Ibn Tufayl: Living the Life of Reason

By Taneli Kukkonen

Ibn Tufayl (d. 1185) was an Andalusian courtier, philosopher, Sufi master, and royal physician to the Almohad Caliphs. He inspired the twelfth-century Andalusian revolt against Ptolemaic astronomy and sponsored the career of the most renowned Aristotelian of medieval times, Abu al-Walid Ibn Rushd (the Latin Averroes). Ibn Tufayl was an exemplar of the kind of versatile scholar early Almohad culture wanted to cultivate.

In this thought provoking and concise account, Taneli Kukkonen explores the life and thought of Ibn Tufayl and assesses the influence and legacy of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, Ibn Tufayl’s famous philosophical romance. Hayy Ibn Yaqzan became a popular and often-copied work in early modern Europe; it has since secured a place as one of the best read pieces in all Arabic literature, partly due to its outstanding literary qualities, in part because it provides an ideal introduction to the themes and preoccupations of classical Arabic philosophy. The study sets Hayy in its historical and philosophical context and paints a vivid portrait of the world as Ibn Tufayl saw it and as he wished for it to be seen.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Oneworld Academic
• Release date: Nov 6, 2014
• ISBN: 9781780746173

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Ibn Tufayl

Living the Life of Reason

Taneli Kukkonen

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IBN TUFAYL

A Oneworld Book

Published by Oneworld Publications 2014

This ebook edition first published by Oneworld Publications, 2014

Copyright © Taneli Kukkonen 2014

All rights reserved

Copyright under Berne Convention

A CIP record for this title is available

from the British Library

ISBN 978–1–78074–564–0

eISBN 978–1–78074–617–3

Typeset by Jayvee, Trivandrum, India

Oneworld Publications

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CONTENTS

Preface

Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: An overview

1 LIFE AND TIMES

The Almohad Revolution

A New Intellectual Order

The Caves of Guadix

The Medical Tradition

In Royal Service

Sufi, Musicologist, Medical Author

Sponsor

2 HAYY

Hayy: A Synopsis

An Architectural Design

Hayy’s Theme

Pointers and Reminders

The Spiral Path

Authority and Authentication

Harmony and Hierarchy

3 ISLAND LIFE

The Island

The Perfect Climate

From Ceylon to Mali

The Twice-born Child

History or Drama

Seeing with One’s Own Eyes

Beginning from the Beginning

Experience and Art

The Limits of Skill

4 NATURE

Taking in the World

Structure and Scaffolding

Suspended between Worlds

Natures and Powers

Forms and Universals

Synthesis and Analysis

Matter

The Elements

The Heavenly Spheres

5 SOUL

Living Nature

Vital Heat

The Vehicle of the Soul

The Spirit which is God’s

Diffusion and Suffusion

Plurality and Unity

The Human Distinction

The Science of the Soul

6 Three Duties

Finitude and Transcendence

Two Worlds

Ought from Is

Three Lives

The Conservation Principle

Kinship with the Heavens

Leaving the World Behind

7 GOD

Unveiling the Mysteries

From Asceticism to Mysticism

Tasting the Truth

Theological Precepts

Like Knowing Like

Annihilation and Restoration

Faces and Names

The Eastern Wisdom

Sensation and Intellection

Arrival

8 RELIGION

Religion and Society

Asal and Salaman

Language and Reality

Modeling Perfection

Re-entering the Cave

Human Weakness

Morality and Scripture

Mortality and Revelation

9 AFTERLIFE

Arabic Margins

Hebrew Echoes

Early Modern Success

The Robinson Question

Orientalist Ideas

Back to Ibn Tufayl

Bibliography

Index

PREFACE

In this book I introduce Ibn Tufayl, a sixth-/twelfth-century Andalusian philosopher of moderate renown. I do so through examining Ibn Tufayl’s only extant philosophical work, the altogether extraordinary narrative, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan , best translated as Living, Son of Wakeful. The title of the book, which at the same time hands us the name of the book’s eponymous protagonist, Hayy, was appropriated from the works of the far more famous Muslim philosopher Ibn Sina (the Latin Avicenna, d.428/1037). So were many of its themes, which in any case are treated much more extensively in the works of other philosophers, some of them Ibn Tufayl’s contemporaries. To this we may add that because Ibn Tufayl lived his life in the far West in Muslim terms, in Andalusia and present-day Morocco, his influence in shaping later Islamic philosophy proved limited. Why, then, dedicate a volume in the Makers of the Muslim World series to him?

One answer is that Ibn Tufayl has had a disproportionate impact on our impression of the Muslim intellectual universe. Hayy was one of the first Islamic philosophical works to be translated into English, first through Latin in 1674 and then directly from the Arabic in 1708. And although the prior medieval Latin reception of Islamic philosophy had already been long and storied, Hayy, with a narrative that details the exploration and eventual conquest of nature and an ensuing spiritual enlightenment, resonated in a fresh and exciting way with an early modern readership. This led to a slew of Hayy translations and imitative works in multiple European languages, among which we may arguably count Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and – with somewhat better justification – its second-in-line sequel, Serious Reflections During the Life and Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe: With his Vision of the Angelick World, which far fewer people have ever read. Subsequent generations of Western readers have continued to turn to Hayy in order to assess the role of reasoned inquiry in Muslim thought (for better and for worse, as we shall see).

