He is also the one who suggests to the king to procreate without having intercourse with a woman, and who arranges the concoction of a male child (tadbīr in the sense of actually producing him). The child, a boy named Salāmān, is provided with a wet nurse named Absāl.⁹ He becomes too attached to her, despite his father’s admonitions to avoid women’s company and to wait until he finds for him “a bride from the uppermost world.” The father contemplates killing Absāl, but his vizier warns him against doing so, and recommends persistence in advising Salāmān. Learning of the king’s scheme, the two lovers run away “beyond the western sea.” Using his magical powers, the king finds them in a state of utmost alienation (ġurba) and misery and separates them. He then obliterates the spiritual beings responsible for the couple’s desires (rūḥāniyyāt šahwātihimā), leaving the two suffering deeply from their longing to each other.¹⁰ The king explains that Salāmān cannot ascend to the throne with Absāl tied to his leg, as it were, and he binds the two together. They throw themselves into the sea, but by the king’s order, the spirit of the water (rūḥāniyyat al-māʾ) saves the boy while the girl drowns. Salāmān’s grief calls again for Iqlīqūlās’s intervention. He promises to help the boy find his love and lures him to the cave of Sārīqūn (Serapeion), where he will stay for 40 days, summoning Absāl. The Sage prays to Aphrodite, and on the fortieth day Salāmān falls in love with her and forgets Absāl. Salāmān ascends the throne and becomes a wise king. He then engraves the story (qiṣṣa) on 7 golden tablets, and puts them in his father’s twin pyramids, together with prayers to the 7 planets. Later, after a flood of fire and a flood of water, the divine sage Plato learns about the wisdom hidden in the pyramids. As he is barred from entering them, he leaves this task as a will to his disciple Aristotle, who, together with Alexander, enters the pyramids and takes out the 7 tablets with the engraved story.

3 Avicenna’s “Stories”

Salāmān and Absāl, the protagonists of Ḥunayn’s story, then appear in Avicenna’s Kitāb al-Išārāt wa-t-tanbīhāt, where he writes:

If, among the things you hear and hearken to, you hear a story (qiṣṣa) about Salamān and Absāl, know that Salamām is a parable of yourself, and Absāl is a parable of your degree of higher knowledge, if you are suitable for it; decipher this hint (ramz) if you can.”¹¹

In addition to this opaque reference in the Išārāt, Avicenna is said to have written a story (qiṣṣa) about Salāmān and Absāl. This story, listed in Abū ʿUbayd al-Ğawzānī’s catalogue of Avicenna’s writings, is preserved only in an abridged Persian translation, with the commentary of aṭ-Ṭūsī.¹² According to al-Ğawzānī’s report, in this story, concerned with knowledge, the boy Absāl is raised by his elder brother Salāmān, and suffers many tribulations due to the ruses of Salāmān’s wife, who lusts after her brother-in-law. While the role of the wife as the source of evil is clear, the division of labor among Salāmān and Absāl is more complex. They are both pure of heart, and each one of them can be said to be guiding the other at some stage: while the older brother is entrusted with raising his younger sibling, it is the younger brother who is more clear-sighted as an adult.¹³

Altogether, Avicenna is known to have written three initiation stories, all of them allegories, in flowery, sometimes rhymed, prose, about the way to attain human perfection.¹⁴ The Epistle of the Birds is closest to The Hymn of the Pearl. Its subject, like that of The Story of Salāmān and Absāl, is the struggle of the soul, ensnared by worldly concerns and temptations, to free itself and achieve redemption.¹⁵ The eponym of the third story, the Sage Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān, cautions the narrator (who remains nameless) regarding the evil influence of his companions. The narrator’s request, to join Ḥayy at this point and to be guided by him,¹⁶ is first turned down, but the šayḫ describes to him the journey towards the King, and then invites him to follow him.¹⁷

In all three stories, the initiation requires outside help. In the Epistle of the Birds, the call of migrating birds reminds the captive of his princely origin, and their active assistance sets him free and directs him home. In The Story of Salāmān and Absāl, the wise Absāl instructs the king Salāmān, guides him despite various plots against him, and helps him regain his footing. In The Story of Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān, the Sage’s instructions take the better part of the story, with the seeker/narrator appearing mainly in the frame-story. Although the Sage Ḥayy is easily identifiable as the active intellect, his literary personality, as a wise old man, is still essential to his role.

4 Ibn Ṭufayl and Avicenna

Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān is the story of an infant growing up in complete seclusion, who, through observation and reflection, gradually discovers human science and philosophy, eventually attaining mystical experience. In contradistinction to all earlier forms of the story, it is as a complete autodidact that he achieves this knowledge, without the help, or for that matter, the presence, of anyone to guide him. After reaching this elevated stage, he meets Absāl (or Asāl), a philosopher from a neighboring island, governed by the just king Salāmān according to religious strictures. The two realize that the self-taught Ḥayy has attained the same knowledge of the truth as Absāl, the product of a perfect human society. Together, however, they then attempt to impart the deeper truths to all inhabitants of Absāl’s island, and fail.

