About this text: The Tale of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān

حي بن يقظان

Ibn Ṭufayl (d. 581/1185)

The child raised by a gazelle who reasons his way to God: part one, to the burial of the gazelle.

On the Platonic Current: Ibn Ṭufayl

In the reader

85 passages · ~60 min · audio · 7 Quran quotations

5,946 words

Audio: Arabic and English
Published translation: none (the English is AI, marked as such)
Quran quotations: 7

Not yet: commentaries.

Read it →Grammar practice Study sheet (print)

Difficulty

much rare vocabulary

Lexical difficulty, from the words themselves: how many roots fall outside the 1,000 most frequent in the Quran, how long the words are, and how much of the vowelling had to be supplied by AI. It says how unfamiliar the vocabulary is, not how deep the ideas are.

Rare roots 15% · mean word length 4.2 letters · AI vowelling on 100% of words

Themes & resonances AI

What the text is about, and what it connects to across the history of thought. Every connection says what kind of claim it is: a documented lineage, a shared source, a resonance with no influence claimed, or a contrast. Mapped by AI; references are shown only once checked. Across the library

Themes

The solitary knower who reasons from natureالمتوحدal-mutawaḥḥidroot وحد
The body as a house its dweller has leftجسدjasadroot جسد
The heart as the seat of the governing spiritقلبqalbroot قلب
Bodies as mirrors of different polish for the one light and spiritمرآةmirʾāroot رأي
Light, heat and the overflowing spiritضوءḍawʾroot ضوأ
Tasting and demonstrationذوقdhawqroot ذوق
Two births: from a chest on the sea, or from balanced clayتولدtawalludroot ولد
The temperate equator and the sun overheadشمسshamsroot شمس
The blind man who knew the colours by their namesبصرbaṣarroot بصر

What each theme is here

The solitary knower who reasons from nature. A child with no teacher and no language works out, by observation and inference alone, what the organs are for and what gives a body life, and the prologue places this beside Ibn Bājja's solitary philosopher.
The body as a house its dweller has left. At the gazelle's death Ḥayy finds the body intact yet idle, and concludes that what he loved as his mother was the thing that lived in it and has gone.
The heart as the seat of the governing spirit. Both the embryology and the dissection lead to the heart, and to its empty left chamber, as the place where the governing spirit dwelt.
Bodies as mirrors of different polish for the one light and spirit. Air, dull bodies and polished mirrors receive the sun's light in degrees, as creatures receive the spirit from God's command, and the human being alone takes on its form, as in the hadith of Adam made in His form.
Light, heat and the overflowing spirit. Ibn Ṭufayl argues that the sun heats the earth only by illuminating it, and uses the same physics of light to picture the spirit that ever overflows upon all things.
Tasting and demonstration. The prologue separates what speculative thinkers reach by syllogism from what the friends of God witness by tasting, using the figure of a man born blind who later gains his sight.
Two births: from a chest on the sea, or from balanced clay. The tale gives two origins for Ḥayy: a secret birth followed by a casting into the sea, or spontaneous generation from clay of perfectly balanced temperament on an equatorial island.
The temperate equator and the sun overhead. A demonstration from natural science and astronomy argues that the equator is the most temperate place on earth, which makes a birth without parents there possible.
The blind man who knew the colours by their names. Knowing by description and knowing by sight agree in content and differ in clarity and delight, which is how Ibn Ṭufayl ranks the philosopher and the saint.

Connections

Lineage 5

Documented transmission: a chain of reading, teaching, translation or citation, grounded in a verified reference or in the later text itself.

Ibn Sīnā, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān and the 'Oriental wisdom' (ḥikma mashriqiyya); al-Ishārāt wa-l-tanbīhāt on the stations of the knowersFalsafa (Arabic philosophy) · firm
Ibn Ṭufayl takes the names Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, Absāl and Salāmān from Ibn Sīnā, says he is answering a question about Ibn Sīnā's Oriental wisdom, and quotes his account of the flashes of light that become a steady companionship.
Carried byحي بن يقظانḤayy ibn Yaqẓān“the name of the sage, Alive son of Awake”
In the library:Ḥayy (Ibn Sīnā) ¶1 Ḥayy (Ibn Sīnā) ¶22
- Henry Corbin, Avicenne et le récit visionnaire (1954): Studies Ibn Sīnā's visionary recitals, including Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, and their later reworkings.
- Lenn Evan Goodman, Ibn Tufayl's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale (1972): Annotated translation that discusses Ibn Ṭufayl's debt to Ibn Sīnā and the sources named in the prologue.
al-Ghazālī, Mishkāt al-anwār (The Niche of Lights): the ecstatic sayings of the knowers and the last class of the veiledSufism · firm
Ibn Ṭufayl cites the Niche by name, discusses its closing section on those who have arrived, and repeats the saying 'Glory be to me' that al-Ghazālī treats as spoken in a state resembling union.
Carried byسبحانيsubḥānīroot سبح“Glory be to me”
In the library:Mishkāt al-anwār ¶51 Mishkāt al-anwār ¶52 Mishkāt al-anwār ¶53 Path: Unification: the soul at peace
- Lenn Evan Goodman, Ibn Tufayl's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale (1972): Annotated translation that comments on Ibn Ṭufayl's reading of al-Ghazālī, including the Mishkāt.
Ibn Bājja (Ibn al-Ṣāʾigh), Tadbīr al-mutawaḥḥid (The Regime of the Solitary) and the Epistle on ConjunctionFalsafa (Arabic philosophy) · firm
Ibn Ṭufayl quotes Ibn Bājja on conjunction (ittiṣāl) with the active intellect and ranks his speculative attainment below the witnessed state of the saints; Ḥayy's solitude on the island gives narrative form to Ibn Bājja's solitary knower.
Carried byاتصالittiṣālroot وصل“conjunction”
- Lawrence I. Conrad (ed.), The World of Ibn Ṭufayl: Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān (1996): Collected studies on the intellectual setting of the tale in al-Andalus, including its relation to Ibn Bājja.
The Quran: Moses cast into the sea in a chest (Q 20:39) and the raven that shows Cain how to bury his brother (Q 5:31)Quran and hadith · probable
The mother who casts her son in a chest into the water entrusting him to God, and the raven that buries its fellow and teaches Ḥayy to bury the gazelle, retell two Quranic scenes; the litany of the Highest Circuit prays with a phrase from the same verse about Moses.
Carried byتابوتtābūt“the chest cast into the water; the raven that digs”
In the library:al-Dawr al-aʿlā ¶6
- Lenn Evan Goodman, Ibn Tufayl's Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale (1972): Annotated translation whose commentary traces the tale's scriptural and philosophical allusions.
Edward Pococke, Philosophus autodidactus (Latin, 1671), and the English versions that followedEarly modern philosophy · firm
The Arabic text was printed at Oxford with a Latin translation in 1671 and put into English several times, and it was read among seventeenth-century English and Dutch thinkers interested in natural reason and the inner light.
Carried by“the self-taught philosopher”
- G. A. Russell (ed.), The 'Arabick' Interest of the Natural Philosophers in Seventeenth-Century England (1994): Includes study of the Latin and English translations of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān and their readers.
- Avner Ben-Zaken, Reading Hayy Ibn-Yaqzan: A Cross-Cultural History of Autodidacticism (2011): Traces the reading and translation of the tale from al-Andalus to early modern Europe.