A better reason for devoting attention to Hayy and its author is that the work rewards the effort. No only is Hayy one of the most delightful literary creations of classical Islamic civilization; it is also about the best introduction to Arabic philosophy one could hope for. In accessible and attractive prose, Hayy portrays much of what is most intriguing about this particular intellectual tradition. Even if Ibn Tufayl did not quite shape the future of Islamic culture to the extent that he – and perhaps we – would have wished, his sole surviving work compellingly conveys some of its perennially fascinating features. In peering at the world through Hayy’s lenses, we can learn a great deal about how the universe appeared to a trained twelfth-century Muslim scholar.

Several superlative English translations of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan exist, a rare blessing when it comes to Islamic philosophy. I hope that this book will encourage the reader to pick up one of them and to discover for the first time, or else to re-read and to re-examine, what is a truly remarkable text. At the same time, this book is meant to stand alone rather than be a running commentary (we have those as well). The reader should come away with some sense of Ibn Tufayl’s achievement and an appreciation of it, as well as an understanding of the circumstances that shaped this most curious work. I have consequently made my own translations from the Arabic text without, however, claiming to have improved upon existing translations.

Throughout this book, I will only engage with existing scholarship, whether good or bad, in a very limited manner. Mostly, I will try to flag up where someone to my knowledge has made some particularly trenchant observation regarding Ibn Tufayl’s thought or its social context. These individual references are not meant either to endorse or to reject a given scholar’s overall interpretation of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, which remains a much misunderstood work.

Many of the most profound misrepresentations of Ibn Tufayl’s thought have occurred where its interpreters have reached for timeless inspiration and topical import. I will settle for historical verisimilitude, which – so I would claim – ultimately yields more interesting results anyway. It is a profoundly useful exercise to try to come to grips with the very real historical distance that separates us even from a thinker such as Ibn Tufayl, who in some ways can seem to us a strikingly modern conversation partner. Such a distancing exercise can serve to remind us of perspectives we have lost as well as ones we have since acquired, and in some cases to ponder whether our own preoccupations and suppositions are as self-evidently correct or worthwhile as we would like to think.

This book is lovingly dedicated to my two sons Sulevi and Julian, who have embarked on a journey of discovery all their own.

HAYY IBN YAQZAN:

AN OVERVIEW

All page numbers in this book are from the 1936 second edition of the Arabic text established by Léon Gauthier. None of the manuscripts bear section headings or show other divides in the text: all such divisions have been imposed by later editors and translators. Here is one possible way of dividing up the text; I discuss my rationale for it in chapter 2.

Preface

3–10 Bliss: Ibn Sina’s Eastern Wisdom

10–20 A conspectus of previous thought

Birth and childhood

20–32 Hayy’s birth

33–38 Early years

38–47 The death of the mother 7 yrs

Nature as an object

47–52 Experiments with fire and anatomy

52–55 The conquest of nature

One and many 21 yrs

55–59 From human spirit to plant life

60–64 Nature and form

64–68 Excursus: from genera to species

68–72 Matter and the three dimensions

72–74 Form imposed from outside

From the world to Creator, then back 28 yrs

74–80 The heavens: finite, spherical, as if an organism

80–85 The world: eternal or originated?

85–88 Dependence on a Creator

88–90 Providence and generosity

The true self

92–96 The rational soul, immaterial and immortal

96–104 Kinship with the heavens

104–108 Participation in life, the heavens, the other world

The three duties

109–113 The needs of the body

113–117 Imitating the heavens

117–121 Becoming like the Necessary Existent

The divine vision 35 yrs

121–127 The unity of all things

127–130 The series of intellects

130–135 The blessed, the condemned, and the faded

Asal and Sulayman 49 yrs

136–143 Asal’s arrival: friendship

144–147 Reason and revelation

147–152 Mission in the city

152–156 Disillusionment and return; closing words

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LIFE AND TIMES

Not many philosophers receive a state funeral. Such was the honor bestowed on Abu Bakr Muhammad Ibn ‘ Abd al-Malik Ibn Tufayl: the Prince of Believers himself, Caliph Abu Yusuf Ya ‘ qub the Victorious (al-Mansur) presided over Ibn Tufayl’s funeral procession in 581 ah /1185 ce . The royal presence at Ibn Tufayl’s funeral shows how he was firmly ensconced in the court at Marrakesh. More importantly, it shows how the study of philosophy, falsafa , had gained a foothold in the intellectual life of the sixth-/twelfth-century Maghreb or Muslim West.

The development had come despite philosophy being a tradition twice-removed from this distant soil: firstly, it was a discipline of ancient Greek origin and second, its first bloom in the Arabic language had occurred in far-off Baghdad and points east. As a recognized authority on the Greek sciences and sponsor to a generation of scholars, Ibn Tufayl stood at the heart of philosophy’s nativization in the Muslim West. Most of Ibn Tufayl’s eulogizers in subsequent centuries refer first and foremost to his philosophical achievements.