As noted by Sami Hawi,

nowhere in the long philosophic tradition preceding Ibn Ṭufayl, neither remote nor immediate, do we find a complete and cohesive philosophical system imbedded in narrative form.¹⁸

The particular epistemological trait of this story as focused on a self-taught man is obvious, and is widely recognized. Indeed, Edward Pocock the Younger already gave his Latin translation of the Epistle, published in 1671, the title Philosophus Autodidactus.¹⁹ The scholarly frame of reference in discussing this trait has generally been philosophical rather than literary, and Ibn Ṭufayl’s philosophical innovations have been measured on the backdrop of contemporary philosophical literature. Ibn Ṭufayl’s literary originality in developing a new literary genre for philosophical writing is also usually recognized by scholars. When, however, these same scholars come to assess Ibn Ṭufayl’s philosophical position and originality, his literary peculiarity and the genre he chose are not brought to bear, as if the litterateur and the philosopher were two distinct persons, or as if we had the fortune of possessing two different works by Ibn Ṭufayl, one – an earnest philosophical composition, the other – an amusing novel.

Still more puzzling is the fact that when students of falsafa discuss Ibn Ṭufayl’s relation to Avicenna, they turn directly to what they consider the hard core of Avicenna’s philosophy: the Išārāt and the Šifāʾ, but fail to pay due attention to Avicenna’s most directly relevant body of literary compositions: the philosophical “stories” that gave Ibn Ṭufayl’s work both its title and its dramatis personae.²⁰ This curious attitude is in line with a view that grants little importance to Avicenna’s stories, regarding them either as “a poetic and profound game” meant to divert him during his imprisonment in Fardaǧān,²¹ or as an example of the symbolic method used by Aristotelian philosophers to impart knowledge to the common people, and thus “by its very nature … inferior to the demonstrative” and constituting “the lowest possible way in which Knowledge could be communicated.”²² In the discussion of Ibn Ṭufayl’s relationship to Avicenna, the relatively meager attention given to Avicenna’s stories may have been reinforced by the conviction (patently wrong, as we shall presently see, yet widespread and insistent), that Ibn Ṭufayl wrote his Epistle without ever seeing Avicenna’s stories.²³ Furthermore, beyond the underrating of the direct connection between the two works, the scholarly dismissive attitude seems to reveal a deeper general attitude that considers the literary form of philosophical texts as accidental to their purpose.

The formal presentation of a well-conceived philosophical work, however, its literary form, is by its very essence relevant to its content, and we might miss some important part of this content if we treat the discussion of its literary form as a mere “empty exercise in … stylistics.”²⁴ Furthermore, we are also likely to miss an important part of its meaning if we err in the identification of the genre the author chose as his literary vehicle. While calling Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy “a philosophical tale”²⁵ or describing it as “an autobiography”²⁶ does capture certain aspects of the work’s message, it completely ignores Ibn Ṭufayl’s basic literary frame of reference. In order to present his philosophical ideas, Ibn Ṭufayl decided to follow the model of the initiation stories, and in particular Avicenna’s stories.²⁷ He chose this model to serve as a literary platform for his philosophical ideas, and one would have expected him to stick to this model as long as it served his purpose. A significant departure from the model – and the absence of the Guide surely constitutes such a significant departure – should raise our suspicion that perhaps at this point the model no longer served Ibn Ṭufayl’s purpose. This is where we must pause, and look for a philosophical meaning for the unexpected departure from the literary model.

In order to do so, we must first examine how Ibn Ṭufayl positions himself philosophically in relation to his predecessors. Ibn Ṭufayl’s Epistle, and in particular its lengthy Introduction, is imbued with explicit as well as implied references to Avicenna’s work. Intrigued by what he describes as a question presented by a friend, Ibn Ṭufayl announces that he wishes to share with him “the secrets of the oriental wisdom mentioned by Avicenna,”²⁸ where Avicenna gave instructions on how to reach truth “clear of faltering.”²⁹ Shortly thereafter he quotes this formulation again, this time with explicit reference to Avicenna’s Kitāb aš-Šifāʾ. A reference to Avicenna’s description of the experience of illumination as flashes of lightning points to Avicenna’s Išārāt.³⁰ And of course, both the title of Ibn Ṭufayl’s Epistle and its protagonists’ names clearly point to Avicenna’s “stories” (qiṣaṣ).³¹ But unlike in these stories, the guide is absent from Ibn Ṭufayl’s Epistle. The mysterious old man who invites Avicenna’s narrator to follow him in his ascent toward the King, explaining to him what awaits him on his way and instructing him regarding his quest to improve himself, disappears from Ibn Ṭufayl’s work; his name, Ḥayy, is transferred by Ibn Ṭufayl to the human infant who grows to become the lone seeker.