Shared source 1

Both draw on a common ancestor by different routes; grounded like a lineage.

Suhrawardī, al-Ghurba al-gharbiyya (The Occidental Exile)Ishraqi philosophy · firm
Suhrawardī in the east and Ibn Ṭufayl in the west, at almost the same moment, each wrote a new tale in answer to Ibn Sīnā's Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān; there is no sign that either knew the other's work.
Common ancestor: Ibn Sīnā's Recital of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān
Carried by“rewriting Ibn Sīnā's recital”
In the library:al-Ghurba al-gharbiyya ¶1 al-Ghurba al-gharbiyya ¶44 Path: The fall and the return of the soul
- Henry Corbin, Avicenne et le récit visionnaire (1954): Discusses Suhrawardī's Recital of Occidental Exile as a continuation of Ibn Sīnā's Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān.

Resonance, not influence 7

Resonance, not influence: a structural or thematic likeness. No influence is claimed.

Ibn Sīnā's 'floating man' and Suhrawardī's argument that one is never unaware of oneselfFalsafa (Arabic philosophy) · probable
Ḥayy imagines each limb, even his head, taken away and finds he could do without it, though not without the thing in his chest; Suhrawardī's Temples argue that one knows one's self while unaware of any bodily part. Both separate the self from the body by an exercise of imagination.
Carried by“imagining the body away”
In the library:Hayākil al-nūr ¶3
Ibn ʿArabī, Fuṣūṣ al-ḥikam, Ringstone of Adam: Adam as the polish of the world's mirrorAkbarian tradition (after Ibn Arabi) · probable
Both authors, Andalusians of neighbouring generations, read the hadith 'God created Adam in His form' through a mirror: for Ibn Ṭufayl the polished body that reproduces the sun's form, for Ibn ʿArabī the human being as the polish in which the Real sees Itself. The figure is shared; no reading of one by the other is claimed.
Carried byمرآةmirʾāroot رأي“mirror; Adam in His form”
In the library:Faṣṣ Ādam ¶3 Mishkāt al-anwār ¶93 Path: The mirror
Plotinus, Ennead VI.9: a grasp of the One that is not by way of knowledgeNeoplatonism · probable
Plotinus says our awareness of the One comes by a presence superior to knowledge; Ibn Ṭufayl says the saints' state differs from demonstration by witnessing and tasting while contradicting nothing demonstration found. The routes by which Neoplatonic ideas reached him are indirect and are not traced here.
Carried byذوقdhawqroot ذوقπαρουσίαparousia“presence beyond knowledge”
In the library:Ennead VI.9, ch. 4
Ibn al-Nafīs, al-Risāla al-Kāmiliyya (Theologus Autodidactus)Falsafa (Arabic philosophy) · suggestive
About a century later the Damascene physician told of a man generated on a desert island who reasons his way to religion and prophecy. Some have read it as an answer to Ibn Ṭufayl; that link has been proposed and has not been established.
Carried by“the island-born autodidact”
- Max Meyerhof and Joseph Schacht, The Theologus Autodidactus of Ibn al-Nafīs (1968): Edition and translation of Ibn al-Nafīs's tale.
William Molyneux's question to John Locke: would a man born blind, given sight, know the cube from the sphere? (Locke, Essay concerning Human Understanding, 1694 edition)Early modern philosophy · probable
Both use a man born blind who gains sight to test how knowledge by description relates to knowledge by seeing. Ibn Ṭufayl's blind man finds nothing unfamiliar, only more clarity; Molyneux and Locke answered that he would not at first recognise the shapes.
Carried by“the man born blind given sight”
Daniel Defoe, Robinson Crusoe (1719), and Rousseau, Émile (1762)Modern literature · suggestive
Island solitude and an education drawn from things and their uses recur in these works; a direct debt to Ibn Ṭufayl has been suggested for both and has not been demonstrated, so the likeness is shown as resonance.
Carried by“the solitary island; education by nature”
Ibn Sīnā, the Ode on the Soul: the dove that descends and dwells among the ruinsArabic poetry · probable
Ḥayy concludes that the dweller has left an intact house and will not return to its ruin; Ibn Sīnā's ode tells of a soul come down into the body that weeps for its first dwelling and departs. One is an inference from a corpse, the other a lyric of exile.
Carried by“the dweller and the house”
In the library:al-ʿAyniyya ¶13 Path: The fall and the return of the soul

