The Shipwrecked Sailor in Arabic and Western Literature: Ibn Ṭufayl and his Influence on European Writers 9780755611133, 9781848855526

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To the Angelic Souls of my Parents, may Allah’s Mercy be upon them, To my dearest wife Mona who supported me all the time, To my sons, Bahaa, Mohammed, Noureddin and Abdulrahman, To my daughters, Areej and Hibaa, To all I dedicate this humble work with love and affection.

NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION

Consonants Arabic ‫ء‬ ‫ب‬ ‫ت‬ ‫ث‬ ‫ج‬ ‫ح‬ ‫خ‬ ‫د‬ ‫ذ‬ ‫ر‬ ‫ز‬ ‫س‬ ‫ش‬ ‫ص‬

Transliteration > b t th j + kh d dh r z s sh ~

Arabic ‫ض‬ ‫ط‬ ‫ظ‬ ‫ع‬ ‫غ‬ ‫ف‬ ‫ق‬ ‫ك‬ ‫ل‬ ‫م‬ ‫ن‬ ‫ھـ‬ ‫و‬ ‫ي‬

Transliteration # % & < gh f q k l m n h w y

Vowels Short Vowels Arabic Transliteration ◌َ– a ◌ُ– u ◌ِ– i

Long Vowels Arabic Transliteration ‫–َ◌ا‬ [ ‫–ُ◌و‬ ] ‫–ِ◌ي‬ \

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THE SHIPWRECKED SAILOR IN ARABIC AND WESTERN LITERATURE

Diphthongs Arabic ‫–َ◌ي‬

Transliteration ay

Arabic ‫–َ◌و‬

Transliteration aw

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

All praises and thanks be to God, the Omnipotent, for all the blessings He has bestowed upon me before and during the writing of this monograph. The production of a work such as this is an exciting venture, which cannot be achieved without help and cooperation from many sources. This work originated in a Ph.D. thesis conducted at the University of Exeter, and so my most fervent thanks and deepest gratitude are due first to my supervisor, Professor Rasheed El-Enany, without whom this work would not have been realised. His outstanding care, insightful guidance and illuminating discussions were the rivers that produced this lake. I am especially grateful to my wife, who often had to look after our family alone while I pursued my research, for her perpetual and indispensable encouragement and patience. It is also my great pleasure to express my warmest love and compassion for my lovely children, the spirit that gave much fuel to an arduous task; I owe them more profound thanks than I can express in words. I would also like to express my sincere gratitude for Professor Mike Hanne from the University of Auckland in New Zealand for his inspiring remarks at an early stage of this research. I am greatly indebted to my faithful brother and honest friend Ali Anders for his creative and constructive comments and wonderful efforts while editing this monograph, for without his assistance the research might have remained incomprehensible. My special thanks go to my sponsors (Ford Foundation International Fellowship Program in USA and AMIDEAST Office in Gaza) for their financial support and follow-up on my academic progress. It is also my pleasure to convey my appreciation and deep thanks to the Elfarouq Foundation for their kind generous support. Last but by no means least, this project would not have

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materialised without the relentless moral support and heartfelt humanistic stance of my sincere friend and true brother Tim Williams. I salute him with the deepest respect. Where my human gratitude and thanks fall short, may God Almighty repay all tenfold.

INTRODUCTION

The theme of the castaway living and philosophising for years on a desert island is one which has captured the imagination of various writers in many cultures and literatures and over a very long period of time. Literary historians and critics in the West are most familiar with the famous example of Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and the many versions and variations it has spawned over the ensuing three centuries, including in recent decades works by William Golding: Lord of the Flies (1954), Michel Tournier: Friday (1967), Derek Walcott: Pantomime (1978) and J. M. Coetzee: Foe (1986). However, little attention has been paid to some of the antecedents of Defoe’s great novel, especially those from other cultures like the remarkable |ayy Bin Yaq&[n (‘Alive, Son of Awake’) by the twelfth-century Arab Muslim philosopher and physician Mu+ammad Ibn ^ufayl (d.1185), who lived in Andalusia, Spain. This text is Ibn ^ufayl’s only surviving work apart from a few writings on medicine and astronomy. It summarises his own ideas and also encapsulates much of the philosophical and scientific thinking of his age in a direct, plain style. The different translations of this exceptionally eloquent and philosophically reflective treatise are often considered indicative of its value and far-reaching influence on medieval and the later modern European philosophy, predominantly in the late seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Due to its profound influence on European thought and philosophy, Ibn ^ufayl’s |ayy Bin Yaq&[n was translated into no less than eight languages (Hebrew, Latin, Dutch, English, French, Russian, German, and Spanish) in addition to Persian and the other major languages of the Islamic world. It was translated into Hebrew in 1349 by the Jew, Moses

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THE SHIPWRECKED SAILOR IN ARABIC AND WESTERN LITERATURE

of Narbonne. Edward Pococke’s Latin version, which was printed alongside the original Arabic text and was known as the Oxford Edition, was published in 1671 under the title Philosophus autodidactus; it was later translated from the Latin into English by the Quakers, George Keith in 1674 and Robert Barclay in 1676, and then by George Ashwell in 1686. Simon Ockley produced the first English translation directly from the Arabic in 1708, just eleven years before the appearance of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719). The above-mentioned translations will be examined in detail in the first chapter. Translated into several languages and appearing in various editions, it is hardly surprising that the question of the text’s literary parentage of certain European works should have arisen. The most illustrious title which has arisen in this context is Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. English readers of the eighteenth century had access to three 1 English translations of the |ayy Bin Yaq&[n, and this fact lends credence to the view of some critics that it was a model for Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe (1719), just as the real-life castaway Alexander Selkirk was. Classification of |ayy Bin Yaq&[n Concerning its classification, Ibn ^ufayl’s |ayy Bin Yaq&[n has been called many things. Edward Pococke, the translator of the text from Arabic to Latin, referred to it as an autodidactic treatise. Since that time, the story has also been referred to by the following names: ‘philosophical tale’,2 ‘philosophical treatise’,3 ‘philosophical novel’,4 a ‘novel’, 5 and, of course, an allegory. 6 However, each of these terms implies something quite different and each, in one way or another, potentially obfuscates by narrowing the scope of this rich narrative. Implicit in the aforementioned terms that include the adjective ‘philosophical’ is the assumption that this work is primarily about philosophy. Indeed, the fact that it was written by one of the wellknown philosophers in Islam in the medieval age spontaneously alerts us to the fact that it should be designated as a philosophical work. While the philosophical component certainly cannot be ignored, we must equally not lose sight of the mystical and the literary dimensions of this text. Simply, we must avoid considering it as either only a philosophical work or only a literary one. It is thus necessary to view this story against a broader cultural, literary, intellectual and religious background than is traditionally done. Such an approach should stress

INTRODUCTION

3

the various disciplinary perspectives that are at work in the way this text generates meaning. I may argue here that |ayy Bin Yaq&[n has a theme or an idea presented by means of a story. Structurally, it has no digressions and has a realistic vein, and in terms of its language it is plain. Thus it could be classified as a philosophical novel, since its creator utilises the novelistic elements as a means to an end, namely philosophical propaganda.7 All of us are aware that the term ‘novel’ is modern and the adjective ‘philosophical’ is controversial and would perhaps not have completely satisfied the author, since his intention was apparently to discuss matters that transcend philosophy, that cannot be grasped by reason and logical argumentation. In fact, according to what Ibn ^ufayl states in the prologue, the things he wants to deal with in his text cannot even properly be expressed in words. It is for this reason that, after much reflection and in order to avoid confusion, I have opted to refer to |ayy Bin Yaq&[n in this monograph as a work or a text, particularly when comparing it with Defoe’s novel Robinson Crusoe. Research Hypothesis and Theoretical Basis This comparative study between |ayy Bin Yaq&[n and Robinson Crusoe seeks to examine in particular the influence on the latter by the former, paying particular consideration to the modifications and alterations that, undoubtedly, will have had to have taken place thanks to cultural and intellectual differences between the two authors. One would be correct in the assumption that the striking similarities between the two texts that become evident when subjecting them to comparison have been observed and commented upon throughout the last two centuries and even before that. However, the issue as to whether Defoe was, by some means or another, indebted to Ibn ^ufayl has led to much controversial debate, with the outcome that one often comes across hints and indications either asserting or rejecting the idea of such an influence having taken place. Moreover, such hints occur in passing and are not supported by evidence or any detailed or systematic wellgrounded study. Most scholars of |ayy Bin Yaq&[n have confined themselves entirely either to editing or translating the Arabic text, while in their introductions we encounter allusions to Defoe’s being influenced by Ibn ^ufayl’s. Other scholars have called attention to parallel episodes in the texts and suggested that much in Robinson Crusoe is evocative of parts of |ayy Bin Yaq&[n; however, none of