That Ibn Ṭufayl’s tale is inspired by Avicenna is not in doubt, as the intertextuality with Avicenna is put forward by Ibn Ṭufayl himself.³² Other questions regarding its sources of inspiration could be, and have been, debated: whether Avicenna’s “oriental wisdom” was the title of a specific book or rather a concept developed in his other works;³³ and whether Ibn Ṭufayl had access to Avicenna’s stories, and if so, to which one of them?³⁴ The composition of a Hebrew rhymed adaptation of Avicenna’s Ḥayy by the Jewish poet and thinker Abraham Ibn Ezra (d. 1167) makes it plausible that this particular story circulated in al-Andalus and was available also to Ibn Ṭufayl. But what about Avicenna’s lost Story of Salāmān and Absāl: could this story have reached al-Andalus too, or did Ibn Ṭufayl derive the names of these protagonists from Avicenna’s Išārāt?³⁵ And what about other versions of the story, in particular Ḥunayn’s: could they have reached Ibn Ṭufayl’s desk? The autogenesis of a human infant is not found in Avicenna’s stories,³⁶ and although this literary motif is widespread in folk literature and may have been found in other contemporary stories, Ḥunayn’s version is the only work available to us that ties this motif with Salāmān and Absāl, the names used by Ibn Ṭufayl. Ibn Ṭufayl does not mention Ḥunayn’s version, but an argument ex silentio regarding the reading list of any of the medieval authors is, by itself, methodologically rather tenuous.³⁷ Andalusian libraries could, indeed must, have held many more books than those mentioned by our Andalusian sources.³⁸ One must therefore assume that Ibn Ṭufayl probably mined unnamed sources, and, until proven otherwise, it seems likely that Ḥunayn’s version was one of them. In comparison to this version too, as to Avicenna’s stories, the absence of the guiding Sage from Ibn Ṭufayl’s Epistle is striking.

The differences between Ibn Ṭufayl’s story and Avicenna’s are obvious, and many of them have indeed been pointed out by scholars.³⁹ Quite often, however, these differences are acknowledged only in general terms. For Hawi, for example,

The themes we elicited in our brief interpretation from Avicenna’s story are dimly found in Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy Bin Yaqẓān’s; … they are diffused and are common in the writings of Muslim mystics and Neoplatonic literature. Ibn Ṭufayl incorporates these themes and surpasses them by building his own elaborate system.⁴⁰

Hawi’s statement is a good example of the widespread scholarly recognition of a Neoplatonic and mystical drift in Ibn Ṭufayl’s work. The vocabulary used by Hawi (“diffuse,” “dimly found”) also reflects the equally widespread imprecise description of Ibn Ṭufayl’s scholastic stance. Although Ibn Ṭufayl is often counted as belonging to the “Andalusian Aristotelian school,”⁴¹ his Neoplatonist and mystical leanings are also generally recognized.⁴²

A good indication of where Ibn Ṭufayl stands in regard to these schools in general, and to Avicenna in particular, can already be gauged from the Introduction that Ibn Ṭufayl offers before presenting his fable. As noted by Steven Harvey, “a proper analysis of [this Introduction] provides hints necessary for understanding the true teachings of the book.”⁴³ Listing a number of philosophers and mystics, this lengthy Introduction does what introductions often do: it exposes his predecessors’ shortcomings, in order to justify the author’s claim for doing something completely new, something that had not been attempted by previous thinkers.⁴⁴ Ibn Ṭufayl tells us that he did not find “this matter” discussed in the philosophical works of his Aristotelian predecessors.⁴⁵ It is not found, he says, in Aristotle’s works, nor in those of the Oriental Aristotelians. Al-Fārābī wrote mostly on logic, and his writings concerning metaphysics are both contradictory and misdirected, since for him the stage of philosophy is higher than that of prophecy.⁴⁶ Avicenna’s Kitāb aš-Šifāʾ follows Aristotle’s works, and he directs his reader to his oriental wisdom for “the truth expressed without stuttering.” Yet studying the plain, outward meaning of Aristotle’s writings and of Avicenna’s Kitāb aš-Šifāʾ will not lead one to the perfection that, Ibn Ṭufayl claims, was promised by Avicenna in this book.⁴⁷

Ibn Ṭufayl thus locates Avicenna within the Aristotelian tradition, which he finds unsatisfactory for his quest. By implication, he offers here a claim for breaking new ground, also in relation to Avicenna’s work. Such a claim, always interesting, is particularly intriguing when presented by an author who at the same time uses extensive literary means to camouflage his independence from his predecessors in general and from Avicenna in particular: for, as we have seen, Ibn Ṭufayl’s work has a recognizable, previously used title, its protagonists bear previously used names, it opens with a statement that ties it to Avicenna, and it purports to reveal Avicenna’s esoteric teaching.⁴⁸ Yet Ibn Ṭufayl also marks Avicenna’s scholastic approach as insufficient, and offers to do something else.