Contrast 2

An instructive opposite: the difference teaches something about both.

Jean Itard's reports on Victor, the wild boy of Aveyron (1801)Modern scholarship · firm
Ḥayy, raised by a gazelle, imitates animal cries and goes on to anatomy and metaphysics unaided; the real child found in the woods of Aveyron never acquired speech and made little progress in abstract thought despite years of teaching.
Carried by“the child raised without human society”
René Descartes, Les passions de l'âme (1649): the pineal gland as the seat of the soulEarly modern philosophy · probable
Ḥayy reasons that what governs the body must sit in a single central, well-guarded organ and finds it in the heart's empty left chamber; Descartes, by a similar argument from singleness and centrality, placed the soul's principal seat in a small gland in the brain. The arguments match and the organs differ.
Carried byقلبqalbroot قلب“the seat of the soul”

Claude (opus) via Claude Code, headless, no web access, 2026-09-28. A reference with a check was found and checked with a web search.

Versions

16 layers, each with its licence

The original

Amīn's edition (Cairo 1952)Aḥmad Amīn · 1952Public domain

By: Aḥmad Amīn (editor) · 1952
Source:: Aḥmad Amīn (ed.), Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān li-Ibn Sīnā wa-Ibn Ṭufayl wa-l-Suhrawardī (Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1952; Dhakhāʾir al-ʿArab 8), Ibn Ṭufayl at printed pp. 55–128, our part pp. 55–77, headed «حي بن يقظان عند ابن طفيل»; the archive.org copy is a later free reprint (Dār al-Madā for al-Ittiḥād) · link ↗
In the reader:: The medieval text only, pp. 55–77: the introduction and the first part of the tale (85 passages, 5,947 words), to the burial of the gazelle
Licence:: The medieval text is public domain. Amīn (d. 1954) is out of copyright in Egypt; his own editorial matter (footnotes, headings, numbering) remains protected in the US and is not used
Notes: Amīn's source is not stated (his preface names the Egyptian prints and the Damascus print of 1935); his text agrees with the readings Gauthier reports for MSS B, P and the prints αβγ (the vulgate). Almost unvowelled (tanwīn, a few shaddas). Excluded as editorial: his footnotes, section headings, numbering and *** separators. Stops at the end of p. 77, before the discovery of fire. Gauthier's first edition (Algiers 1900, public domain) was searched for and not found online.

Gauthier's critical edition (2nd ed., 1936)Léon Gauthier · 1936Copyrighted: cited only

By: Léon Gauthier (editor) · 1936
Source:: Léon Gauthier (ed. & tr.), Hayy ben Yaqdhân, roman philosophique d'Ibn Thofaïl. Texte arabe avec les variantes des manuscrits et de plusieurs éditions et traduction française, 2nd ed., revised (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1936; Institut d'Études Orientales d'Alger III), Arabic pp. 1–47 for our part
In the reader:: Counts, and single readings cited in the notes: 336 difference units (54 orthographic, 282 substantive)
Licence:: Gauthier d. 1949: public domain in France/EU since 2020, but in the US probably protected until 2031. Compared privately; cited only
Notes: A critical edition from MSS A (Algiers, 1180/1768), B, C, L, P and the prints α β γ. Our private consonantal transcription of its main text was aligned word by word with ours (difflib, on a normalised skeleton). Of the 282 substantive units: 186 replacements, 67 places where Amīn has words Gauthier lacks (108 words, the doxology included), 29 where Gauthier has words Amīn lacks (218 words, c. 190 of them the lacuna after passage 10). No reading of Amīn was replaced by Gauthier's, except obvious misprints.

OpenITI digital text (Shamela)OpenITI · RELEASE v2025.1.9Open licence

By: OpenITI (digital text, from al-Maktaba al-Shāmila) · RELEASE v2025.1.9
Source:: OpenITI 0581IbnTufayl.HayyIbnYaqzan.Shamela0009734-ara1 (RELEASE v2025.1.9), edition not stated; lacks the introduction (starts at «ذكر سلفنا الصالح»)
In the reader:: Not shown
Licence:: OpenITI corpus, CC BY-NC-SA 4.0
Notes: Poor in places; used only as a second check on our reading of Amīn in the narrative.