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THE SHIPWRECKED SAILOR IN ARABIC AND WESTERN LITERATURE

these provides anything except minor or partial handling of the topic and no conclusive evidence has yet been presented. Others strongly confirm the literary debt owed by Defoe to Ibn ^ufayl, yet none thoroughly demonstrates their strong claims of indebtedness. Moreover, students of Defoe, exploring the sources of Robinson Crusoe, have almost exclusively ignored the Arabic text, actually unaware that it had been suggested as a possible source. Therefore, this comparative analytical study will investigate the concept of influence starting with the tentative hypothesis that Ibn ^ufayl’s |ayy Bin Yaq&[n can be regarded as one of the major and genuine sources that exerted a great influence upon Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe. Accordingly, this study will show the impact of Arabic literature on English literature taking into consideration that Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe can be classified as the first English novel. To justify the claim that Ibn ^ufayl’s story is one of the major sources that exerted much influence on Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe, I shall first undertake a detailed investigation in search of external historical links and evidence in terms of the availability of the various translations of the Arabic text, particularly the Latin8 and English ones. In support of the external evidence, I shall also need to examine the various strange and surprising sources of Defoe’s text and his familiarity and curious relationship with the translators of the Arabic text. Exploring the internal evidence, I shall move on to compare their works, and will focus on certain significant parts from each to highlight the concept of influence and borrowing. In order to achieve this aim I will be focusing primarily on the texts themselves. Simply speaking, my main method or instrument in this analytical critical study is comparative textual analysis. In other words, comparison will be the major tool of this research and its critical approach will be chiefly analytical. In addition, this textual analysis will be supported by previous critics’ and writers’ arguments regarding the relationship, possible connection and similarities between the two works. In order to avoid pitfalls in terminology and semantic overlaps, it is still necessary to draw further lines of demarcation. When conducting this comparative study we are mainly talking about influence and impact, not adaptation or imitation. The concept of influence should be considered as practically the key notion in comparative literary studies, since it posits the presence of two distinct and therefore comparable entities: the work from which the influence precedes and that at which

INTRODUCTION

5

it is directed. In his Comparative Literature and Literary Theory, Ulrich Weisstein notes that at this point, it is hardly needed to stress that the ‘difference between the study of influences occurring within a national literature, and that of influences which transcend linguistic boundaries, is not a qualitative and hence methodological one.’ 9 The two approaches are simply differentiated by the fact that, in the latter case, works written in two different languages are carefully examined, which creates a necessity to consider the language barrier. According to Ihab H. |assan, it is unfortunate that often, in literary studies, ‘the concept of influence is called upon to account for any relationship, running the gamut of incidence to causality, with a somewhat expansive range of intermediate correlations.’10 The question of what exactly is meant by ‘influence’, which is essential for the comparatist, has recently been the focus of scholarly attention, especially in the United States. Besides |assan, scholars like Joseph T. Shaw11 have participated in the lengthy and animated discussion. In general and in order to avoid methodological complications, I will take into consideration the fact that usually the emitter and the receiver of a literary influence are not in direct contact with each other but are rather linked by intermediaries or transmitters such as translators, critics, scholars, travellers, or vehicles like books. Conducting a systematic study for the hypothesis, I would argue that the comparatist ought not to construct a qualitative distinction between the active and passive factors of an influence, for there should be as much no disgrace in receiving as there is no honour in giving. In this respect, Ulrich Weisstein claims that ‘in most cases, at any rate, there is no direct lending or borrowing, and instances of literal imitations are probably rarer than more or less creative transmutations.’12 Weisstein has tried to answer the question as to what extent ‘a literary influence is a conscious or unconscious form of appropriation.’ 13 In terms of their interdependence, we might tentatively define influence as the result of unconscious imitation, and imitation as intentionally directed receipt of influence. One might here agree with J. T. Shaw’s remark that unlike imitation, influence usually portrays the influenced writer producing work that is fundamentally his own. Influence is not restricted to individual details or images or borrowings or even sources – though it may include them – but is something ‘pervasive, something originally involved in and presented through artistic works.’ 14 A. O. Aldridge, who defines influence as ‘something which exists in the work of one author which could not

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THE SHIPWRECKED SAILOR IN ARABIC AND WESTERN LITERATURE

have existed had he not read the work of a previous author,’ corroborates Shaw when stating: ‘Influence is not something which reveals itself in a single, concrete manner, but it must be sought in many different manifestations.’ 15 To put it in other words, influence cannot and should not be calculated quantitatively. In the case of imitations, says Shaw, ‘the author gives up, to the degree he can, his creative personality to that of another, and usually of a particular work, while at the same time being freed from the detailed fidelity expected in translation.’ 16 Adaptations, which involve works written in a foreign language, are often based on literal translations – ranging all the way from congenial reworking of a model to more or less commercial attempts at making a work palatable to foreign audiences. One is sometimes led to speculate whether any study of influence is truly justified unless it succeeds in elucidating the particular qualities of the borrower, in revealing along with the influence, and almost in spite of it, what is infinitely more significant: the turning crucial point at which the writer frees himself of the influence and finds his originality and creativity. In this context, we can deduce that Defoe is in no sense influenced by his predecessor to the degree that his creativity and originality are submerged. Defoe has employed and merged certain elements of his predecessor to create something far from |ayy’s island, something which is of the nature of his eighteenth-century age. Comparing the two texts, we should appreciate influence in relation to impulse rather than mere imitation. In order to consider the influence of Ibn ^ufayl on Defoe, we might not anticipate the effect to be traced back to isolated passages. Rather, the spirit of the whole is much more likely to have remained with Defoe when he modified the Arabic story to conform to his design as he tailored, omitted, selected, and recast his narrative. Without conceding his own individuality, he extracted from Ibn ^ufayl’s |ayy Bin Yaq&[n just what he needed to construct a masterpiece in English literature. By delving to the depths of the transformation effected between |ayy Bin Yaq&[n and Robinson Crusoe, we can infer that the latter is not a mere repetition of the former or ‘appropriation’ of material or a particular exploitation of a source. In fusing and mingling all his borrowed material from Ibn ^ufayl and other sources into an enduring coherent unity, Defoe has also involved his own standards and introduced his own perspectives to create a novel

INTRODUCTION

7

and distinctive literary work in which are intermingled all the ingredients that have guaranteed its permanence and survival. The Structure of the Monograph The present short introduction aims to answer the question as to what category we should place |ayy Bin Yaq&[n in and sets out the main argument, the methodology adopted, the organisation of the study, and its rationale. Following on from this, the first two chapters of this book are mainly concerned with the external evidence for the influence of |ayy Bin Yaq&[n on Defoe, while the remaining three chapters are concerned with the internal, textual evidence. It is in these latter chapters that I will be conducting a detailed comparative analysis of the texts themselves, as a means of seeking internal criteria by which influence can be detected, through elaborating outstanding similarities while also briefly pointing out differences. The first chapter is an introductory one which seeks to provide a brief idea of the oriental tale in England in general, with special reference to |ayy Bin Yaq&[n, its different translations (particularly the English ones), and its reception in the West and the East. As expressed by Weisstein, ‘The scholar dealing with influence will be forced to draw, on many occasions, upon the concept of source, which looms especially large in nineteenth-century literary historiography.’ 17 A connection between influence and source exists, semantically, by virtue of the fact that both terms relate to the flow of liquid; the source being the origin of that flow, and the influence (in an obsolete meaning of the term) or influx its goal, that is, the point at which the movement ceases. Accordingly, the second chapter of this study is a survey of the diverse sources of Robinson Crusoe, initially focusing on literature of travel and narratives concerning outcasts on desert islands. A significant section is dedicated to the Crusoe-|ayy controversy, dealing at some length with previous studies concerning whether Defoe was influenced by the Arabic text or not. In order to answer the question of whether Defoe had actually read any of the English translations of |ayy Bin Yaq&[n, a short but an important section examines Defoe’s acquaintance with the translators of the Arabic text, and in particular Simon Ockley and the Quakers. The last section in this chapter tackles the sources of and influences on Ibn ^ufayl’s |ayy Bin Yaq&[n itself.

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THE SHIPWRECKED SAILOR IN ARABIC AND WESTERN LITERATURE

The internal textual evidence examined by the final three chapters is based on the island as a main setting in both stories, the main characters, and other key distinctive features – like the ‘meeting with the Other’ – that are major, significant factors in the comparison of the two texts. The third chapter may be considered as the backbone of the study, because it incorporates a great number of very specific similar elements found in the two works, such as the heroes’ being castaway on a desert island for more than twenty-eight years in complete isolation, and the absence of female characters in both works. It clarifies how setting and plot are effectively exploited by Defoe and Ibn ^ufayl. In particular, it will bring to light the striking similarity and confluence between the two texts in terms of the fact that they both belong to the literary genres of Robinsonade, utopian literature and allegory. In addition, this chapter will show how the two main characters employ the empirical method and their acute observations in an attempt to survive and adapt themselves to their rather similar natural physical environment. It can be said that this chapter is mainly concerned with showing how the two heroes struggle to fulfil their physical needs at large in their desert island location. The fourth chapter turns to the heroes’ spiritual journeys and their religious awakening, which start at almost the same age for each one of them. This awakening consists of a dramatic shift from the earthly to the heavenly perspectives in both men’s minds, whereby they undergo similar contemplative reflections leading them to discover God and become very close to Him. The chapter also discusses |ayy’s discovery of the soul and Crusoe’s conversion. Having a terrible dream and becoming ill, Crusoe ends up becoming a better Christian while in his solitude than ever he was before. |ayy, on the other hand, discovers the existence of God without the help of prophets or religious scriptures, and he even succeeds in having a mystical vision of the Divine, which echoes Crusoe’s vision of the Angelic World. Both men feel the same need to transfer their religious experience to another, which paves the way for the appearance of the Other in both works. In consequence, the fifth chapter of this book focuses on another strikingly similar feature shared between the two texts, which is the heroes’ encounter with the Other: Crusoe with Friday in Defoe and |ayy with Abs[l in Ibn ^ufayl. I will be examining the two characters’ encounters with the newcomers, given that the two works share analogous characteristics such as the ending of the heroes’ solitude and