Ibn Ṭufayl, moreover, reviews also the eastern Islamic mystical tradition, in its radical as well as in its moderate form, and here too he expresses his dissatisfaction. The Introduction speaks of a “state” (ḥāl, a decidedly Sufi term) to which the reflection on the question led him. As he hastens to show, this state is apt to throw anyone attaining it into an unsolvable conflict: on the one hand, the exhilaration accompanying it is too great to withhold, and on the other hand, there is no way to express it correctly. Consequently “those un-refined by the sciences” (man kāna mimman lam tuḥaḏḏiqhu l-ʿulūm), like some well-known mystics, blabber about it,⁴⁹ whereas those who have profited from such refining scientific education (addabathu l-maʿārif wa-ḥaḏḏaqathu l-ʿulūm), like Abū Ḥāmid al-Ġazālī (d. 505/1111), admit that it cannot be expressed.⁵⁰ Ibn Ṭufayl, however, also criticizes al-Ġazālī, who wrote for a broad public, and therefore contradicted himself constantly. In some of his books, says Ibn Ṭufayl, al-Ġazālī identifies with the belief of the Sufi masters (šuyūḫ aṣ-ṣūfiyya). His instructions, however, are so veiled that they can be understood only by those who had already reached the truth by themselves.⁵¹ He expresses his conviction that al-Ġazālī himself had attained “the utmost felicity” (as-saʿāda al-quṣwā). It is therefore often argued that Ibn Ṭufayl’s thought is inspired by both Avicenna and al-Ġazālī, and that he offers a synthesis between these two giants.⁵² A careful reading of the Introduction, however, exposes the flip side of Ibn Ṭufayl’s decision to synthesize their thought, namely, that he found the approach of each one of them wanting in some way.

Ibn Ṭufayl concludes his presentation – and criticism – of al-Ġazālī by saying that if al-Ġazālī ever wrote books in which he hid the science of revelation (ʿilm al-mukāšafa), these books did not reach al-Andalus.⁵³ Indeed, although Ibn Ṭufayl begins by tracing the general philosophical scene as it unfolded in the Islamic East, he soon moves to focus on his own territory. For him, whatever the merits of al-Ġazālī’s writings, his thought was not sufficiently discussed in any Andalusian work, because of the slow development of philosophy in al-Andalus. According to Ibn Ṭufayl’s verdict, Ibn Bāǧǧa, the only Andalusian author bright enough to reach the aspired elevated stage of knowledge, was deterred from doing so by mundane circumstances (šaġilathu d-dunyā).⁵⁴ The introduction thus reveals that, in addition to his general claim of offering something new, Ibn Ṭufayl is specifically interested in filling a gap in Andalusian philosophy. Although he does not rule out the possibility that some of the Eastern thinkers have written on the subject at hand, his point of reference are those works of theirs that were known in al-Andalus.

It is hence in the Andalusian context that Ibn Ṭufayl’s decision to write his own version of Ḥayy should be examined. Avicenna’s Oriental philosophy is therefore only the excuse or the occasion for Ibn Ṭufayl’s composition, rather than the true pivot of his Epistle.⁵⁵ It is not the secrets of Avicenna’s philosophy that Ibn Ṭufayl sets out to explain, but rather something else, that seems to have been missing in the writings of both Avicenna and al-Ġazālī. A correct assessment of Ibn Ṭufayl’s independent purpose may also shed light on the originality of his fable and on his departures from Avicenna’s stories.⁵⁶

According to his own testimony, after he had reached the stage of science achieved by Avicenna and al-Ġazālī, Ibn Ṭufayl continued in his studies and contemplation until the friend’s question allowed him to transcend this stage and reach a higher level. It is to this higher level that his work is dedicated.⁵⁷ In other words, the Epistle was composed specifically in order to convey something that lies beyond the works of Avicenna and al-Ġazālī. As Ibn Ṭufayl, however, hastens to clarify, revealing his final goal outright would have missed the point of the Epistle. Such outright disclosure would have provided the reader only with a superficial instruction by rote, but without permitting him to truly attain deep understanding:

If I revealed to you the highest levels I reached in this matter, without first establishing its principles [mabādiʾ] with you, it would avail you of nothing more than what is learnt by blind faith [amr taqlīdī] …⁵⁸

If the traditional form of direct philosophical instruction will not do, another form of instruction must be found. It is here that Ibn Ṭufayl mobilizes his literary inventiveness.

