The simple setting of a man, living a solitary life on an Island, entirely given up to meditation and introspection, is used by our author as an arena for the display of his philosophical views, which, in kaleidoscopic transformation, cover the whole range of wisdom of those times—astronomical, geographical, cosmographic, physiological,—and so on, the whole picture touched with the wand of the master.
The author of the story, Ibn Tufail, though he is generally not reckoned among the most prominent in that brilliant array of Arabian philosophers for whom Spain became the rallying-point in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, yet his name will outlive centuries. For the romance which he has given to the world is a work of everlasting beauty, of immortal freshness; one that will never grow stale in the flight of ages.
Little is known of his private life, which seems to have passed by as uneventful as that of many of the philosophers and scientists of those ages.
He was born at Guadix, a little town of Andalusia. After having finished his education, he became a secretary at Granada, and later on we find him as Vezir and Physician to Abu Yakub, one of the first representatives of the dynasty of the Almohades. He died in Morocco, in 1185, leaving, besides his story of Hayy Ibn Yokdhan, only a few poems of insignificant value; whilst his principal work, the Self-taught Philosopher, has secured for him immortality.
In the following pages I will endeavour to give a short résumé of this story, though I am painfully aware of the fact that such an analysis can scarcely do justice to the beauty of the language nor to the wealth of philosophical thought and speculation represented therein.
From the outset the atmosphere is created with broad and happy touches.
On an Island in the Indian Ocean, famous for its health-giving atmosphere, abounding in fruits and inhabitants, Hayy Ibn Yokdhan comes into this world, as the son of a Princess, who is compelled to expose the child soon after his birth. The tide carries him to another Island, where he is found by a roe, that takes pity on him, nurses him like a mother, and watches over his every movement with tender affection.
Under her care he quickly develops into a fine strapping boy who is not afraid to venture a passage with wild beasts that dare to oppose him.
After the death of the roe, at which he is grief-stricken, he is wholly thrown on his own resources. Yet he knows how to look after himself. He covers himself with leaves of trees, and finds out other ways to keep himself warm and protected.
As the repairing of the coverings of leaves was very troublesome, he had a design of taking the tail of some dead beast and wearing it himself; but when he perceived that all beasts avoided those which were dead of the same kind, it made him doubt whether it was safe or not. At last, by chance he found a dead eagle, and observing that none of the beasts showed any aversion to that carcase, he concluded that this would suit his purpose, and so he cuts off the wings, the tail, and spreads the feathers open: then he draws off the skin and divides it into two equal parts, one of which he wears upon his back; with the other he covers his breast: the tail he wore behind and the wings were placed upon each arm.