INTRODUCTION

9

the trials experienced during that in favour of living within a human society, the teaching and learning of a language, and the transmission of faith. However, as we will observe, the teaching of the language, along with some other essential elements of the encounter, are depicted quite differently in each text. I will also seek to shed some light on the colonial dimension to the encounter between Crusoe and Friday. Finally, I will also analyse the significance of the differences existing between the two stories from a post-structuralist translation perspective. The short conclusion to this book will sum up the most important findings deduced from the study and the recommendations made. Personal Background and Rationale for the Study I believe that it is the role of comparative studies in literature today to act as a means of enhancing mutual understanding among peoples and nations, reducing psychological tensions and distances between them, and erasing any distorted images that each party holds of the other. Accordingly, such studies are capable of spreading a spirit of tolerance and kindness and establishing the concept of acknowledging the other and his¦her right to differ, hence abandoning notions of superiority that beget contempt and breed racism. It is in this context that this study is keen to analyse the mutual interaction of ideas, representations, and images as manifested in different literatures – overcoming barriers of language and borders that can obstruct the meeting of cultures. It is bound to be a means of understanding and a meeting ground for diverse human efforts. It is also worth adding that the basic aim of this study is not to bring out differences, but to assert the unity and individuality of human creativity, which is the only unity that can be achieved in a world still uncompromisingly split. I also hope that this comparative study will be a bridge that links two intimately connected domains of human creativity and draws two authors, worlds apart, together. The inspiration for this study was born years ago while teaching a course at the Islamic University of Gaza entitled ‘Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Prose’, where I taught Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe along with other novels. At that time, some of my students noticed that there was a striking similarity between this English text and Ibn ^ufayl’s |ayy Bin Yaq&[n, which they had read at school. Accordingly, I started encouraging my students to compare the two stories, and indeed this proved to be very interesting, promising and fruitful. This led our English Department to think seriously of including a new course

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THE SHIPWRECKED SAILOR IN ARABIC AND WESTERN LITERATURE

which might be called Comparative Literature or World Literature, through which our students in Palestine would be able to compare different cultures, civilisations and literatures. From that moment on, I decided to obtain my Ph.D. in comparative literature, given that a degree in this field would enable us to establish a new program at the Islamic University of Gaza where our students could conduct comparative studies between different literary texts belonging to different cultures and ideologies and be in touch with a range of ideas and notions – often of universal value and validity. My Ph.D. research, undertaken at the University of Exeter Institute of Arab and Islamic Studies, led to the present monograph. Equally important, it is my aim that this study may help me to contribute to reforming and building up our Palestinian community. I strongly believe that art should be socially and politically useful; it should be exploited to help in solving national and international issues. What we, teachers and scholars of literature, are doing in our both proud and modest way is the prerequisite of a better world. We try, in depth and over time rather than in fragile publicity, to understand, to appreciate, and if possible, to love the most comprehensive expression of human thinking and feeling: literature. Most comprehensive as it incorporates the mind and the imagination, the objective and the subjective, the collective and the individual. And it is precisely the lasting artistic beauty and satisfaction provided by the best literary texts that, in conjunction with our ideas, ensure the continuity of our task. In fact, I chose to obtain my doctorate in comparative literature as a result of wanting to emerge beyond myself, see and think through another’s eyes and mind, and live as someone else; this is a valuable experience which literature offers, which can help one become more sensitive to language, both one’s own and other people’s. Moreover, being a lecturer in English literature in Palestine, this work will help my students, and myself as well, understand and appreciate cultures and ideologies different from our own in time and space, and come to perceive the tradition of thought, feeling and artistic form within the heritage that the literature of such cultures embodies. Finally, I hope through this study to contribute some insights complementary to those of my predecessors and to bring us a little nearer to appreciating the nature and magnitude of English and Arabic literature and culture.

1 RECEPTION OF IBN ^UFAYL’S |AYY BIN YAQ*{N IN SEVENTEETH- AND EIGHTEENTHCENTURY ENGLAND

England and the Oriental Tales

The Country is miserably decayed, and Hath lost the Reputation of its Name, and Mighty stock of Credit it once had for Eastern Wisdom and learning: It hath Followed the Motion of the Sun and is Universally gone Westward. (Robert Huntington, from Aleppo, to John Locke, 1 April 1671)1 The medieval transmission from Arabic into Latin helped transform European intellectual and scientific development. Actually, the study of Arabic in Europe during the Middle Ages was carried out for two main reasons: the attainment of scientific knowledge and Christian missionary activities. For both of these the most important focus of activity was Spain, or Andalusia, which had long been a centre of Islamic culture and civilisation,2 and consequently sustained the other parts of Europe with a ready access to Arabic culture and literature. Another area where transmission of Arabic language and culture took place was Sicily and southern Italy, which had also been under Islamic influence (and partly under Arabic rule) from the tenth century

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THE SHIPWRECKED SAILOR IN ARABIC AND WESTERN LITERATURE

onwards.3 As a result of the Norman Conquest which began in the late eleventh century, Sicily experienced a blend of Greek, Latin, and Arabic culture, particularly under two rulers who were patrons of Arabic literature, Roger II (1130–54) and his grandson the Emperor Frederick II (king of Sicily 1197–1250).4 The period of Frederick’s son Manfred is also significant for the achievements of translators from the Arabic in Sicily and southern Italy.5 But the contribution of this part of the world to both Islamic and Latin culture was never comparable to that of Spain. Now, considering the Islamic expansion in general, we can say that it had created a cosmopolitan civilisation with great cities, wealthy courts, and a network of communications through trade from Spain to the borders of China. The largely agrarian and feudal social structure of Latin Christendom was eclipsed. Thus, it is not strange to say that Arabic became a symbol of wealth, power, and above all of intellectual prestige. It was considered as the key to a ‘treasure house’ of knowledge, the acquisition of which was eagerly sought by medieval scholars. A remarkable widespread interest in Arabic language and literature can also be witnessed in seventeenth-century England. This interest led to Arabic ‘professorships in universities, first at Cambridge (1632), then at Oxford (1634), with Arabic as a requirement for the Arts degree’,6 and Edward Pococke, the elder (1604–91), an eminent seventeenthcentury Arabist, was the first to occupy the Arabic chair in Oxford.7 In addition, William Bedwell (1562–1632) stressed the importance of Arabic and spoke of it as the ‘only language of religion and the chief language of diplomacy and business from the Fortunate Islands to the China Seas.’ 8 Arabic was taught also at such famous schools as Westminster. 9 Huge collections became established in private hands and in libraries, exemplified by the Bodleian at Oxford. Bilingual editions of Arabic texts were printed; grammars and dictionaries were prepared. Islamic histories based on original Arabic sources were written. G. A. Russell points out that this ‘enterprise involved theologians, whether Catholic or Anglican, Puritan or Quaker; scholars, whether royalist or Parliamentarian; physicians, astronomers, mathematicians, and philosophers.’ 10 Most astonishing of all: the ‘forward-looking’ natural philosophers pursued Arabic manuscripts, particularly in astronomy and mathematics. After the establishing of the Royal Society (1660), Arabic subjects dominated the ‘correspondence’ and contacts among the Fellows.11 In brief, Arabic interest galvanised

RECEPTION OF IBN ^UFAYL’S |AYY BIN YAQ*{N

13

English society in all aspects, including the court, clergy, institutions of universities, and diplomatic activity, as well as commercial firms. The existence of such extensive interest was not an isolated occurrence, unique to England, but emerged against similar developments on the Continent, particularly in the Netherlands, and with scholars in both Catholic and Protestant countries in close contact.12 If we want to consider the extent of its widespread and farreaching outcomes, we can say that this wave of Arabic interest deserves recognition as a significant aspect of seventeenth-century thought. And yet – as suggested by Russell – in ‘the intensively scrutinised intellectual and social landscape of the period, it seems to have remained somewhat invisible to the historian outside specialised’13 fields. This has been a brief glance at the Arabic interest in the seventeenth century in England, the ‘Age of Arabick’ as it has been called, by way of introducing the related interest in the oriental tale. Oriental tales had been borne to England from an early period by different waves of influence. As far back as the eleventh century, fictional descriptions of the wonders of India are found in Anglo-Saxon translations of legends concerning Alexander the Great.14 During the Middle Ages – according to Martha Conant – many Eastern tales drifted across Europe by way of Syria, Byzantium, Italy, and Spain. Merchants and travellers like Marco Polo, missionaries, pilgrims, and crusaders aided the oral transmission of this fiction; and scholars gave to Europe Latin translations of four collections of genuine oriental tales: Sendebar; Kalila and Dimna; Disciplina Clericalis; and Barlaam and Josaphat.15 A specific share in this wealthy treasure fell to the lot of England and appeared in the form of romances, apologues, legends, and tales of adventure. Mandeville’s Voiage and Chaucer’s Squire’s Tale are typical examples. In his essay entitled Literature in Legacy of Islam (1974), H. A. R. Gibb suggested that the latter is an Arabian Nights story that was in all probability borne to Europe from the Black Sea by Italian merchants. In the sixteenth century, that great era of translation, were published the first English editions of the ‘Gesta Romanorum and of the Fables of Bidpai; the latter entitled The Morall Philosophie of Doni…englished out of Italian by Thomas North… (1570).’16 An entirely new line of intercourse between England and the East was established during the reign of Queen Elizabeth by the voyages of exploration, discovery, and trade, all features of the Renaissance. Moreover, since the fall of