5 Literary Form

According to Steven Harvey

if we consider that these stories [scil. Avicenna’s and Ibn Ṭufayl’s] are intended as allegories of something very important, the differences between them become of little importance.⁵⁹

For Harvey, Ibn Ṭufayl “wished the reader to believe that the secrets of Avicenna’s Oriental philosophy could be found in Avicenna’s Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān.” Harvey therefore compares the two stories of Ḥayy, but “not so much the narratives, as what is learnt from them.” But the difference between the narrative forms of the two stories is, I submit, crucial to understanding what Ibn Ṭufayl intends the reader to learn from it. It is perhaps the literary form that can give us the sharpest indication of Ibn Ṭufayl’s break with Avicenna. Avicenna’s philosophical stories, although much shorter than Ibn Ṭufayl’s Epistle, also represented a literary innovation. As I have argued elsewhere, Avicenna’s attempt to express philosophical ideas in the form of a story were inspired by his readings of Aristotle’s Poetics.⁶⁰ For the falāsifa, this text was as authoritative as the other books of Aristotle’s Organon, among which it was counted. The kind of fiction with which the Poetics is concerned, however, was totally foreign to them, and they struggled to make sense of it.⁶¹ Avicenna’s solution to this awkward situation was to write philosophy in a literary form that would have the cathartic effect of the tragedies described by Aristotle. The plot of the tragedy, called qiṣṣa or ḫurāfa in the Arabic translation used by Avicenna, suggested to him to write his own qiṣaṣ: stories that would meet the Aristotelian criteria of the plot and would have a similar mimetic effect.

Ibn Ṭufayl borrowed from Avicenna the idea of a literary composition as a non-discursive way to impart philosophical ideas, and developed it far beyond what Avicenna had done. Inspired by Avicenna’s philosophical stories, Ibn Ṭufayl adopted this non-argumentative form of writing in order to have the reader reach important insights through experience rather than through reasoned discourse. He calls his epistle maṯal, whereas the word qiṣṣa is used by him in the sense of “the account of what happened.”⁶² For Avicenna, the qiṣṣa is endowed with the cathartic role of Greek tragedy; for Ibn Ṭufayl, on the other hand, the maṯal is used to replace something that remains inherently ineffable.⁶³

Ibn Ṭufayl’s insistence on beginning with the principles (mabādiʾ) quoted above [apud note 58] reaffirms his commitment to the philosophical structured curriculum. At the same time, it also reveals his intention regarding the function of the Epistle. When read and properly understood, stage by stage, the Epistle is intended not only to set the goal, but also to serve as the actual training for achieving it, a mental practice which can lead the reader to partake in the culminating experiential wisdom.

For we will wish to lead you on paths on which we had previously walked, and to make you swim in the sea which we had crossed, or to bring you to what [your question] brought us to, so that you experience what we have experienced, and you will confirm with your soul’s vision the truth of everything the truth of which we have confirmed.⁶⁴

In this sense one can say, as I have suggested in the past, that, rather than being metaphorical or allegorical, Ibn Ṭufayl’s novel is an explicit, beautifully written, manual for the initiate.⁶⁵ Ibn Ṭufayl does not go so far as to say that the Epistle itself will be sufficient in the long training; but he wishes to encourage the committed apprentice by flashing before him the story of Avicenna’s three protagonists.⁶⁶ The purpose of telling the story, he says, is “to offer you a short flash of light (lamḥa), so as to awaken your desire (tašwīq) and to urge you to start on this way (ṭarīq).”⁶⁷ The experience and insight must be reached by each person alone; the purpose of telling the story is to set him on the way. To some extent, one can say that the story replaces the guide; indeed, the story is the guide.

In the Introduction, Ibn Ṭufayl clearly speaks as the teacher, who wishes to guide and initiate the younger disciple. But unlike Avicenna, he keeps the narrator – and the teacher he represents – out of the story itself. Nor can one argue that Ḥayy himself becomes a guide to Absāl; although at the end of the story the latter follows the former to his island, Absāl had already reached the highest levels of knowledge before meeting Ḥayy and without his guidance. More importantly, however, is the hierarchical evaluation that Ibn Ṭufayl establishes between various forms of learning. He recognizes that the practice of following a teacher has some value, but the knowledge reached in this way remains for him, as we have seen, amr taqlīdī, essentially inferior to experiential knowledge.⁶⁸

The absence of a teacher is noticed by Christoph Bürgel, but since his point of reference is the structured philosophical teaching, he misinterprets it. For Bürgel,

Ḥayy’s development does not represent the normal curriculum of a philosopher, which would consist of listening to the lectures of a teacher, participating in scholarly discussions, reading books and writing dissertations … The fact that Ḥayy has no teacher only underscores the enormous power attributed in this tale to human reason.⁶⁹

In fact, despite the lack of books and formal instruction, the course of Ḥayy’s progression strikingly fits what was then considered to be “the normal curriculum of a philosopher”: the structured Aristotelian curriculum, legacy of the Alexandrian Neoplatonist schools, which was strictly kept among Andalusian philosophers. The hierarchical progression of Ḥayy’s learning, before it is crowned by an experience surpassing rational, discursive philosophy, is central to the fable. Notwithstanding Ibn Ṭufayl’s adherence to the content of the philosophical curriculum, however, it is to another model that he turned for the literary structure of his work.

