Ibn Ṭufayl
- In full:
- Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṭufayl al-Qaysī
- Also called:
- Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Muḥammad ibn Muḥammad ibn Ṭufayl al-Qaysī
- Latin:
- Abubacer
- Born:
- 1109/10, Guádix, Spain
Ibn Ṭufayl (born 1109/10, Guádix, Spain—died 1185/86, Marrakech, Morocco) was a Moorish philosopher and physician who is known for his Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (c. 1175; Eng. trans. by L.E. Goodman, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓan by Ibn Ṭufayl, 1972), a philosophical romance in which he describes the self-education and gradual philosophical development of a man who passes the first 50 years of his life in complete isolation on an uninhabited island. Ibn Ṭufayl also wrote a number of medical treatises in Arabic verse.
Ibn Ṭufayl was influenced by the works of Avicenna and Avempace, the latter of whom was instrumental in introducing the Islamic philosophical tradition to Spain, and was a contemporary of Averroës. He served as the court physician and general adviser to the Almohad ruler Abū Yaʿqūb Yūsuf from 1163 to 1184.