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THE SHIPWRECKED SAILOR IN ARABIC AND WESTERN LITERATURE

Constantinople (1453), the Turks had been a mounting threat to Europe. Their dominance culminated in the reign of Suleiman the Magnificent (1520–66), and their continual advance upon Christendom was checked only by their enormous defeat at the battle of Lepanto (1571). As an expected outcome of these events and of the voyages referred to above, interest in oriental history and fiction was aroused throughout the century. In Painter’s Palace of Pleasure, for example, we can observe the stories of Mahomet and Irene, and Sultan Solyman.17 Interest in the Orient in the seventeenth century was revealed by the works of travellers, historians, translators of French heroic romances, dramatists, and orientalists. Knolles’s famous General History of the Turks appeared in 1603. Toward the middle of the century the pseudooriental heroic romances of ‘Mlle. de Scudéry’ and others were translated and achieved great recognition. Various heroic plays on similar subjects followed in rapid sequence after the Restoration. A few of these heroic romances were reprinted in the eighteenth century and thus form one link between the fictions of the two periods. Another significant link is the Latin translation by Edward Pococke, son of the Oxford orientalist, of the Arabian philosophical treatise ‘Hai Ebn Yockdhan’,18 which appeared first in English in the seventeenth century. Such was the oriental fiction that had come into England before 1700, and had moulded a more or less ambiguous and common imaginative acquaintance with the Orient. ‘The sudden advent of the Arabian Nights, full of the life, the colour, and the glamour of the East – even in the Gallicised version of Antoine Galland – naturally opened a new chapter in the history of oriental fiction in England.’ 19 The Arabian Nights Entertainment came to Britain from the East via France; indeed, the French translator and distinguished Orientalist Antoine Galland was one of the leading forgers of western European constructions of the East. Stories are not simple freight; in their passage from East to West ‘they are often radically altered to become hybrid commodities and the bearers of multiple new meanings.’ 20 Thus, through their ostensible depiction of life in the eastern harem, The Arabian Nights Entertainment could, amongst other things, provide a window for English readers into the precise culture of the eighteenth-century French life. The Arabian Nights was a source book for a great number of the eighteenth-century writers and it was also an ‘epochal event which triggered off the European fascination for the orientalia, and consequently the phenomenon of what is now termed Orientalism.’21

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Immediately after Galland’s version, Turkish and Persian collections of stories and tales were also translated by a French savant, Petis de la Croix, and revised by La Sage.22 Then, there appeared pseudo-oriental fabrications by another Frenchman, Gueullette. 23 The fact that these works came to England from French made them welcomed by the English reading public. In his book The Eighteenth Century: The Intellectual and Cultural Context of English Literature 1700–1789, James Sambrook24 points out that the English version of The Arabian Nights was sufficiently popular for a ‘chapbook version to be advertised’ as early as 1708, though it was not until 1788 that one of its stories (‘Aladdin and his Wonderful Lamp’) achieved the most permanent form of popular success in the form of pantomime. The Arabian Nights was imitated in such works as James Ridley’s lively Tales of the Genii (1764), and in the collections of Mogul Tales, Chinese Tales, Tartarian Tales, Peruvian Tales; even Pope considered writing some Turkish tales. Periodical essayists from Steele to Johnson fabricated oriental tales for moral instruction as well as for romantic excitement. The variety of ways in which orientalism could be employed is well indicated by the difference between Johnson’s fable on the vanity of human wishes, the History of Rasselas, Prince of Abisinnia (1759), and William Beckford’s exotic, erotic, and decadent History of the Caliph Vathek (1786). Johnson’s fascination with the East and its culture was never fortuitous; he showed a profound concern about the subtle and sophisticated subject of the East, and Rasselas constituted a part of his response to the intellectual situation of the Eastern culture. In this respect, we can claim that The Arabian Nights was a source of inspiration for Johnson’s Rasselas. Boswell remarked that ‘it «Rasselas» enjoys all the charms of oriental imagery, and all the forces and beauty of which the English language is capable.’ 25 Johnson’s interest in the culture of the East showed a great passion for all oriental things, which may be seen as a symptom of the cultural malaise suffered by eighteenth-century writers. Rasselas is a vivid picture of its writer’s admiration of the exotic East: luxuries, enchantment, escape; picturesque, Gothic; dates and coffee trade, and land of deep history and strategic geographic location that controls old great trade routes. In his ‘Narrative Transmigration: The Oriental Tale and the Novel in Eighteenth-Century Britain’, Ros Ballaster points out that the solid Protestant heroism of Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe and Samuel

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Richardson’s Pamela (1741) may seem unlikely places to look to show the importance of oriental fiction to the development of the novel in Britain. However, the use of narrative as ‘survival strategy’ in the aforementioned novels, the notion of the ‘otherness’ to be found within the self, especially in the act of consuming story, and the casting of epistolary as an unbalanced and unpredictable alienation of the self, ‘can all be traced to the influence of the oriental tale.’26 Oriental sources have been identified in The Life and Strange Surprising Adventures of Robinson Crusoe before now. In 1671, the first professor of Arabic at Oxford, Edward Pococke, supervised a translation by his son of Ibn ^ufayl’s story about the life of |ayy Bin Yaq&[n; the narrative concerns a shipwrecked infant who grows to spiritual and philosophical maturity on a desert island, and it seems to have appealed to late seventeenth- and eighteenth-century English readers because it confirmed the premises of John Locke’s philosophy. There has been a long controversy, as we will observe in the second chapter, over the question of whether this text provided one of the major sources for Defoe’s allegorical novel, and the present monograph will argue that it did. Other oriental influences on Defoe that have been observed include the mercantile and naval providential successes of Sinbad 27 in The Arabian Nights Entertainment. Regarding eighteenth-century Arabists: they also continued what had been pioneered during the seventeenth century. In this context, we can mention in particular Simon Ockley (1678–1720), the devout student of Edward Pococke, as the first to make the achievements of the Orientalists more accessible to the reading public. It is worth mentioning that he became Professor of Arabic at Cambridge in 1711.28 Ockley was the first scholar in England, perhaps in Europe, who discovered beauty in Arabic literature and history, and insisted in his writing and teaching on the aesthetic aspect and value of this civilisation. In his first book in Latin Introductio ad Linguas Orientales (Introduction to Oriental Languages), he burst out: ‘Shame on us, a nation famous throughout the world for our pursuit of learning, that we should have so few scholars dedicating themselves earnestly to these studies.’29 Ockley emphasised the value of Arabic for the new light it threw on Hebrew, and in order to be able to read the Qur’an, a book which has dominated a great part of the world. At that time Islam was still not fully comprehended by the west; to them, Islam was a religion of killing and violence. In his History of the Saracens,30 which is based

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in part on manuscripts he had studied at Oxford, Ockley tried to provide his readers with an appropriate account of the Arab civilisation’s achievement in an understandable form. The work, supplemented by a second volume in 1718, covered the first two centuries of the Caliphate from the death of Mu+ammad (peace and blessings of Allah be upon him), and, being based on firsthand knowledge of original sources, is the one major contribution to Arabic studies to emerge from England in the eighteenth century. It had a powerful impact on the young Gibbon, who later made good use of it in his Decline and Fall. 31 Most importantly, Ockley offered his readers an extensive sample of the outstanding achievement of the Arabic heritage when he produced a new English translation of Ibn ^ufayl’s philosophical novel |ayy Bin Yaq&[n, made directly from the Arabic (unlike previous versions, which had been made from the younger Pococke’s Latin). The Different Translations of |ayy Bin Yaq&[n As noted in the introduction, there are numerous translations of |ayy Bin Yaq&[n into European languages. We will here give an account of some of these, focusing especially on the Latin and English versions. European interest in Ibn ^ufayl’s story goes as far back as the fourteenth century when the text was translated into Hebrew, and supplied with a commentary by the Jew, Moses of Narbonne, in 1349.32 A Latin translation from the Hebrew version by Pico della Mirandola33 occurred in the second half of the fifteenth century. In 1671, the year when John Locke started on the first drafts of his Essay on Human Understanding, a bilingual text in Arabic and Latin was published at Oxford under the title Philosophus autodidactus «Self-taught philosopher», sive Epistola Abi Jaafar Tophail de Hai Ebn Yokdhan. The story portrayed the development of a child’s mind from a tabula rasa to that of an adult, in complete isolation from any given society. By means of sensory experience, reasoning, and contemplation, without any innate conceptions, |ayy discovers the natural and physical sciences, God, and morality. With perfect justification, Russell calls this work a case study for the main thesis of Locke’s Essay. The Arabic narrative was |ayy Bin Yaq&[n, written in the twelfth century by Ibn ^ufayl, the physician-philosopher under the Muwa++ids’ reign in Muslim Andalusia. This Latin version was directly translated from Arabic by Edward Pococke the eldest son under the supervision of his father, Dr Pococke, the first Laudian Professor of Arabic (1636) and