What is patently missing in Ibn Ṭufayl’s story, therefore, is not the master of the Alexandrian philosophical curriculum, but the guide of the initiation stories. The prevalent scholarly disregard for the specific literary function of the missing character may mislead us into considering the guide to be a minor detail, inadvertently left out, but this is far from being the case. As we have seen, the presence of an external, authoritative guide was a cornerstone of the initiation story, an essential conventional feature amply attested throughout the many manifestations of this literary genre. The guide is absent from Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān because the author has decided to remove him from his fable, and to build an initiation story without him. The comparison with Avicenna’s stories, where this literary convention is kept, highlights the momentous change which Ibn Ṭufayl consciously introduced into what he himself presents as Avicenna’s legacy.

The significance of this change is at the heart of Ibn Ṭufayl’s endeavor. By eliminating the guide, and leaving the initiate alone on a desert island, Ibn Ṭufayl transforms the initiation into a totally internal process that must be lived step by step by the initiate himself. Once the change in the story’s pattern is noticed, its significance – its message as well as the effect it has on the reader – also becomes clear.

There remains, however, the question of what prompted Ibn Ṭufayl in this direction. Rather than attempting to offer a single answer, I will suggest here a few observations that, together, may highlight the circumstances that favored the emergence of the new epistemological turn signaled by Ibn Ṭufayl.

6 The Legacy of the falāsifa’s Political Philosophy

As Gutas has repeatedly and forcefully argued, Avicenna was an Aristotelian philosopher. Like in the case of other medieval falāsifa, Neoplatonist elements are evident in his thought, but these elements are integrated into a harmonizing system which we call – and he believed to be – “Aristotelian.”⁷⁰ Ibn Ṭufayl, on the other hand, is not only conscious of the different elements that feed his thought, but he highlights them in his Introduction. As already mentioned, while remaining faithful to the Alexandrian curriculum, Ibn Ṭufayl points out the limitations of Aristotle and Avicenna. His reserved attitude to the Aristotelian element in his intellectual legacy can be gauged not only from this direct criticism, but perhaps even more from what he has to say about Ibn Bāǧǧa, who has been called the father of the Andalusian peripatetic school. Ibn Ṭufayl’s criticism of Ibn Bāǧǧa does not target his method or his competence; rather, it revolves around the latter’s sīra; the way he led his life, Ibn Ṭufayl implies, was not conducive to attaining the experiential knowledge, the ḏawq.⁷¹ As a reprehensible trait of Ibn Bāǧǧa’s sīra Ibn Ṭufayl mentions specifically greed and striving to accumulate wealth.⁷² He also underlines Ibn Bāǧǧa’s political involvement, pointing to it twice as having held him back not only from achieving the higher level of human wisdom, but even from completing the works he was committed to write.⁷³

At first sight, this last criticism may seem odd. Political involvement, inspired by Plato’s political writings, was as essential to the Aristotelian falāsifa as the structured curriculum. It was practiced not only by Ibn Bāǧǧa, but, as intensely, also by Avicenna as well as by Ibn Ṭufayl himself. A closer look at the Epistle, however, shows that, unlike his predecessors, Ibn Ṭufayl is reluctant to fully integrate the falāsifa’s political theory into his thought, and he remains ambivalent towards political activism.⁷⁴ The whole of his Epistle reflects this ambivalence, which gradually leads to a de facto rejection of political involvement by those who had achieved true human perfection. When Ḥayy meets Absāl, he is at first attracted by the idea of spreading the good word to Absāl’s people. Then, when their efforts are frustrated, he concedes that Salāmān’s way of governing is the only suitable way for his people, as it will allow them to reach the highest level possible for them. Exceptional people like himself and Absāl, however, are destined to solitary (or quasi-solitary) life.

