Abu Bakr ibn Tufayl

Andalusian Arab-Muslim polymath (c. 1105 – 1185 CE / 500 – 581 AH). Born in Guadix (Wadi Ash), trained in Granada, served as physician and courtier to the Almohad caliph Abu Yaqub Yusuf in Marrakesh and Seville. Influenced by al-Farabi, Avicenna (Ibn Sina), and the broader Aristotelian-Neoplatonic tradition of Islamic philosophy. A teacher of Averroes (Ibn Rushd), whom he introduced to the Almohad court. Author of Risāla Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (The Treatise of Living, Son of Awake, c. 1175–85), a philosophical romance whose protagonist Hayy is raised in solitude by a gazelle on an uninhabited island and ascends to metaphysical knowledge of the divine through observation and reason. On the wiki, Ibn Tufayl enters via *The Beast and the Sovereign, Volume II* S10 (26 March 2003), where Derrida — in the seminar's closing minutes — invokes Hayy ibn Yaqzan as a non-European, pre-Defoe Robinsonade that radically destabilizes the European canonization of *Robinson Crusoe* as paradigmatic island-fiction.

Key Points

Hayy ibn Yaqzan (c. 1185) is a 12th-century Arabic-Andalusian Robinsonade, written five centuries before Defoe. The protagonist (Hayy = "living"; ibn Yaqzan = "son of Awake") is born by either spontaneous generation on an uninhabited equatorial island, or by being placed in a basket and washed ashore (the narrative offers both possibilities). Suckled by a gazelle (his "nurse-mother"), then orphaned at her death, Hayy lives alone for 49 years, ascending step by step from observation of nature to physics, then to metaphysics, then to mystical contemplation of "the One and Eternal Spirit" — without language, without scripture, without teacher. (derrida-2002-bete-souverain-ii S10, pp. 276–277.)
Two islands, not one. The story's structural innovation: Hayy's uninhabited island is parallel to a neighboring civilized island reigned over by the wise sovereign Salaman, whose people follow a Koranic system of rewards and punishments. The holy man Asal, dissatisfied with the surface religion of his fellows, withdraws to Hayy's island for solitary contemplation — and finds Hayy. Asal teaches Hayy language; Hayy teaches Asal the "pure truth" he has reached unaided. The two then go to Salaman's island to preach this truth to the islanders — and fail completely. The people understand nothing; remain idolatrous; cling to the system of sanctions. Hayy concludes that Mohammed's revelation (the system of rewards and punishments) was the only efficacious method for the common people. Hayy and Asal return to the uninhabited island.
The "pure truth" / anhupotheton. Ibn Tufayl's central concept (per Ibn Arabi's later exegesis, mentioned by Derrida at BS-II S10 p. 277): the truth Hayy reaches by reason alone is the same as the truth symbolized by Asal's religion — and is the anhupotheton (the unconditioned; cf. Plato, Republic VI 511b on the anhupotheton as ground of the dialectical method). Hellenism via Plato, Aristotle, Averroes. Ibn Arabi's mystical philosophy elaborates this; Ibn Tufayl is the philosophical-romance presentation.
Translation history. Hayy ibn Yaqzan was translated into Hebrew (Moses ibn Tibbon, 14th c.) and into Latin (Pico della Mirandola, 1493; Edward Pococke, 1671). The 1671 Latin edition (Philosophus Autodidactus) reached the English Enlightenment. Simon Ockley's 1708 English translation predates Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) by eleven years; the influence-question is contested. Derrida cites the Ockley translation (1708, revised 1929 with Fulton's introduction).
Hayy as paradigm of autodidactic knowledge. The Latin title Philosophus Autodidactus names the central philosophical claim: a single human being, raised without teachers, language, or scripture, can attain the whole truth of metaphysics, physics, and theology by reason and observation alone. This is one of the foundational arguments of Islamic philosophical rationalism — and the structural target of later Enlightenment defenses of "natural religion."
Hayy vs. Robinson: the structural contrast. Both protagonists are solitary on islands, both ascend from natural existence to higher knowledge, both eventually encounter a (one) other person. But the divergences are decisive: Hayy is suckled by an animal-mother (the gazelle), Robinson kills animals; Hayy reaches pure truth by reason, Robinson reaches Christian conversion by Providential intervention; Hayy and Asal fail to convert the islanders, Robinson succeeds in subjugating Friday; Hayy returns to solitary contemplation, Robinson returns to England as wealthy patriarch. The structural-rhetorical genres differ (Arabic philosophical qissa vs. English Dissenting fictional autobiography). The Robinsonade is not the same Robinsonade. (BS-II S10 develops only briefly; the full comparative analysis is gestured at, not delivered.)
Derrida's de-provincializing gesture. Within 1.5 pages of S10 (pp. 276–277), Derrida moves the entire seminar's Robinson-reading out of its European-canonical frame. The European philosophical-pedagogical Robinsonade (Rousseau's Emile; Marx's "Robinsonade"; Joyce's "British conquest" symbol; Tournier's Vendredi; Deleuze's perversion-without-other) is shown to be one variant of a wider non-European tradition. The gesture is a destination-marker rather than a sustained analysis — Derrida flags Ibn Tufayl's existence near the end of the seminar's "long halt" (S10 p. 261). The seminar's incompleteness extends to this de-provincialization.

Selected Bibliography

Risāla Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (The Treatise of Living, Son of Awake, c. 1175–1185) — Ibn Tufayl's only surviving work. Trans. Simon Ockley, The History of Hayy ibn Yaqzan (1708; revised with introduction by A. S. Fulton, London: Chapman and Hall, 1929). This is the edition Derrida cites. Modern translations: Lenn Goodman, Ibn Tufayl's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale (Twayne 1972 / U Chicago Press 2009).

Connections

is the author of Hayy ibn Yaqzan (concept page to be created if BS-II reception expands; for now folded into this entity page)
is read by derrida-2002-bete-souverain-ii S10 — the Arabic-Andalusian Robinsonade as non-European destabilization of the European canonization of *Robinson Crusoe*
contrasts with robinson-crusoe — both solitary insular fictions; structurally analogous but philosophically divergent (Sufi rationalism vs. Christian Providentialism)
engages Averroes (Ibn Rushd) — Ibn Tufayl's student; "trained and informed in Hellenism" via Aristotle and Averroes per Derrida
engages Avicenna (Ibn Sina) — Ibn Tufayl draws on Avicenna's Risāla Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (a different short text, despite the same protagonist name) — the Avicennian Hayy is a Persian visionary figure; Ibn Tufayl gives the autodidactic-Andalusian elaboration
engages al-Farabi — political-philosophical inheritance; the "perfect city" + "imperfect cities" structure
engages Ibn Arabi (Sufi mystic philosopher, 12th–13th c.) — "very fine exegeses" of Hayy ibn Yaqzan, especially on the anhupotheton (cited by Derrida BS-II S10 p. 277)
deprovincializes the European Robinsonade canon (Rousseau / Marx / Joyce / Deleuze / Tournier / Coetzee)

Sources

derrida-2002-bete-souverain-ii — sole wiki entry, S10 pp. 276–277. Brief but argumentatively decisive: opens the seminar's only direct gesture toward non-European philosophical-literary tradition.
Ibn Tufayl, The History of Hayy ibn Yaqzan, trans. Simon Ockley (1708), revised with introduction by A. S. Fulton (London: Chapman and Hall, 1929).
Modern scholarship: Goodman 1972 / 2009 (the standard contemporary English edition).