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the Regius Professor of Hebrew (1648), who provided the historical preface to the text. In fact, the whole project was conceived and directed by the father, who obtained the manuscript from which the translation was made during his five-year visit to Aleppo, wrote the introduction, and supervised the translation itself.34 There is no doubt that the time was opportune for his son, whom he saw as his successor in the Arabic Professorship, to create a place for himself, but there may have been other reasons for Pococke’s not publishing this outstanding work under his own name. It is worth mentioning that the elder Pococke had even started to make an English translation of the work himself in 1645. Whether he ever completed it is not clear, although it seems likely that he did.35 However, G. J. Toomer claims that ‘this did not happen, probably because of Pococke’s cautiousness.’ 36 During the Civil War and the Interregnum it would have been exceedingly irresponsible for one in Pococke’s precarious situation to publish a work which could easily be analysed as an assault on revelation and established religion. Even after the Restoration, when Puritanism had lost much of its influence in England, there would be many readers who might take a rather negative stand against such a book, especially if published in English; it is worth mentioning in this connection that during this period, Locke found it necessary to go into exile in Holland in 1683, only feeling able to return to England in the wake of the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688. Therefore, it is not strange that when Pococke brought |ayy Bin Yaq&[n to the public, he did so in his son’s name, and in Latin (so that it would appear as a scholarly, not a debatable book). In fact, Pococke’s preface to his son’s translation incorporates a note requesting the readers to make room for the differences between then and the time in which the work was written and to understand the work’s ideas according to their own interpretations.37 In his own argument concerning the author’s purposes, he argues that, after explaining how far reason alone can soar in ‘attaining knowledge of God, the work demonstrates that further progress is only possible by divine revelation.’ 38 This reading seems misleading, since to a contemporary English or non-English reader ‘divine revelation’ would stand for the word of God as embodied in the Scriptures, and Ibn ^ufayl meant nothing of the kind, but rather some kind of mystical spiritual union of the individual with the Divine. In this regard, Toomer interprets this deliberate ambiguity as an attempt by Pococke to provide a cover of belief for a treatise which he knew to be,

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if rightly understood, profoundly rebellious against ‘conventional morality’. I do not have space to go further into the influence of |ayy on Pococke’s contemporaries here, but I will examine its impact on Locke in particular in the third part of this chapter, which concerns the reception of |ayy in the East and the West. The dissemination of the Philosophus autodidactus, shining and glowing from Oxford to the Continent, is an amazing phenomenon. In clarifying the contributing factors to the reception of this translation, G. A. Russell admits that it was Dr Pococke’s strong reputation both at Oxford and abroad which attracted ‘attention to the book’.39 To record an idea of the extent of Dr Pococke’s domain of influence and the admiration in which he was held, one needs only to look at the correspondence reported by Pococke’s eighteenth-century biographer, and at the number of scholars who were interested in consulting him.40 Even his son’s translation has at times been mistakenly attributed to the father.41 Immediately after its publication, many copies of the Philosophus autodidactus were being sent to prominent figures abroad. For example, Francis Vernon, who was secretary to the British Embassy in Paris (1673–77) at the time, reported that ‘by the Doctor’s own Direction,’ he had delivered copies of ‘his son’s Book’ to a number of orientalists at the Sorbonne. He also observed that ‘all had read and approved it’.42 Not only key orientalists or ‘Sorbonists’ in Paris were interested, but also such influential figures as Melchisedec Thevenot (1620–92),43 who was in touch with most of the famous persons of his time, and John Wallis,44 Pococke’s friend, who had little skill in the Arabic language. In fact, it seems that Vernon ran out of extra copies to circulate. In a letter to Dr Pococke, he regrets that he ‘had not begged a copy for Thevenot,’ who was so clearly ‘much taken with the fancy of the piece’ and intended in return to send a gift of an Arabic manuscript of the life of ‘Ibn Tophail’.45 The great demand for the book can be, for example, witnessed in the fact that Francis Vernon, having run out of copies of the book, had even to part with ‘his own copy’ in order to present it, either on his own proposal or possibly upon request, to Christian Huyghens, the distinguished Dutch scientist who was in Paris at the time.46 In November 1671, the book had already been taken to Florence by Abbot Lorenzo] Panciatichi (1635–76), to make the ‘value of it known’ 47 there. By the end of December of the same year, the

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Philosophus autodidactus was being translated into Dutch in Holland. This anonymous translation from Edward’s Pococke’s Latin is entitled Het Leven van Hai ebn Yokdhan (Amsterdam, 1672) and went through several editions. ‘For example, when Pococke’s Latin was reprinted in 1700, a second edition of the Dutch translation followed in 1701, with the additional title of De Natuurlyke Wysgeer.’48 In their Arabic Studies in the Netherlands,49 Brugman and Schroder claim that it was Adrian Reland (1676–1718) who revised the Dutch translation (1701) of |ayy Bin Yaq&[n. There is no doubt that the efforts of the Oxford circle of Dr Pococke’s followers were responsible for the primary circulation of the book. In addition, the fact that it was also in Latin made it reachable by the educated elite, and allowed it to travel through Europe.50 These do not, however, explain the great popularity of the book, or, as Vernon related, why ‘they every where made Account of it.’ There were burning demands for the Philosophus autodidactus even of scholars who had come to Oxford from out of the country, to study with Dr Pococke. For example, Ferrand, at the Sorbonne, requested a copy from Ottsius, the Swiss scholar, on behalf of Francis Bosquet, the Bishop of Lodève and later of Montpellier, who ‘impatiently’51 waited for it. The bilingual publication of the Philosophus autodidactus, having attracted immediate attention, was followed by different retranslations into Dutch, English, and German, initially from Pococke’s Latin, but subsequently also from the original Arabic. 52 There were reprinted editions, summaries (in English and French), and similar ‘plagiarised’ versions which continued right into the next century.53 These editions evoked inspiring reactions not only from orientalists, but also from theologians and natural philosophers. George Keith the Quaker, arrested by the similarity of Ibn ^ufayl’s views to his own, though innocent of Arabic, immediately set about translating Pococke’s laboured Latin into noble English; his version, annotated in the spirit of Quakerism, appeared in 1674 under this long title: An account of the Oriental Philosophy, the Wisdom of some Renowned Men of the East; And particularly, the profound Wisdom of Hai Ebn Yaqdhan. Both in Natural and Divine things; which he attained without converse with Men (while he lived in an Island a solitary life, remote from all Men from his Infancy, till he arrived at such perfection). Writ originally in Arabick, by Abi Jaaphar Ebn Tuphail; And out of the Arabick translated into Latin

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by Edward Pococke, a student in Oxford; and now faithfully out of his Latin, Translated into English: For a general service.54 This translation bears significant relationship to the ‘Society of Friends’, or the Quaker movement. What Keith and other Quakers of the time found attractive in the book was the fact that Ibn ^ufayl’s ideas and conceptions were in complete harmony with those of the Quakers regarding the Inner Light and personal spiritual experiences. Keith observed that the ‘infidel author’ had been a good man, and far beyond many who had the name of Christians – a striking contrast to the prevailing intolerance against Islam – and added that he showed excellently how far the knowledge of a man, whose eyes are spiritually opened, different from that knowledge that men acquire simply by ‘hear-say or reading.’55 In other words, the personal communion with the Deity which the Quakers valued was beyond any rites or dogma. From this explanation we can say that Keith found a remarkable affinity between this Islamic text and his own form of Nonconformist Christianity where personal experience was put above the established dogma of the church. At the same time, he is acutely aware that such a connection might appear inherently incongruous to some of his readers. So he recommends them in his own introduction entitled ‘An Advertisement to the READER’ 56 to receive what is agreeable with them and pass by what is not. Keith’s translation seems to have coincided with his drafting of the formal Quaker manifesto, in co-operation with Robert Barclay (1648– 90), the highly influential Scottish apologist for the Society of Friends. 57 For Keith, Ibn ^ufayl’s story depicted exactly what he summarised as the Quaker ‘common notion’: ‘the sufficiency of inner light.’ The Quaker doctrines were put forth in 1675 as fifteen propositions, referred to as Theses Theologiae, a public discussion of which was held at Aberdeen in Scotland. Being prepared in defence of the ‘theological theses’, Robert Barclay’s Apologia was reprinted in Amsterdam in 1676.58 Not only did Keith influence Barclay in the creating of the Quaker manifesto; he also provided him with a ‘Quaker’ version par excellence of |ayy Bin Yaq&[n. The self-taught philosopher appears in the Apology – Propositions V and VI (par. xxvii) – as the perfect illustration of the experience of Inner Light without the means of the Holy Books. The assumption that George Ashwell’s English translation

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of The History of Hai Eb'n Yokdhan is remarkable for having provided Robert Barclay with a piece of evidence of his doctrine of Inner Light is completely incorrect. Ashwell’s translation from Pococke’s Latin version was published in 1686, which puts it after Keith’s translation in 1674 and twelve years after the publication of the Apology. Like Keith, Barclay leaves out the intellectual development of |ayy Bin Yaq&[n, and focuses in his summary only on the final achievement of the knowledge of God through personal experience. Although Barclay may have seen Pococke’s Latin publication, the main statement of his summary is taken almost faithfully from the ‘Advertisement to the READER’ in Keith’s version of the Philosophus autodidactus. Yet there is a book translated out of the Arabick, which gives an account of one Hai Ebn Yokdan, who without converse of man, living in an island alone, attained to such profound knowledge of God, as to have immediate converse with him, and to affirm that the best and most certain knowledge of God is not that which is attained by premisses premised and conclusions deduced, but that, which is enjoyed by conjunctiuon of the mind of man with the Supream Intellect, after the mind is purified from its corruptions and is separated from all bodily images and is gathered into a profound stillness.59 Entirely aware of his contribution to the Apology, Keith gives a description of it years later in his Standard of the Quakers examined, or an answer to the Apology of Robert Barclay. 60 By that time he had given up Quakerism, after a life spent in and out of jails with angry battles ranging from England to America (Pennsylvania), 61 where he most probably carried at least the summary of |ayy Bin Yaq&[n, if not a copy of his own translation. Providing the Quakers with a sound proof of the existence of the Inner Light, the Apology was highly influential in its original Latin as well as in its English, Dutch, French, German, and other versions. Equally important, the Apology was the most reliable and systematic statement of Quaker principles. According to it, the Quaker movement was defined as a religion of ‘inner light’, against both Roman Catholicism and Anglicanism, and conceived of as one where neither the church nor the Holy Scriptures could claim ultimate power or lead to salvation. Instead, salvation could be realised only through the Holy

