PREFACE.

It seems beyond doubt that our Abu Ja’far or Abu Bakr The author, Ibn Tufayl, was known by these kunyas or nicknames lived at the same time as Averroes original: "Averroe"; the Latinized name of Ibn Rushd, a famous Andalusian philosopher, who is said to have died at a very advanced age in the 595th year of the Hijra The Islamic calendar; 595 AH corresponds to 1198 AD (which falls in the year 1198 AD), and thus he flourished more or less five hundred years ago. From the same evidence, one may gather that he also wrote other works; however, since these have not come into our hands, our discussion must be confined only to the present book. This work bears the title, The Epistle (for the Arabs and Jews love to call even the shortest treatises by this name) of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan The name means "Alive, son of Awake", and of Asal (for so it is consistently read elsewhere, although at the end of the Preface in the manuscript copy it is read as
* And so it seems Ibn Khallikan reads Absal) by the error, I believe, of the scribe, since in the Hebrew version and the commentary of Moses of Narbonne he is always called Asal, as he is by Mordecai Comtino, and in our own copy, Asal), and of Salaman. These names, he says, were bestowed by Abu Ali Avicenna original: "Abu Ali Avicennam"; the Latinized name of Ibn Sina [or Ibn Sina]. Where exactly he did so, he does not indicate. Moses of Narbonne A 14th-century Jewish philosopher and commentator supposes that he mentioned them in his philosophy which he called "Oriental"; but since that work does not survive in its entirety (and as the author of the History of the Physicians original: "Historia Medicorum"; likely referring to the work by Ibn Abi Usaybi'a warns that it had ceased to exist many years ago), I would not dare to affirm or deny it. It is likely that he did so in another distinct work,
see also Ibn Khallikan since among his writings in the same History a book is listed with the title Hayy ibn Yaqdhan. Since we have not had the chance to see that book, we do not know what its purpose was; however, we may conjecture that the things our author fables here concerning Hayy's origin and birth were drawn from it—at least regarding that part of the story which relates that he came forth from the womb of the earth without father or mother. For this opinion was long ago attributed to Avicenna. Averroes attacks him on this point, both in the 8th book of his Physics and the 2nd book of his Metaphysics. Rabbi Gershom A Jewish scholar and translator clearly states that Avicenna wrote original Hebrew: "שאינו מן הנמנע" it is not impossible for matter to be so prepared in the earth that the human form...