Al-Fārābī, and, following him, Maimonides, had argued that the illuminated philosopher who had reached the summit of human knowledge must, throughout his earthly life, descend from this summit to lead his community and improve it. Ibn Ṭufayl, by contrast, initially grants wisdom-seekers like Absāl a role in society, but, once they attain the coveted highest degree of wisdom, any aspirations they might have had to lead their community in their footsteps are necessarily dashed. The ultimate wisdom, once it is achieved, has no social meaning, and they, as the wise ones, are not bound to play a political role. Perhaps the clearest mark of Ibn Ṭufayl’s ambivalence towards the falāsifa’s political ideas, however, is his attitude to Ibn Bāǧǧa. On the one hand, as we have seen, he criticizes Ibn Bāǧǧa’s immersion in politics. On the other hand, he is clearly inspired by Ibn Bāǧǧa’s Regimen of the Solitary (Tadbīr al-mutawaḥḥid), a work which he does not mention in his introduction. Ibn Bāǧǧa, who in principle accepted the Platonic model, nevertheless argued that in an imperfect world the perfect man can thrive only by withdrawing from society.⁷⁵ Ibn Ṭufayl’s criticism of Ibn Bāǧǧa thus appears to be directed not at political involvement as such, but rather at Ibn Bāǧǧa’s failure to practice what he himself preaches. By throwing the solitary on a desert island from birth, and keeping him in complete solitude throughout his educational process, Ibn Ṭufayl took Ibn Bāǧǧa’s idea a few steps further. Nevertheless, his Epistle can still be seen as a dramatization of the idea put forward by Ibn Bāǧǧa.

Just like the elimination of the spiritual guide, the rejection of the Platonic ideal of a philosopher-king highlights the individualistic nature of the strife for knowledge.⁷⁶ Ibn Ṭufayl’s wise one is inherently solitary, neither guided not guiding.

7 The Legacy of Andalusian Philosophical Mysticism

As we have seen, Ibn Ṭufayl states explicitly that he wrote this Epistle in response to a fault or an absence he found in the philosophical scene of al-Andalus. It seems therefore reasonable to examine his innovative literary move on the backdrop of the specific Andalusian setting.

In the description of Ḥayy’s intellectual and spiritual development we repeatedly find the key term fiṭra. This Qurʾānic term, indicating the inherent, inborn knowledge of God (fiṭrat Allāh, Q. 30:30), is then carried on to the ḥadīṯ.⁷⁷ But the meaning of fiṭra in the Qurʾān and ḥadīṯ is certainly not the only meaning this term has in Arabic. Fiṭra also refers to an inbuilt, inborn trait or potential, the equivalent of ṭabʿ or ġarīza. In this general sense it appears already in the earliest kalām Summa, the Twenty Chapters by the ninth-century Jewish thinker Dāwūd b. Marwān al-Muqammaṣ, who speaks of “our spirits, our innate dispositions.”⁷⁸ For al-Muqammaṣ, these fiṭar, although in the plural, are common to all humans.

The centrality of the term fiṭra for Ibn Ṭufayl is noted by Raissa Von Doetinchem de Rande, in whose view Ibn Ṭufayl gives the Qurʾānic term a somewhat unusual intellectual twist: rather than a levelling feature, equally found in all people, it underlines, she suggests, the inborn difference between different intellects.⁷⁹ For her, Ḥayy is the exceptional Sage, endowed with this extraordinary disposition (fiṭra fāʾiqa).⁸⁰ She [p. 217] abstains “from guessing what exactly Ibn Ṭufayl meant when he used fiṭra or what he thought allows for the application of the term.” Noting the appearance of the graded, differentiated use of the term by Ibn Ṭufayl in his parable of the blind boy, who is described as endowed with fine inborn disposition and vigorous intuitive reflection (“ǧayyid al-fiṭra qawī al-ḥads”), she seems to imply that Ibn Ṭufayl was following philosophical practice. Indeed, Ibn Ṭufayl quotes the use of the term by Avicenna and al-Ġazālī, and must have been familiar also with its use by al-Fārābī and Ibn Bāǧǧa, but the philosophical elitism he inherited from the falāsifa does not explain why he decided to do away with Avicenna’s guide.⁸¹ An additional source of inspiration may be found in the Andalusian tradition of philosophical mysticism.

Ibn Ṭufayl’s Sufi leanings have been noted by scholars.⁸² He himself directs us in this path by discussing the Oriental Sufis and al-Ġazālī, but he prudently ignores the Andalusian mystics. In the tenth and eleventh century, the development of Sufism in al-Andalus, as that of philosophy, was repeatedly checked by the authorities.⁸³ By Ibn Ṭufayl’s time, ascetic and Sufi works were readily available, but Ibn Ṭufayl’s reticence to cite them testifies to the fact that the authorities’ attitude to Sufism remained cautious and ambivalent.⁸⁴ While mentioning Eastern Sufis seemed safe enough, Ibn Ṭufayl may have considered it unwise to call attention to the local Sufi tradition, especially in view of the Almohads’ confrontations with contemporary masters like the rebel Ibn Qasī (d. 546/1151).⁸⁵ Nevertheless, the impact of the local, Andalusian, tradition of philosophical mysticism can clearly be seen in Ibn Ṭufayl’s work. The notion of fiṭra plays an important role in this tradition, as developed from Muḥammad Ibn Masarra (d. 319/931) to Ibn Ṭufayl’s contemporaries Ibn Barraǧān and Ibn al-ʿArīf (both of whom died in 536/1141), but the affinity with Ibn Masarra is particularly striking.⁸⁶