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Spirit. |ayy Bin Yaq&[n served the Quakers’ principles simply because it was seen by them as the perfect manifestation of religion as an individual experience of ‘inner light’. In fact, the eighteenth-century English translation from the Arabic original by Simon Ockley (1678– 1720) was in reaction against the Quaker understanding and use of the Philosophus autodidactus as a representative for their ‘enthusiastic notions’.62 Inspired by Ibn ^ufayl’s story, George Ashwell, the vicar of Banbury, emulated Keith by putting Pococke into English with an epilogue of his own in 1686, under the title The History of Hai Eb’n Yockdhan; an Indian Prince: or the Self-Taught Philosopher. Being well known for his naturalist theology, Ashwell translated the book in support of his argument that nature is capable of leading us to God. In his introductory letter to the reader entitled Epistle Dedicatory, he suggests that his main concern is to instruct this ‘licentious Generation, whereof some are too loose in their principles and others in their practices.’ He elaborates by saying that the philosopher, whose life is described here, is capable of teaching them: …in such principles of Morality and Religion and such alone as the light of Nature discovers and which must needs be acknowledged for true by all those, who will judge and act as Men, according to the dictates of reason, and the Conclusions resulting from experience. And I heartily wish indeed, that all us were arrived even thus far, by the guidance of this light, and agreed in such principles as humane Reason teacheth out of the book of nature, which sets forth to our view God’s works of Creation and Providence. For this foundation being laid, there would be hopes of agreement about that, which the Supernatural light of Revelation discovers to our Faith, and superstructs thereupon.63 In his preface, he also declares that his version is not a slavish translation of the Latin rendering. Thus, he thinks that he can use more liberty in order to render it ‘more clear’ and provide the reader with greater profit and pleasure as well. To achieve this goal, Ashwell deletes Ibn ^ufayl’s introduction, the spontaneous generation version of |ayy’s birth, and the passage concerning the argument advanced by Ibn ^ufayl in support of his view that regions under the equinox enjoy the most temperate weather, for he perceived in them little or nothing

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contributing to the main ‘Design of the History’. To this translation, Ashwell adds an epilogue written by himself entitled Theologia Ruris, Sive Schola Scala Nature: Or; The Book of Nature, Leading us, by certain Degrees, to the Knowledge and Worship of the God of Nature.64 Even before Keith and Ashwell had made their translations, Pococke’s Latin had crossed the North Sea and gone into Dutch; as mentioned previously, Het Leeven van Hai Ebn Yokdhan appeared anonymously in Amsterdam in 1672. However, as regards its anonymity, we may note that it was ‘reported that Spinoza, the Dutch philosopher whose family settled in Holland as refugees from the Inquisition in Spain and Portugal, had either translated the Arabic novel or recommended it to be translated into Dutch.’65 Another anonymous translation (an English one) of |ayy Bin Yaq&[n appeared in 1696, bound with Robert Green’s Dorastus and Fawnia, and under the title The History of Josephus the Indian Prince. Here, most of the philosophical concepts of the original text were either omitted or summarised, with the outcome that |ayy Bin Yaq&[n was presented to its readers simply as an amusing story rendered in plain style and language. Now, Simon Ockley, however impatient and inexperienced he may have been in his promotion of things Arabic, was very far from hoping to be identified with the ideas of Keith, Barclay and Ashwell. In his preface to his translation, he tells his readers that he tried to translate it anew, because he is certain that since Keith’s and Ashwell’s renderings ‘were not made out of the Original Arabic, but out of Latin’, they must have mistaken the sense of the author in many places. His other reason for translating this work is to incline his friends who have not seen this book to a more favourable opinion of Arabic learning. In 1708, Simon Ockley’s version, made directly from the Arabic, was published in London (and was reprinted there in 1711, and again in Dublin in 1731) under the following long title: The Improvement of Human Reason, Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan: Written in Arabick above 500 Years a go, by Abu Jaafar Ebn Tufail, In which is demonstrated, By what Methods one may, by the meer Light of Nature, attain the knowledge of things Natural and Supernatural; more particularly the knowledge of God, and the Affairs of another life…Newly translated from the Original Arabick…With an Appendix, In which the Possibility

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of Man’s attaining the True knowledge of God, and things necessary to Salvation, without Instruction, is briefly consider’d.66 Ibn ^ufayl himself had written a short introduction to his treatise, in which he discusses briefly some of the concepts held by the leading Muslim advocates of mystic philosophy before his time, namely, alF[r[b\ (d.950), al-Ghaz[l\ (d.1111), and Ibn S\n[ (d.1037) and Ibn B[jja (d.1139). This is omitted not only from Ashwell’s translation, but also from the 1731 edition of Ockley’s version, and from the 1986 edition which was revised and introduced by A. S. Fulton, since – according to him – it contains nothing of general interest. 67 The bookseller’s (Edward Powell) preface to the reader in Ockley’s first edition (1708) summarises the author’s purpose and outlines the story with sufficient clearness. It states that the purpose is to show how humane reason may, by observation and experience, arrive at the knowledge of natural things, and from thence to Supernatural; particularly the Knowledge of God. Furthermore, in order to achieve this goal, he presumes an individual brought up by himself, where he was altogether fully deprived of any kind of instruction, but what he could get from his own observation and contemplation when living in isolation. Conant claims that one appealing depiction of the lonely hero’s manner of making himself live at ease on the island recalls Robinson Crusoe, and that since this book appeared only eleven years before Robinson Crusoe, ‘the passage may possibly have been seen by Defoe.’68 Thus, English readers of the eighteenth century had access to three remarkable English translations of Ibn ^ufayl’s |ayy Bin Yaq&[n in addition to Pococke’s Latin translation and the anonymous partial English translation entitled The History of Josephus the Indian Prince. If we make brief comparison between these different versions of Keith, Ashwell and Ockley, we can say that Keith was mainly concerned to use it as a support to the Quaker’s conception of Inner Light, and he was not so much concerned with producing an elegant work of art as providing his readers with a faithful and accurate rendering of Pococke’s Latin translation. It is also worth mentioning that Keith included all Ibn ^ufayl’s introductions to the story in his translation. Ashwell gave himself the freedom to render the Latin version into plain language, for his major concern was the pleasure of his readers. Unlike his predecessors, Ockley’s aim was to produce a neat, well-organised and as much as possible accurate piece of Arabic artistry. As suggested

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by Arberry, Ockley’s translation is ‘a fluent and on the whole very accurate piece of work’, and can hardly have failed to make a positive impression on his public. Large claims have now and then been advanced concerning its influence on eighteenth-century thought; particularly, it ‘has been argued, not implausibly, that the book was read by Daniel Defoe, and remembered when he came to picture Robison Crusoe as a speculative philosopher’.69 This suggestion will be analysed in detail in the forthcoming chapters of this monograph, especially when examining the textual evidence. The following extracts quoted below may well clarify how far the mentioned translators did succeed in achieving their aims:We will consider an extract from the Arabic text which illustrates |ayy’s unexpected discovery of the art of cooking, which runs as follows: ‫وكان من جملة ما ألقى فيھا على سبيل اإلختبار لقوتھا شيء من أصناف الحيوانات‬ ‫ فلما أنضجت ذالك الحيوان وسطع قتاره‬- ‫ كان قد ألقاه البحر إلى ساحله‬- ‫البحرية‬ 70 .‫ فاعتاد بذلك أكل اللحم‬,‫ فأكل منه شيئا ً فاستطابه‬،‫تحركت شھوته إليه‬ In Keith’s version, this passage turns out to be an ambiguous chain of relative clauses: Among other things which he did cast into (fire), for the trying of its strength, there were some of those animals which live in the sea, which the sea had cast upon the shore, which being roasted with the fire, and the smell of them rising up, his appetite was stirred up, so that he tasted somewhat of them; which when it was acceptable to him he accustomed himself to the eating of flesh…71 As an objective reader, I can say that Ashwell’s version seems much more interesting and amusing: And among other Experiments, wherewith he made trial of its strength, he put thereinto certain fishes which the sea had cast upon the shore; which being fried, and the steam thereof coming to his Nose, his Appetite was stirr’d up, and become quickened thereby, insomuch that he ventured to taste some part thereof; which when he found acceptable to his Palate, and agreeable to

