Back-cover text:
Hayy ibn Yaqzan… Hayy ibn Yaqzan. However often we repeat the name, it casts its spell anew. In giving his work this title, Ibn Tufayl seems to have secured its immortality and set it apart from everything that resembles it.
Yet it is, in truth, without equal. Born in al-Andalus, it was a work of firsts whose reach extended east and west, and far beyond its own time.
The Middle Ages were a period in which humanity struggled between darkness and the desire for light, searching for a way forward. Rising above the sterile debates of his age, Ibn Tufayl offers what feels like a new beginning for humankind. His philosophical vision is woven into the natural world and infused with a pure religious sensibility. Through the story of a self-taught protagonist, he shows how a person might find a way to become themselves. Hayy ibn Yaqzan is a story of continual becoming.
Reason and feeling take on a new, universal form through experience. This vision would later resonate in Western thought, finding echoes in philosophers such as Spinoza, Leibniz, and Rousseau.
Now this enduring work reaches readers once more in Mehmet Hakkı Suçin’s translation from the Arabic original, adding a new voice to its centuries-long conversation with the world.