THE HISTORY OF HAYY IBN YAQZAN

Hayy ibn Yaqzan is the only extant work of Ibn Tufail today. It is a short philosophical romance, but so great has been its influence on the succeeding generations in the West that it has come to be recognized as “one of the most remarkable books of the Middle Ages”. The story revolves around Hayy ibn Yaqzan, a little boy who grew up on an island in the Indies under the equator, isolated from the people, in the bosom of an antelope that raised him feeding him with her milk. Hayy has just learned to walk, imitating the sounds of antelopes, birds, and other animals in his surrounding, he learns the languages of the animals around him, and he learns to guide himself to the actions of animals by imitating their instinct.