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his Stomach, from thence Forward he accustomed himself to eat Flesh.72 If compared with the previous ones, Ockley’s extract is concise, smooth and elegant in style: Among other things which he put in to try its strength, he once flung in some Sea Animals which had been thrown ashore by the Water, and as soon as e’er he smelt the Steam, it rais’d his Appetite, so that he had a Mind to taste of them; which he did, and found them very agreeable, and from that time he began to use himself to the Eating of Flesh…73 Regarding modern translations of |ayy, mention can be made of J.M. Budd’s in 2000 74 and Lenn Evan Goodman’s in 2003.75 However, in my search for textual evidence, I will, of course, be examining the translation of Simon Ockley (1708). Reception of |ayy Bin Yaq&[n in the East and West After Pococke’s Latin translation of |ayy Bin Yaq&[n and the three subsequent translations into English by Keith, Ashwell and Simon Ockley, the book could hardly have escaped the reading public. Alexander Pope himself had a copy of Ockley’s translation and he kept referring to it whenever the occasion presented itself. To encourage kind treatment towards animals, he considered |ayy as an example to be followed: Every one knows how remarkable the Turks are for their humanity in this kind: I remember an Arabian Author, who has written a Treatise to show, how far a Man, supposed to have subsisted in a Desert island, without any instruction, or so much as the sight of any other Man, may by the pure Light of Nature, attain the knowledge of philosophy and virtue. One of the first things he makes him observe is that Universal Benevolence of Nature in the Protection and Preservation of its Creatures. In Imitation of which, the first Act of virtue he thinks his self-taught Philosopher would of course fall into is, to Relieve and Assist all the Animals about him in their Wants and Distresses.76

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Moreover, Pope regarded |ayy as the most appropriate model of the isolated natural man. In a letter dated 13 September 1719 and addressed to Lord Bathurst, Pope referred to |ayy, the self-taught philosopher, along with Alexander Selkirk, a Scottish sailor who had been exiled in October 1704 to one of the desert Juan Fernández Islands, and was rescued in February 1709 by Captain Woodes Rogers.77 In this letter, Pope tells Bathurst that he may address him as a very abstracted person, like Alexander Selkirk or the self-taught philosopher. This example illustrates the fact that |ayy Bin Yaq&[n was read, enjoyed, and made use of throughout the age. Because of its popularity and the relevance of its themes to the age, it never lacked readers. To start with, |ayy is a well-constructed and compact work. Its style is plain rather than figurative and free from ambiguous or inflated language,78 qualities that were dominant features of most of the oriental tales at the time but were not wholly acceptable to the European reader. In addition, what popularised the book for the Western readers was the fact that it, though written by a Muslim, provided no aggressive stand against any religious sect or group in any way. If we assume a reader who has no previous knowledge about the writer’s identity and consider that the book is devoid of Qur'anic verses and allusions, it would be extremely difficult for such a reader to decide to what religion the writer belonged. In terms of the philosophical notions of the text, we may note that |ayy’s experience is universal and timeless, and that it happened to have a well-known place in the argumentations of the time. As an embodiment of natural and revealed religion, |ayy Bin Yaq&[n achieved precedence over most of the tracts of the time, for the eighteenth century was an age that had a strong inclination to discuss such conceptions, and Ibn ^ufayl’s book is a striking example of a theory put into practice. Moreover, |ayy was one of the ‘natural men’ or ‘noble savages’ that were used to support the notion of natural religion. Analysing |ayy’s and Crusoe’s characters in the light of the noble savage concept will be assayed in the fifth chapter. However, concerning |ayy’s appeal to the age of ‘new philosophy’, Russell points out79 that philosophical considerations are not sufficient to clarify why an Islamic work from the medieval past should maintain such an overwhelming interest to become ‘literally a bestseller’ within a short period of time. Its success is particularly astonishing in an age which was also characterised, contrary to its label of ‘Enlightenment’,

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by unreasonable high waves of religious maltreatment and intolerance. In England, ‘Papists, Turks, and Mohammedans’ were indiscriminately lumped together as ‘atheists’ threatening both Church and State. 80 In spite of the fierce enmity to Islam as a ‘false’ religion, the passionate reception of an Arabic text which was not scriptural, nor specifically astronomical, or medical, defies all expectations. In addition, its prevalent influential force is also difficult to reconcile with the declining interest in Arabic at the time, in contrast to the fervent interest of the earlier decades. One might suggest that the answers must be clearly sought in the ideas of the text itself and their significance to the fundamental intellectual perspectives and concerns of the second half of the seventeenth century. Another significant reason behind the text’s popularity is its appeal to the mind as well as to the imagination, like John Donne’s metaphysical poetry. Regardless of the fact that some of its translators did sometimes focus on theological and spiritual notions at the expense of other equally significant elements, they nonetheless contributed in making the book accessible for readers who might discover different themes in it. After all, it is a philosophical novel that ‘might have served as a pattern for any novelist interested in the theme’,81 namely, the themes of isolation and how human reason can ascend from contemplation of the Inferior to knowledge of the Superior, two of the favourite themes of the time. From this perspective we can suggest that inter-cultural influences are always preceded by an already existing activity in the related field within the culture to be influenced, and that it is such an activity which stimulates the attraction factor without which no creative assimilation can ever happen. Such themes were destined to evoke a favourable response in England during the Enlightenment, and other scholars and literary figures were as taken by the book as Dr Pococke, Keith, Ashwell and Ockley had been. In his introduction to The World of Ibn ^ufayl, Lawrence Conrad claims that whether Daniel Defoe modelled his Robinson Crusoe on Ibn ^ufayl’s work is uncertain, ‘but John Locke and others probably knew it and were influenced by it.’ 82 This indication must lead us to examine the possible impact of the Latin translation on Locke. However, before moving on to Locke, I think it will be useful first to shed some light on the nature of the narrative of |ayy Bin Yaq&[n, as a kind of background to the argumentation. The Philosophus autodidactus is preceded by a philosophical introduction

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by Ibn ^ufayl, where he presents a critical review of the development of philosophy in Islamic Andalusia, acknowledges his intellectual indebtedness to al-F[r[b\, al-Ghaz[l\, and Ibn S\n[, and finally gives his aim in writing the book. The story itself is about the Alive (|ayy) Son (Bin) of the Awake One (Yaq&[n), who, cast upon a desert island in the Indian Ocean as an infant and nurtured by a gazelle, survives. He gradually learns by experience and his native intelligence to fend for himself. As the boy becomes a child, he is led by his acute observations and comparisons to question his identity and to find out why he is different from other animals around him. Unlike the lower animals, he becomes conscious of his being naked and unarmed with physical weapons of defence. He reflects over the situation and covers the lower parts of his body with leaves, arms himself with a stick, and thus comes to realise the superiority of his hands over the feet of animals. As he matures he starts to speculate about the nature of what he observes in the world, and about himself. The outcome is a unique account of how the boy, |ayy Bin Yaq&[n, grows to adulthood and intellectual maturity by the use of observation, experience, and the innate power of reason. Depending only on his own efforts, he progressively discovers the natural and the physical sciences, as well as the main truths of philosophy. In the process, |ayy gains not only a systematic mastery of scientific principles, but also an awareness of God, the Creator, as the embodiment of perfection and complete knowledge. With this awareness comes morality and theology without any assistance from outside. |ayy thus reaches the ultimate meaning of human existence which distinguishes man from animals. Ultimately he achieves, if only momentarily, a kind of mystical union with the divine. With the chance and sudden arrival of Abs[l83 from a neighbouring inhabited island, who seeks perfection in solitude, |ayy, the child of nature, learns about man, society, language and religious institutions.84 To his amazement, Abs[l finds out that what was taught through revealed religion, |ayy had discovered by himself in a pure and more perfect abstract form. In this regard, Ibn ^ufayl avoids referring specifically to Islam, mentioning only ‘they say that in an Island not far from that where Hayy Ibn Yaqzan was born (according to one of the two different Accounts of his birth) there had arrived one of those good Sects founded by some of the ancient Prophets (upon whom the blessings of God!)’,85 which could equally well apply to Christianity.

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|ayy wishes to preach to the people on Abs[l’s island a more rational understanding of the revealed truths of their religion, which seem to him to have been corrupted by anthropomorphic symbolism and distorted by tangible images. Abs[l takes |ayy back home with him, but there |ayy finds, to his dismay, that most men are governed not by reason but by their appetites, and the restraints of government and traditional religion are needed to maintain a semblance of civility. He endeavours hard to enlighten the masses through pure concepts. Unfortunately, his attempt is a complete failure. However, through his experience, |ayy achieves insight into the nature of men, who seem far from the perfect, reasonable creatures he had imagined. They are egocentric and enthused by self-indulgence. They respond only to emotional persuasion, not to reason. He concludes that in society men need the Law for the social control of their conduct, and that religion provides this necessary fixed authority. In fact, for the majority of men, revealed religion is their only source of Truth and Morality. With this insight, |ayy returns in disgust, together with Abs[l, who has become his disciple, to his island and a life of contemplation.86 This brief summary can provide us with a simple idea of Ibn ^ufayl’s masterly and subtle narrative, which has no single obvious moral, but which can be read and interpreted in different ways by differently biased individuals. However, whatever one’s tendencies, it is hard not to see it as threatening established religion whether Islam or Christianity, with its adoration of individual reason and refusal of revelation (whether through prophets or inspired books) except as a means of keeping the multitude in line. It is not astonishing that the original work was condemned by Muslim theologians, and its European translations by Christian preachers. However, Pococke’s work struck chords which resonated in contemporary intellectual and religious movements. The narrative is not simply a medieval conceptual argumentation, but a perfectly comprehensible story. More significantly, it introduces a new theory of the sources and nature of human apprehension. The writer explains in detail how experience through the senses begins a process of intellectual growth which progressively transforms the blank mind of the infant into the subtle complexity of a grown-up intellect. Ibn ^ufayl is also concerned to show that such an individual as |ayy can surpass the rational realm, crossing over to a mystical state that furnishes him with a vision of the Supernatural. In addition, the work

