Abstract

Abū Bakr Ibn Ṭufayl was one of three great Islamic Peripatetics of Andalusia, sandwiched between Ibn Bājja for whom he had both highest encomia and biting censure, and his own illustrious protégé, Ibn Rushd. Yet only one philosophic work survives by Ibn Ṭufayl, the wondrous novella, Ḥayy Ibn Yaq ẓān, about an autodidact on a deserted island, who comes to learn almost all things through the use of reason alone. The present book by Taneli Kukkonen offers a welcome introduction to Ḥayy Ibn Yaq ẓān and the thought of Ibn Ṭufayl. It appears in Patricia Crone’s Makers of the Muslim World series, which strives to “combine first-rate scholarship with a strong...