Ibn Tufail

Ibn Tufail

Ibn Tufail (full Arabic name: أبو بكر محمد بن عبد الملك بن محمد بن طفيل القيسي الأندلسي Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Tufail al-Qaisi al-Andalusi; Latinized form: Abubacer Aben Tofail; Anglicized form: Abubekar or Abu Jaafar Ebn Tophail; c. 1105 – 1185) was an Arab Andalusian Muslim polymath: a writer, novelist, Islamic philosopher, Islamic theologian, physician, astronomer, vizier, and court official. As a philosopher and novelist, he is most famous for writing the first philosophical novel, Hayy ibn Yaqdhan. Read more on Wikipedia

Since 2007, the English Wikipedia page of Ibn Tufail has received more than 211,440 page views. His biography is available in 40 different languages on Wikipedia (up from 37 in 2019). Ibn Tufail is the 205th most popular philosopher (up from 226th in 2019), the 104th most popular biography from Spain (up from 131st in 2019) and the 8th most popular Spanish Philosopher.

Ibn Tufail is most famous for his philosophical novel, "Hayy ibn Yaqzan" (meaning "Alive, son of Awake"). The book, written in Arabic, tells the story of a man who is raised in isolation on an island and discovers the world through his own observations and reasoning. The book was an early example of philosophical fiction and had a major influence on later European thinkers, including Gottfried Leibniz, Baruch Spinoza, and George Berkeley.