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functions as a kind of philosophical primer that can serve to ‘introduce neophytes to basic philosophical concepts through the story of their spontaneous’87 discovery by a single individual. From the above, we can realise how the Latin translation of |ayy could have spread with such amazing speed on the Continent; how its thematic components would have served as an integral focal point to some of the key controversial topics of seventeenth-century argumentations. These argumentations were concerned with the question of whether the concept of God was innately provided by or derived from rational considerations. They paid much attention to the concept of the ‘law of nature’ and of ‘natural religion’, with its connotations for morality. They regarded the function of religion as a necessary support for social control and harmony. In fact, the Philosophus autodidactus was received and apprehended as an incarnation of these concepts. More importantly, the substance of the story offered strong support for the Lockean belief in the mind as a tabula rasa, where ideas are attained by means of sensory feeling and thinking, as opposed to the Cartesian belief in their innateness. In the light of this background, we can now move to Locke and scrutinise to what extent he was familiar with this story and possibly influenced by it. In the same year as the publication of Philosophus autodidactus, a famous discussion took place between Locke and a number of his friends at Exeter House in London, in which the concept of ‘human understanding’ was raised. Years later, in an attempt to remember the circumstances of his writing of the Essay, 88 Locke refers enthusiastically to this occasion and indicates that it was started by ‘chance’ on a ‘subject he had never before considered’. In this regard, James Tyrell, the grandson of Bishop Usher, who was one of those six friends present at the Exeter meeting, notes that the discourse on the occasion when Locke first raised the issue of human understanding was about ‘principles of morality and revealed religion’. If Locke had never before considered the subject, then the question is what prompted the concept of human understanding and what could have brought about the particular discussion? One here might agree with Russell’s suggestion that the chance factor seems weak and may not be convincing. Then an alternative possibility is that the debate was directly motivated by the participants’ knowledge of the recently published Philosophus autodidactus and that Locke was aware of the book and its content.

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At the time of the writing of the early drafts of the Essay, Locke was also working part-time in Oxford.89 If the reputation of a book issuing from Oxford extended throughout the Continent, it is reasonable to assume that it would have been well-known in its place of origin. The academic life of the University brought the lecturers into daily contact through meetings, lectures, correspondences, societies and clubs. In such an environment, the transmission of any book would have been immediate, especially when reviewed in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society.90 We know from the correspondence between the fellows of the Royal Society, and in particular that of Oldenburg, that the book and its fame out of the country was known, not only to Vernon, a Fellow of the Royal Society, but also to others such as John Wallis, the Savilian Professor of Geometry, 91 who taught Locke as an undergraduate. Consequently, on these grounds alone, it is difficult to say that Locke, who had been elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1668, could have remained unaware of the book. It is also worth noting that during the publication of the Philosophus autodidactus, the Pocockes, both father and son, were at Christ Church, Oxford – the most powerful and influential college of the University. We have seen that Dr Edward Pococke, being the most distinguished orientalist of the time in England, held the chairs of both Arabic and Hebrew. His eldest son Edward Pococke, the translator, had received both his B.A. and M.A. degrees at Christ Church, where he had studied Hebrew as well as Latin and Greek. It was also the same college where Locke had been both a student and a lecturer. Pococke is also considered by most of Locke’s biographers, including H. R. F. Bourne,92 as the teacher who influenced him most in his early years at Oxford, and to whose lectures Locke paid a great deal of attention and admiration. In such a close-knit group, it would be unreasonable to suppose anyone could be ignorant of a publication overseen by Dr Pococke, especially if, like Locke, they were associated both with the College and with Dr Pococke himself. Regarding Locke’s attitude to the teaching and importance of ‘oriental languages’, it is significant that of all his teachers, the one he ‘most revered’ should have been Dr Edward Pococke. Obviously, Locke was among those who were privileged to have an intimate acquaintance with Pococke. They both seemed to share the same simplicity and nobility of temperament, and perhaps, as suggested by Bourne, Locke learnt something more and better than Hebrew and

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Arabic from him. In fact, when writing a biography of Dr Pococke, Locke was approached by Humfry Smith, Vicar of Dartmouth, on the grounds of his having been informed that Locke had for several years been intimately acquainted with Dr Pococke. Locke’s contribution, an eleven-page ‘long obituary’ letter, preserved in the Lovelace collection, ‘leaves no doubt that a close relationship existed between Dr. Pococke and Locke.’ 93 In fact, this is further emphasised by Humfry Smith’s acknowledgment that of the various letters he received from Pococke’s acquaintances, he gained ‘a clearer and more distinct Idea of his great Worth’ from Locke’s ‘than from any other hand’. Even more significantly, Locke was not only a lifelong friend of Dr Pococke, but also tutor to his eldest son, the future translator of the Philosophus autodidactus. While Edward was taking his B.A. between 1661 and 1664, Locke was still at Christ Church lecturing in Greek and Rhetoric. Although we have no statement of what Locke thought of Edward, Locke’s elegiac letter confirms his close relationship with Dr Pococke. We can also assume that it reflects an intimate knowledge of Dr Pococke’s scholarly activities, his translation projects and publications, and his unfulfilled plans. Above all, it symbolises Locke’s deep affection, and boundless admiration for Pococke, whom he regards as a man of deepest humility, and greatest temperance. Indeed, such a detailed knowledge indicates that Locke spent a great deal of time in conversation with Dr Pococke. With such a strong bond, it seems unthinkable for Locke not to have known of the publication of his admired friend and mentor, or of the translation of his pupil. Furthermore, the Latin title is not a straight or literal translation of the Arabic original, |ayy Bin Yaq&[n (Alive, Son of Awake). Since Dr Pococke’s unfinished English translation does not bear it either, one is persuaded to claim that the title, Philosophus autodidactus (the Selftaught Philosopher), might have been stimulated by Locke himself. Russell observes that it would have been unusual for Dr Pococke, a theologian, and Locke, a philosopher – who ‘learnt much in conversation’ – not to have discussed the implications of such a work for ‘Morality’ and ‘Revealed Religion’.94 Moreover, at the time when Dr Pococke was circulating copies of his son’s translation, Locke was at Oxford, starting on the second draft of the Essay. Being very much interested in books, Locke would have been offered a copy either by his past student or by his admired friend. On the grounds of all the evidence mentioned, I can conclude that not only must Locke have

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known the work; he must also have been closely familiar with the growth of the entire translation task. Thus, the period (1667–71) during which Locke first started to consider the ‘problems’ of the Essay, and put them in writing for the first time, coincides precisely with that of the translation, publication and spread of the Philosophus autodidactus by the Pocockes. In terms of |ayy’s reception in the West, we can also add that interest in the story among scholars of Arabic and Islamic studies received a dramatic increase in momentum with the contribution of Leon Gauthier, who prepared a critical edition of the Arabic text with a French translation in 1900.95 A few years later, he published a small monograph on Ibn ^ufayl, and in 1936 he returned to the text and published a revised second edition and French translation ‘which still remain the best Arabic text and French version available for study.’96 More recent research has also produced various significant articles and one extended study in English,97 while translations have continued to appear. It is worth noting that the text is now available in Czech, Italian, Persian, Polish, Russian, and Turkish, and that recent versions in languages which have long had translations are available; of these the abundantly annotated English rendering by Lenn Evan Goodman,98 the recent English translation by J. M. Budd, 99 and the critically wellregarded Dutch translation by Remke Kruk100 are the most outstanding achievements. Needless to say, there is perhaps no work in all of classical Arabic literature that has been published so many times and translated into so many other different languages, apart from the Thousand and One Nights and of course the Holy Qur’an. Concerning its reception in the East, it is noteworthy that Ibn ^ufayl’s |ayy Bin Yaq&[n has been received by the Muslim public with interest and admiration since its author’s own time, and an impressive echo of its appeal and transmission can be witnessed in the fact that a manuscript of it has now emerged in Kuala Lumpur,101 at the far end of the Islamic world. Sustained modern scholarly interest in the text has developed more recently, particularly since the end of the Second World War, leading to a number of useful monographs and articles. Some of these analyse, for example, the literary aspects of the work and its place within the cultural and political life under the Muwa++ids, and thus serve as an important counterbalance to the Western interest in |ayy mostly as a philosophical text. As Fedwa Malti-Douglas comments,102 there has also been a lively popularising

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aspect to the reception of the text in the Arab world, represented by television specials and films. The last several decades have also witnessed a dramatic development in the state of scholarly knowledge of the western Maghrib and alAndalus in medieval Islamic times, manifested not only in terms of new and modified better editions, but also in the wide range of current research and interest in such previously underdeveloped concepts as @]fism, the culture of the Mur[bi% (Almoravid) and Muwa++id (Almohad) eras, and the history of the sciences and medicine. Quite expectedly, deeper examination has brought to attention cultural, social, economic, political, and intellectual examples of considerable richness and magnitude. Nevertheless, little attention has been given to the re-evaluation of Ibn ^ufayl and his work against this wider cultural background, and various basic mistakes have constantly appeared in scholarly studies. For example, according to Conrad, it is still declared in practically every discussion of Ibn ^ufayl that he was the vizier of the Muwa++id caliph Ab] Ya