Our edition

Our transcription of Amīn's textUNVERIFIED, Claude (AI) · 2026-09-28AIOur work

By: UNVERIFIED (transcriber); Claude (AI) (editorial decisions (misprints, the lacuna, doubtful readings; provisional)) · 2026-09-28
Source:: data/sources/hayy-tufayl-base.json; text record §§3–5
In the reader:: In full; every change and doubtful reading listed
Licence:: Ours
Made by:: Claude (Opus; exact version not recorded), 2026-09-28 (the decisions in the text record §4 are marked 'AI (Claude)'; first commit of data/sources/hayy-tufayl-base.json)
Notes: Transcribed from 250-dpi page images (the OCR was too poor to use as a typing layer), doubtful spots at 450 dpi; proofread against OpenITI and the OCR, then against Gauthier's page images with his apparatus (one typing error fixed: بمعاليق, p. 75). 12 misprints corrected (each a letter-level slip supported by Gauthier or the vulgate); 5 words in Amīn's parentheses kept without the marks; the lacuna after passage 10 (c. 190 words in Gauthier) recorded, not supplied; 11 doubtful readings left as printed. The doxology (passage 0) kept as printed, flagged. Quotations: 5 Quran quotations replaced with the verbatim Tanzil Uthmani text (96:4–5, 4:113, 12:111, 50:37, 76:1); 11 allusions, 1 hadith, poetry, sayings and prose quotations (Ibn Sīnā, Ibn Bājja, al-Ghazālī) recorded and left as printed; two verse attributions still to verify.
UNVERIFIED:: The text record does not say whether Amīn's text was transcribed by a person or by AI (the editorial decisions are marked AI).

Published translations

Ockley's translation, revised by FultonSimon Ockley, A. S. Fulton · 1708; revised 1929PD-US

By: Simon Ockley (translator (1708)); A. S. Fulton (reviser (1929)) · 1708; revised 1929
Source:: Simon Ockley (tr., 1708), The History of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, revised with an introduction by A. S. Fulton (New York: Frederick A. Stokes; London, 1929), pp. 37–53; OCR of a library copy, not corrected, cut to our passages (data/sources/hayy-tufayl-tr-ockley.json, scripts/recitals/tufayl_translations.py)
In the reader:: Quoted in the triangulation notes ("Translators differ"), passages 32–84 only (Fulton omits Ibn Ṭufayl's introduction)
Licence:: Public domain in the US (published 1929); Ockley's 1708 text public domain everywhere
Notes: A passage boundary may be off by a sentence.

Gauthier's French translation (1936)Léon Gauthier · 1936Copyrighted: cited only

By: Léon Gauthier (translator) · 1936
Source:: Léon Gauthier, Hayy ben Yaqdhân, roman philosophique d'Ibn Thofaïl … et traduction française, 2nd ed. (Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1936), French translation
In the reader:: Not shown; quoted at most four words in the triangulation notes
Licence:: In copyright (private study layer); cited only
Notes: Used in the triangulation (passages 0–84). The 1900 translation (public domain) was not found.

AI layers

Vowelling (supplied vowels)Claude (AI) · 2026-09-28AIOur work

By: Claude (AI) (vowelling) · 2026-09-28
In the reader:: The vowel marks the AI supplied are shown in amber (per-character mask: 't' from the source, 'a' from AI)
Licence:: Ours; marked AI
Made by:: Claude (Opus; exact version not recorded), 2026-09-28 (first commit of app/src/data/hayy-tufayl.json (scripts/recitals/prepare.py hayy-tufayl: headless Claude Code, Opus; letters verified unchanged))
Notes: Amīn's print is almost unvowelled: prepare.py supplied AI vowels to all 85 passages (3 workers, 2 retries), letters verified unchanged; 374 ambiguous readings flagged. The model reordered combining marks in 8 words of the Tanzil quotations; these were restored verbatim afterwards. Not yet compared with Gauthier's partial vowelling.

English translation, passage by passageClaude (AI) · 2026-09-28AIOur work

By: Claude (AI) (translator) · 2026-09-28
In the reader:: Under each passage
Licence:: Ours; marked AI
Made by:: Claude (Opus; exact version not recorded), 2026-09-28 (first commit of app/src/content/ai/hayy-tufayl.json (scripts/recitals/translate.py hayy-tufayl opus: headless Claude Code, minimal context))
Notes: Written for this reader from the Arabic (our vowelled text), with the glossary in data/sources/hayy-tufayl-meta.json; the model was told not to reproduce or imitate published translations (Corbin/Trask, Goichon, Heath, Thackston, Azal, Hussain, Beneito & Hirtenstein, Austin, Nicholson, Chittick) and was given none. After the triangulation (2026-10-02) four places were fixed in our own words (¶1, ¶6, ¶34, ¶81); eight doubtful places are left for a person (¶7, ¶32, ¶37, ¶47, ¶50, ¶62, ¶68).

Word glossesClaude (AI) · 2026-09-28AIOur work

By: Claude (AI) (glosses) · 2026-09-28
In the reader:: One gloss per word, in the sense the passage gives it (word panel, and under the words on request)
Licence:: Ours; marked AI
Made by:: Claude (Opus; exact version not recorded), 2026-09-28 (first commit of app/src/content/ai/hayy-tufayl.json (scripts/recitals/translate.py hayy-tufayl opus: headless Claude Code, minimal context))
Notes: Contextual glosses (1–5 words) for every word id, from the same run as the translation.

Term notesClaude (AI) · 2026-09-28AIOur work

By: Claude (AI) (notes) · 2026-09-28
In the reader:: Up to six technical terms per passage, each with a one-sentence note, on the word
Licence:: Ours; marked AI
Made by:: Claude (Opus; exact version not recorded), 2026-09-28 (first commit of app/src/content/ai/hayy-tufayl.json (scripts/recitals/translate.py hayy-tufayl opus: headless Claude Code, minimal context))
Notes: From the same run as the translation, with the glossary in data/sources/hayy-tufayl-meta.json.