Of the writings of this first Andalusian mystical philosopher, only two small epistles have survived, and both of them highlight the importance of fiṭra, the inbuilt knowledge of every human being. In Ibn Masarra’s Book of the Properties of Letters (Kitāb Ḫawāṣṣ al-ḥurūf) this notion appears already in the opening line, which gives praise to God “who created the hearts with the inborn disposition to know Him (faṭara l-qulūb ʿalā maʿrifatihi).” Later on, the fiṭra is associated with the letter ṭāʾ, identified with the clay (ṭīn) from which Adam was created, thus underlining again the notion that humanity is endowed, from creation, with the inborn knowledge of God.⁸⁷

It is, however, in Ibn Masarra’s shorter (and probably earlier) Epistle of Contemplation (Risālat al-iʿtibār) that the relevance to Ibn Ṭufayl’s fiṭra finds its full manifestation.⁸⁸ The epistle presents the mental practice of contemplation (iʿtibār), whereby the seeker, by observing the world, gradually ascends from the lower level of creation to the mystical experience of knowing his Creator.⁸⁹ It is the testimony of this innate knowledge (šahādat al-fiṭra) which guides him in his ascent. The fiṭra corroborates the results of rational speculation and it is further corroborated by divine revelation. Endowed with this inborn faculty (ḥiss al-fiṭra), however, a human being can dispense with both rational speculation and revelation. He should be able to attain the highest degree without the help of either a teacher in the rational sciences or a divine messenger. It is exactly this ascending process of learning which is practiced by Ibn Ṭufayl’s Ḥayy, and it is indeed quite likely that Ibn Ṭufayl was familiar with Ibn Masarra’s work and inspired by it.⁹⁰

In this context, one should also note the similarity between the solitary life led by the young Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān, as well as his later withdrawal to seclusion together with Absāl, and Ibn Masarra’s reputation as a recluse. It is Ibn Masarra’s withdrawal to an isolated retreat in the mountains near Cordoba that gave him the epithet al-ǧabalī. I believe, however, that noteworthy as this similarity might be, this aspect of Ibn Masarra’s biography, which must have been known to Ibn Ṭufayl, played only a secondary, supplementary role in his construction of the figure of Ḥayy.

With Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān’s superior fiṭra to guide him, and with no social structures to throw obstacles on his way, the presence of a guide becomes superfluous. Ibn Ṭufayl’s parable is thus a dramatic departure from the classical model of the initiation story. The difference is obvious when we compare it, for example, with an Ismāʿīlī text (which he does not quote and may well have not seen) like The Master and the Disciple (from which the notion of fiṭra and its near-synonym ġarīza are totally absent). Unlike the disciple in this Ismāʿīlī initiation story, Ibn Ṭufayl’s protagonist does not require an authoritative instruction (taʿlīm), and he is not bound to show the master his gratitude by obedience.⁹¹ Ibn Ṭufayl’s hero is also sharply distinct from the model set by thinkers to which Ibn Ṭufayl himself refers his reader. He can dispense with the hoary šayḫ of Avicenna’s Story of Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān, or, for that matter, with the Sufi šuyūḫ with whom he associates al-Ġazālī.⁹²

Ibn Ṭufayl used elements from two versions of an initiation story where the names of his protagonists appear: Ḥunayn’s story of Salāmān and Absāl (from which he could derive the autogenesis of the infant Ḥayy) and that of Avicenna. Fusing elements from these two by-then classical initiation stories, he proceeds to structure them so as to make his main character a personification of Ibn Masarra’s contemplator, thus transforming the initiation story into a Bildungsroman.⁹³

8 Conclusion

Ibn Ṭufayl’s momentous innovation is a striking example of the way in which literary and philosophical materials were reworked and transformed as they travelled West from the Islamic East.⁹⁴ His break with the literary conventions of the initiation story marks in fact a paradigm shift in the philosophical tradition, which appears to favor the scientific over the authoritarian mode of learning. The popularity of Ḥayy Ibn Yaqẓān among early modern Western intellectuals, with which we began, reflects the Enlightenment’s affinity with the new epistemological turn heralded by Ibn Ṭufayl.

By Ibn Ṭufayl’s time, philosophy could be expressed through a number of literary genres: commentaries, epistles, tractates, and (somewhat less frequently), dialogues, poetry, philosophical parables, or initiation stories.⁹⁵ Ibn Ṭufayl’s literary starting point was the initiation story, but he developed it into a new literary genre – what we could call a novel. The very move of picking a new literary genre to serve as platform for philosophical ideas can allow for a fresh consideration of traditional philosophical positions. Ibn Ṭufayl used his new literary departure to break away from the literary conventions of the background genre, obliterating the until-then ubiquitous dramatis persona of the guide. This conscious literary departure, however, was only a vehicle to express his deep philosophical conviction, and his departure from a contemporary convention of philosophical pedagogy.