For all this, it was not Ibn Tufayl the philosopher to whom al-Mansur primarily came to pay his respects, but Ibn Tufayl the physician. (The two activities were related, as we shall see.) Ibn Tufayl had been personal physician both to al-Mansur and to his father and predecessor, Abu Ya‘qub Yusuf. The move to sponsor philosophy and to enlist Ibn Tufayl’s help had been the father’s, not the son’s. And although al-Mansur continued to employ philosophers, his reign also showed the first signs of a retreat from this liberal position, culminating in the brief banishment of Ibn Tufayl’s famous protégé Ibn Rushd, known to the Western world as Averroes, to the small coastal town of Lucena in 592/1195, together with a banning of the latter’s books.

In ten years, then, the prevailing Almohad dynasty had swung from publicly celebrating the life of one court-affiliated philosopher-physician to publicly disgracing another. This testifies to how turbulent were the times in which Ibn Tufayl operated, and how volatile the intellectual climate. In this chapter I shall sketch out a picture of the social and political milieu in which Ibn Tufayl’s life and work unfolded. I do so in order for us to appreciate better the different dimensions of Ibn Tufayl’s activity and his overall achievement.

THE ALMOHAD REVOLUTION

The major social and political upheavals of Ibn Tufayl’s day all stemmed from a change in ruling authority, and with it a cultural shift, from one side of the Gibraltar strait to the other. For centuries, the Muslim West had been ruled by the descendants of the venerable ‘Umayyad dynasty, which had once been in control of the entire Muslim world but which had long since settled for dominion over the West only. With its seat of power in al-Andalus (southern Spain) and a proud past reaching back to pre-Islamic Arab tribal life, ‘Umayyad culture generally portrayed its southern counterpart in northern Africa as backwards and savage, indeed uncultured and barely Islamicized.

This ancient dynamic became unsettled midway through the fifth/eleventh century when a new ruling family emerged with a power base among the Sinhaja Berbers in Morocco. The dynasty was known as al-murabit, signifying military readiness at the frontiers, which in the mouths of Europeans assumed the form ‘Almoravid’. This ruling power in turn was overthrown by a further uprising emanating from among the Masmuda tribes of Berbers, one that rallied under the banner of al-muwahhidun – those who profess divine unity, or ‘Almohads’ in European parlance. The result was a fundamentally changed cultural landscape, one in which old certainties gave way to a jostling for power, often under the guise of religious and intellectual polemic. Even the human geography of the region provides a durable reminder of this change. With the rise of the Almoravids, an Andalusian influence begins to show in public architecture on the south side of the Mediterranean, while Spanish towns take on the names of Berber tribes.

The Almohad revolt was originally carried to power on a wave of religious revivalism. The founding ideologue of the Almohad movement was Muhammad Ibn Tumart (d. 524/1130), a Berber preacher with what on the surface was a simple agenda. Ibn Tumart railed against the religious culture of his day, which he portrayed as corrupt and ossified and excessively dependent on endless refinements of the various branches (furu‘) of Islamic law, specifically the Maliki school of interpretation (as dominant in Muslim Africa then as it is today). Ibn Tumart postulated adherence to a simple creed that was meant to be understood and received by all believers in their hearts. As for following God’s commandments, such foundational matters could not possibly be so convoluted as to require reams of books of legal opinions (kutub al-ra’y) or a cadre of often venally-minded self-appointed experts; the plain meaning of the primary two sources of religion – the Qur’an and the Prophetic traditions – would suffice (Cornell 1987).

Ibn Tumart’s teachings in this regard show a certain affinity with those of the renowned Muslim theologian and spiritual author Abu Hamid Muhammad al-Ghazali (d. 505/1111), who had shaken the intellectual world of the eastern ‘Abbasid caliphate a generation before. In his famous and abidingly popular Revival of the Religious Sciences, al-Ghazali called for a renewal to a personally committed practice and an unseating of the old religious experts in favor of a reconceived spiritual order based on genuine religious merit.

Now, in a notorious instance of book-burning in the West, the Almoravids had committed early copies of al-Ghazali’s Revival to the pyre while the latter still lived. And according to one popular legend, al-Ghazali, who heard about the incident in far-flung Baghdad, personally entrusted Ibn Tumart with avenging this outrage. The encounter, which is supposed to have happened during Ibn Tumart’s travels in the East, would make the Almohads al-Ghazali’s direct torch-bearers on Maghrebi soil. The story is discussed at length in practically all histories of the Almohad regime, and translated in many, which at the very least speaks to its central positioning in the scholarly imagination (Le Tourneau 1969, 6–8; Fromherz 2010, 30–35).

The account as it stands has to be fictitious. For one thing, al-Ghazali was long gone from Baghdad by the time Ibn Tumart made his way to the city. Still, Ibn Tumart may well have encountered some latter-day Ghazalians when visiting Baghdad’s Nizamiyya college, and his thought does resemble al-Ghazali’s in more ways than one. This proved important to Ibn Tufayl, who is the subject of our book. Ibn Tufayl, like al-Ghazali before him, had to present Sufism and