Translators differ (triangulation)Claude (AI) · 2026-10-02AIOur work

By: Claude (AI) (comparison of the translations (scripts/triangulate.py, PROTOCOLS §17)) · 2026-10-02
In the reader:: Only the serious divergences, as a note under the passage (8 of 45)
Licence:: Ours; marked AI
Made by:: Claude (Opus; exact version not recorded), 2026-10-02 (generatedOn of content/triangulation/hayy-tufayl.json (Claude Code, scripts/triangulate.py))
Notes: Ockley–Fulton and Gauthier 1936 compared on 85 passages: 45 divergences, 8 serious (¶34, ¶40, ¶46, ¶49, ¶52, ¶70, ¶73, ¶81). The descriptions are ours (AI); the quotations are the translators' own words, cited. Check of our AI English: no contradiction, 12 places flagged doubtful.

Resonances: themes and connectionsClaude (AI) · 2026-09-28AIOur work

By: Claude (AI) (map of themes and connections, by docs/RESONANCES-METHOD.md) · 2026-09-28
In the reader:: For the whole text: themes and 15 connections, on the About page
Licence:: Ours; marked AI
Made by:: Claude (Opus; exact version not recorded), 2026-09-28 (generatedOn of content/resonances/hayy-tufayl.json (Claude Code, headless, no web access))
Notes: Every connection states its kind; parallels are resonances, not claims of influence. External references were proposed by the model without web access and are shown only after an agent verified them with a web search.

Automatic analysis

Word analysis (CAMeL Tools)CAMeL Tools 1.6 (NYU Abu Dhabi) · 2026-09-28Our work

By: CAMeL Tools 1.6 (NYU Abu Dhabi) (analyser: calima-msa-r13 + MLE, constrained by the text's vowelling) · 2026-09-28
Source:: scripts/fusus/analyze.py → data/sources/hayy-tufayl-analysis.json · link ↗
In the reader:: Lemma, root, part of speech, clitics and pattern, in the word panel
Licence:: Our analysis layer, made offline with CAMeL Tools (code MIT; calima-msa-r13 database GPL v2, not redistributed)
Notes: 5,946 words analysed, 3,459 with a root, 728 distinct roots, 158 vowel conflicts with the AI vowelling. Automatic and non-generative; date = first commit of the analysis file.

Quran quotations found automaticallyscripts/quran_refs.py · 2026-09-28Our work

By: scripts/quran_refs.py (skeleton matcher against the Tanzil Uthmani text) · 2026-09-28
Source:: app/src/data/quran-refs/hayy-tufayl.json
In the reader:: 7 matches, on the words they cover
Licence:: Ours
Notes: Quotations verified when the text was established, plus an automatic match on the consonantal skeleton (vowels, Quranic marks, alif spellings and hamza seats ignored): a run of four or more words, or three words of at least 12 letters. No AI.

Audio

Arabic read aloud (machine voice)ar-SA-HamedNeural (Azure AI Speech) · 2026-09-28AIOur work

By: ar-SA-HamedNeural (Azure AI Speech) (machine voice) · 2026-09-28
In the reader:: Each passage, word by word highlighted
Licence:: Ours; generated on Azure's paid tier, whose terms allow the audio output to be published
Made by:: ar-SA-HamedNeural (Azure AI Speech), 2026-09-28 (first commit of app/src/data/hayy-tufayl-audio.json)
Notes: Machine voice reading the vowelled text (including the AI vowels); a reading aid, not a recitation.

English read aloud (machine voice)en-GB-RyanNeural (Azure AI Speech) · 2026-09-28AIOur work

By: en-GB-RyanNeural (Azure AI Speech) (machine voice) · 2026-09-28
In the reader:: Each passage, word by word highlighted
Licence:: Ours; generated on Azure's paid tier, whose terms allow the audio output to be published
Made by:: en-GB-RyanNeural (Azure AI Speech), 2026-09-28 (first commit of app/src/data/hayy-tufayl-audio-en.json)
Notes: Machine voice reading the AI English translation; a reading aid.

✦ marks AI that no person has reviewed yet; ✧ marks AI reviewed by a named person. Copyrighted works are cited, never shown. All sources · How texts are established

The text record

Our working notes on this edition: status, witnesses, the decisions taken and why, and what AI supplied. This is a working edition, not an authority.Show the notes

Work / author / dates	Risālat Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān fī asrār al-ḥikma al-mashriqiyya (رسالة حي بن يقظان) · Abū Bakr Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Malik ibn Ṭufayl al-Qaysī (d. 581/1185-6)
Part added	Introduction + the first part of the tale: the two accounts of Ḥayy's origin, his upbringing by the gazelle, her death, the dissection and the burial. Stops before the discovery of fire (see §7). About 30% of the work; 85 passages, 5,947 words.
Text id	`hayy-tufayl` (the id `hayy` is Ibn Sīnā's Ḥayy); word-ID prefix `y1`
Reader route	`/read/hayy-tufayl` (proposed) · apparatus `/read/hayy-tufayl/notes` (proposed)
Status	text of A established (steps 2–6, 8), collated privately with Gauthier 1936, 28 Sept 2026 · reviewed by: —

Structure of the part added: doxology (passage 0; see §4) · the question and the state beyond description (1–4) · Ibn Bājja and the rank reached by speculation (4–6) · Avicenna's stations of the knowers, quoted from the Ishārāt (6–8) · the parable of the man born blind (8–10) · [lacuna in A, §4] · the two things the question can seek (11–14) · the philosophers of al-Andalus, al-Fārābī, Aristotle and the Shifāʾ, al-Ghazālī (14–27) · the author's own path and the invitation (27–30) · first account: the equatorial island, with the argument on the sun's heat (31–37) · second account: the princess, the chest and the sea (38–42) · first account resumed: the fermented clay and the three chambers (43–54) · the gazelle nurses the child (54–57) · nakedness, leaves, a staff, the eagle's skin (58–63) · the gazelle's death (64–70) · the dissection (71–74) · the heart's empty chamber (75–79) · the ravens and the burial (80–84).

