Abstract

The purpose of this essay is to examine two important treatises of the Islamic classical age in the light of utopian discourse. The works considered are the “philosophical novels” Risālat Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān f ī asrār al-ḥikmat al-mašriqiyya (Treatise of the Alive, son of the Awake, on the secrets of oriental wisdom) by Ibn Ṭufayl (d. 1185) and Risālat Kāmiliyya f ī al-Sīra al-Nabawiyya (Treatise of Kāmil on the Life of the Prophet) by Ibn al-Naf īs (d. 1288). Together with the political writings of al-Fārābī, these works are among the first to be named when considering the possibility of an autonomous utopian tradition in Islam.1 Their relevance to the utopian category has already been shown by other scholars; ..