1. Witnesses

Siglum	Witness	Kind	Vowelled?	Licence	Location / hash
A	Aḥmad Amīn (ed.), Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān li-Ibn Sīnā wa-Ibn Ṭufayl wa-l-Suhrawardī, Cairo: Dār al-Maʿārif, 1952 (Dhakhāʾir al-ʿArab 8); the scan is a later free reprint (Dār al-Madā for al-Ittiḥād). Ibn Ṭufayl at printed pp. 55–128 (= PDF pp.); our part pp. 55–77. Source not stated; Amīn's preface names the Egyptian prints and the Damascus print of 1935. His text agrees with the readings Gauthier reports for MSS B, P and the prints αβγ (the vulgate) in nearly every place where they differ from Gauthier's text.	early 20th-c. print (vulgate)	almost none (tanwīn, a few shaddas)	Amīn d. 1954: PD in Egypt; US status uncertain. The medieval text only is used; Amīn's footnotes, headings and numbering are excluded.	(archive.org `quran99yaai_gmail_201710`), SHA-256 `db21ba54e283f36cbc5bbf4a09823ab43e52a138c8d480d15cac6e94462c65c0`; OCR text (poor: typing aid only)
G	Léon Gauthier (ed. & tr.), Hayy ben Yaqdhân, roman philosophique d'Ibn Thofaïl. Texte arabe avec les variantes des manuscrits et de plusieurs éditions et traduction française, 2nd ed., revised, Beirut: Imprimerie Catholique, 1936 (Institut d'Études Orientales d'Alger III). Critical edition with apparatus: MSS A (Algiers, 1180/1768), B, C, L, P and the prints α β γ; Arabic pp. 1–47 for our part (PDF p. = Arabic p. + 192).	critical ed.	partly	Gauthier d. 1949: PD in France/EU since 2020; in the US probably protected until 2031 (1936 foreign publication, restored under the URAA). Used as a private comparison witness only.	archive.org `fr110philo10` (an upload from a personal book site; no licence stated), local copy, SHA-256 `647c600c463403cefec2d3d45804a94d4db04324f86427d4b488bc2eaa706399`. No Arabic text layer (the djvu OCR is French only). Our consonantal transcription of its main text: kept in the private layer.
G¹	Gauthier, 1st ed., Algiers: P. Fontana, 1900 (text, variants, French translation). Public domain everywhere.	critical ed.		PD	Not found online (archive.org, Gallica, HathiTrust search blocked, Google Books quota): searched 28 Sept 2026. Only Gauthier's 1900 leçon d'ouverture (`laphilosophiemus00gaut`) and his 1909 Ibn Thofaïl, sa vie, ses œuvres are on archive.org.
O	OpenITI `0581IbnTufayl.HayyIbnYaqzan.Shamela0009734-ara1` (RELEASE v2025.1.9), from al-Shamela, edition not stated; lacks the introduction (starts at «ذكر سلفنا الصالح»).	digital	no	CC BY-NC-SA (OpenITI)	local copy, SHA-256 `e91fbf65205f2e6af3407817e5a53f16a8519e039d0ff039a15be800283e94ab`. Poor in places (e.g. غرابان … ضار, بعقد for بعلق). Used only as a second check on our reading of A in the narrative.
—	Fārūq Saʿd (ed.), Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān li-Ibn Ṭufayl, Beirut: Dār al-Āfāq al-Jadīda, 1992 (private copy)	modern ed.		©	Text layer in presentation forms, badly broken; not used.

2. Base and why

A (Amīn 1952), as for the Ghurba: it is the only openly usable print on disk, its scans are clear, and the task allows it (Egyptian PD; only the medieval text is transcribed). G¹ (Gauthier 1900), the preferred public-domain base, could not be found. G (1936) is the better text (a critical edition from five manuscripts) but is probably still protected in the US; it is therefore the private check witness, as Corbin is for the Ghurba. No reading of A was replaced by Gauthier's, except obvious misprints (§4), each listed.

3. Collation

Transcription: A from 250 dpi page images (the OCR was too poor to use as a typing layer: 494 disagreements with our first reading, nearly all OCR noise). Doubtful spots re-read at 450 dpi.
Proofreading: (1) against OpenITI (narrative only) and the OCR; (2) against G, read page by page from 220 dpi images with its apparatus; every disagreement not explained by Gauthier's apparatus was checked again on A's page image. One typing error of ours was found and fixed (بعاليق → بمعاليق, p. 75); the rest were A's readings.
Tool: difflib alignment on a normalised consonantal skeleton (vowels, hamza seats, alif forms, tāʾ marbūṭa neutralised), word by word, our final text against G.
Result: 336 difference units: 54 orthographic, 282 substantive (186 replacements; 67 places where A has words G lacks, 108 words, the doxology included; 29 places where G has words A lacks, 218 words, of which c. 190 are the lacuna below). A 5,947 words, G 5,965 for the same stretch.
Readings: private layer only.
Most substantive differences are readings G reports for B, P and αβγ, which A follows (e.g. «من كتابه ذلك», «بل هي أحوال من أحوال السعداء», «خلق مكفوف البصر», «وبها شجر يثمر نساء … جزيرة الواقواق», «الملتفة الشجر», «خرج من كناسه فحمله العقاب», «الأذواق», «حقيقته», «المحمدية»). Where A's reading is attested only in G's MS A (Algiers), e.g. «كتاب الجوهر», «جنات القدس», «شبه حزام», it is noted in the private file.

4. Decisions (substantive)

Where	Reading adopted	Rejected / A	Reason	By
passage 0 (p. 55)	the doxology «الحمد لله العظيم … تسليماً كثيراً», kept as printed	G's text: basmala + «صلى الله على سيدنا محمد وآله وصحبه وسلم»	G relegates this preamble to the apparatus (only in BP αβγ: "peu conforme à la manière sobre d'Ibn Thofaïl"). A is our base; kept, flagged in the label.	AI (Claude), provisional
after passage 10 (p. 58)	lacuna recorded, not supplied	G pp. 9–10: «وقد يوجد في النادر … وتصريف وجوه الحيل في اكتسابه» (c. 190 words)	Absent from A; no witness in G's apparatus lacks it, so the omission is A's (or its source print's). Supplying it from G would import G's text; recorded in `uncertain` and on the passage (`lacunaAfter`).	AI, provisional
12 misprints corrected (list in `changes`, type `proof` / `mechanical`)	الآلاء, يعتريه, مما (the verse), كانت, لا على, علم المكاشفة, متكيفة, حاذاها, ويئن, النضيجة, عليها, الذي	الآراء, يعتز به, ممن, كنت, لأعلى, عدم, مكتفية, خاذاها, وينن, النضجية, غليها, الدي	Each a letter-level slip (dot, metathesis, nūn-shaped hamza seat, word division) giving no sense, and each supported by G or by the vulgate reading G reports.	AI, provisional
5 words in Amīn's parentheses	kept, parentheses removed: الإمام, رحمة الله عليه, يرى, أنواع, شبه	—	Amīn's marks of addition; the words are attested (BP αβγ; MS A for شبه). Logged as mechanical.	AI
11 doubtful readings of A	left as printed, listed in `uncertain`	—	Print clear, sense doubtful; G's reading given in the note (e.g. «مصارفه», «إنما هي كاملة» without غير, «ولا على حالة واحدة», «أو لإلمام», «مع الظبي»).	AI

5. Quotations verified

Quran, replaced with the verbatim Tanzil (Uthmani) text (5), each checked as an exact token run of the Tanzil Uthmani text: 96:4–5 (doxology; A continues «ما لا يعلم», Q «ما لم يعلم», left), 4:113 (doxology), 12:111 and 50:37 (end of the introduction; A «ذكرى», Q «لذكرى», left), 76:1 (the mother's prayer).
Allusions, left as printed (11): 17:43, 39:6, 14:15, 12:64, 20:39 (the chest cast into the sea, Moses), 18:17 (the sun inclining from the thicket, the Cave), 17:85, 76:2, 7:22 (covering with leaves), 20:18 (the staff), 5:31 (the raven that "scratched the ground": the three words match the verse; the episode is retold).
Hadith (1): «إن الله خلق آدم على صورته» (al-Bukhārī, Istiʾdhān 1; Muslim, Birr 115).
Poetry and sayings: the shaṭaḥāt of al-Bisṭāmī / al-Ḥallāj; the line «فكان ما كان مما لست أذكره» (commonly ascribed to Ibn al-Muʿtazz; to verify) and «خذ ما تراه ودع شيئاً سمعت به» (commonly ascribed to al-Mutanabbī; to verify); two anonymous verses («برح بي أن علوم الورى»).
Prose quotations: Ibn Sīnā, al-Ishārāt, namaṭ 9 (abridged; G compares Mehren); Ibn Bājja, Risālat al-ittiṣāl; al-Ghazālī, Mīzān al-ʿamal and al-Munqidh.
Still to do: scripts/quran_refs.py cannot be run for this text until it is added to that script's TEXTS table (a shared script; not edited here).

6. Vowelling

A is almost unvowelled. scripts/recitals/prepare.py hayy-tufayl (28 Sept 2026) supplied AI vowels to all 85 passages (headless Claude, opus, 3 workers; 2 retries), letters verified unchanged, per-character vowelMask ('t' print, 'a' AI); 374 ambiguous readings flagged by the model (ambiguous per passage). The model reordered combining marks in 8 words of the Tanzil quotations; these were restored verbatim afterwards (logged in changes). prepare.py drops printedPage, label and lacunaAfter from base passages; they were merged back into hayy-tufayl.json from the base file. Comparison with a vowelled authority: G is partly vowelled; not yet compared (TODO).

7. Segmentation and word IDs

85 passages (0–84), 27–116 words (mean 70), cut at A's paragraph and sentence breaks; section labels ours. Word IDs y1:<n>:<token> (analyze.py numbering). Stopped at the end of A p. 77 (G p. 47, l. 5), after «فيعتقد أنه ليس في الوجود سوى جزيرته تلك», before «واتفق في بعض الأحيان أن انقدحت نار في أجمة قلخ» (the discovery of fire). Next part starts on A p. 77, last lines.

8. Analysis layer

scripts/fusus/analyze.py hayy-tufayl.json hayy-tufayl-analysis.json y1 (CAMeL Tools): 5,946 words analysed, 3,459 with a root, 728 distinct roots, 158 vowel conflicts (AI vowels vs the analyser). Unresolved weak roots are the usual #-radicals (ف.#, #.ن.ن, ذ.#, ع.ل.#).

9. Commentaries aligned

None. No classical Arabic commentary on Ibn Ṭufayl is known to us; Gauthier's notes (French) and Pococke's Latin (1671) are candidates for later.

10. Translation

AI (scripts/recitals/translate.py hayy-tufayl opus) from the Arabic, with the glossary in hayy-tufayl-meta.json. Gauthier's French (1936) is not published: it is the revised 1936 version, probably protected in the US until 2031; the 1900 translation (PD) was not found. Candidate PD English: Ockley 1708/1731 (archive.org bim_eighteenth-century_hayy-ibn-yaqdhan-engli_abu-bakr-ibn-al-tufail-_1731), Ashwell/Fulton 1929 (historyofhayyibn00ibnu, US status to check).

Translation triangulation (docs/PROTOCOLS.md §17; 2 Oct 2026, scripts/triangulate.py hayy-tufayl). Translations compared: Ockley–Fulton (Ockley 1708 as revised by A. S. Fulton, New York/London 1929; public domain in the US; Fulton omits Ibn Ṭufayl's introduction, so ¶32–84 only), cut to our passages in data/sources/hayy-tufayl-tr-ockley.json; and Gauthier 1936 (French, ©, private layer (private copy), ¶0–84). Both cut by scripts/recitals/tufayl_translations.py from the OCR (Claude marks only where each passage begins, which OCR units are footnotes, and where the OCR has displaced a block; the text is sliced by the script, so every word is the translator's own; alignment logs in (private copy)). No commentaries. Result (app/src/content/triangulation/hayy-tufayl.json): 85 passages, 45 divergences, 8 serious (shown as "Translators differ"): ¶34 what is credited to Avicenna; ¶40 Yaqẓān a kinsman (Ockley) or a neighbour (Gauthier), قريب; ¶46 the spirit "from God's command"; ¶49 the self-reflecting mirror; ¶52 which organs rule the later ones; ¶70 «يعترض سائر أعضائه» (stopping the organs, or reviewing them in the mind); ¶73 the membrane reached (diaphragm or pleura); ¶81 «شوق» (desire to inquire, or longing). Gauthier is quoted at most four words. AI-English check: no contradiction; 12 places flagged doubtful. Fixed in our own words:

¶	was	now	why
1	must seek it and strive earnestly to acquire it	must seek these secrets and strive earnestly to acquire them	the pronoun of «بطلبها … اقتنائها» is feminine: the secrets (of the Oriental wisdom), not «الحق»
6	recalls something of what pertains to them	recalls something of the matter of that holiness	«من أمره» is masculine singular: holiness (القدس), not the plural gardens
34	or contact with hot bodies, and illumination	or contact with hot bodies, or illumination	three separate causes, any one sufficient
81	to the body's owner (its mover) and to what moved it	to the body's owner, its mover	«صاحب الجسد ومحركه» is one being described twice

Left for a person (doubtful, not changed): ¶7 «النبل» (or al-nayl, as in the Ishārāt) and «مصارفه» (the Ishārāt has a form of maʿārafa); ¶32 "supernal light" for «النور الأعلى» in a climatic argument; ¶37 «الذي ما أضاء موقعه من الأرض قط» (ours keeps the negation the Arabic has; the translators paraphrase); ¶47 «يُستضاء به» (ours: "take on illumination"); ¶50 «كمالها»; ¶62 the relative «ما» after «يئس من»; ¶68 «لا يغني عنه شيء» (dependence).

11. Rights and private layers

Public: our working text of A (medieval text only) with our corrections, quotations and notes. Private (not published): Gauthier 1936 PDF, our transcription of its main text, the word-level collation. Nothing of Gauthier's text or apparatus is in the public JSON beyond single cited readings in the notes.

12. Open questions / to review

Review the 12 misprint corrections and 11 doubtful readings against a second print (Cairo prints; Ṣalībā–ʿAyyād, Damascus 1935).
The lacuna after passage 10: supply from a public-domain witness (Gauthier 1900, Cairo prints) if one is found.
Find Gauthier 1900 (BnF has it: catalogue.bnf.fr ark:/12148/cb347277098; not digitised on Gallica as far as searched).
Verify the verse attributions (Ibn al-Muʿtazz, al-Mutanabbī).
Compare AI vowelling with G's partial vowelling.

13. Change log

2026-10-02: translation triangulation (Ockley–Fulton PD, Gauthier 1936 private): 8 serious divergences shown in the reader; 4 AI-English fixes (¶1, ¶6, ¶34, ¶81), 8 doubtful places listed (§10).
2026-09-28: record created; A pp. 55–77 transcribed, proofread twice (OpenITI/OCR; Gauthier 1936), 12 misprints and 5 parenthesis marks logged, 5 Quran quotations replaced; 85 passages written to data/sources/hayy-tufayl-base.json + -meta.json; private collation with Gauthier (336 units).
2026-09-28: prepare.py (85/85 vowelled), Tanzil restored in 8 words, base fields merged back; analyze.py (y1) and translate.py (opus, 85/85) run. translate.py also wrote app/public/data/commentaries/hayy-tufayl.json with its hard-coded Ibn Zayla entry (count 0), which does not apply to this text.