In twelfth-century Iberia under the Almohad caliphate, Andalusi polymath Ibn Tufayl wrote the philosophical tale, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan (Alive, Son of Awake). It is an autodidactic story that greatly influenced contemporaneous Islamic and Jewish philosophy as well as later Enlightenment thinkers.
Hayy’s Story
The story follows the life of a boy raised by a gazelle, isolated from society, as he learns how to survive, communicate, reason, and ultimately understand the universe through direct observation of nature. He contemplates the cosmos and, with only his own self-education as his guide, theorizes the ways in which the divine “oneness” manifests in diverse multitudes. Near the end, he even tries his hand at teaching others his findings before retreating back to his island for a life of quiet reflection.
If the idea of a feral child raised by animals sounds familiar, it is because it has echoes in Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 Jungle Book, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s 1912 Tarzan of the Apes, and even, to an extent, Daniel Defoe’s 1719 Robinson Crusoe. While the chances of any of us being adopted by animals is slim, Ibn Tufayl’s story offers something more universal: a model of learning from life itself. Elsewhere, I have spoken of the text’s value regarding grief and perennial questions; here, I want to focus on its powerful pedagogical message.
Test It Yourself
As the school year ends, many of us—students, teachers, and lifelong learners—reflect on what we’ve learned and how. At any level, teachers are fundamental for inspiring curiosity and a desire to learn, even if the subject matter was not initially our cup of tea. Mirroring current best pedagogical practices, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan reminds us that it is our own active engagement with authentic examples of what is taught that truly helps us learn.
Ibn Tufayl emphasized this in his introduction, encouraging readers not just to accept his ideas but to truly engage with and test them:
I want only to bring you along the paths in which I have preceded you and let you swim in the sea I have just crossed, so that it may bear you where it did me and you may undergo the same experience and see with the eyes of your soul all that I have seen. Then you will not need to confine yourself within the limits of my knowledge.
Yes, a good teacher is knowledgeable about their subject, but even the best of teachers have their limits. There is only so much their words can do. It is in encouraging students to ask their own questions and test things out themselves that a teacher truly ruptures the limitations of the classroom. As Ibn Tufayl states, we shouldn’t be “confined” and just take the teacher’s word for it but rather witness and test things out ourselves—that is how we truly begin to understand.
Experience as Teacher
An English translation of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan from 1711 – Wikimedia Commons
Throughout the story, Hayy closely observes the natural world. He notices that every material thing is part of a cycle of generation and decay despite their different attributes—ranging from plants and animals to minerals and elements. Hayy notes, after “study and thought,” that “while physical things differed in some respects, they remained alike in others.”
His observations seem simple at first, but it is often in the most simple ideas that profound truths and insightful connections surface. For example, “he perceived that warm bodies grow cold and cold ones hot; he watched water turn to steam, steam to water; burning things to embers, ashes, flame and smoke.” All things change. He notes that nothing “kept the same form. All was in a constant alternation of build-up and breakdown.” Yet despite all these changes, he noticed a unity as well.
Hayy understood this unity through differing spheres of existence, with the highest being “free from matter” and the closest to us manifesting in many seemingly singular entities that all reflect back aspects of this first high sphere which is “too magnificent to be described and too delicate to be clothed in written or spoken words.” Hayy concluded this through years of meditation, contemplation, and observation.
It is through this “line of thinking” that Hayy is able to conclude that despite diversity, there is also unity. Had he simply read this conclusion somewhere, while he might find it poetic and meaningful, it is far more impactful to him with the evidence he gathered first-hand supporting that conclusion. The same is true in a classroom—when students experience or witness a theory, they are more likely not only to retain the information but to understand it. Hayy’s insight did not come from a textbook; it came from his lived experience. That, in part, is the core educational message: we often understand best what we discover for ourselves. Once we have spent time with the material, observed it organically, and digested it—making it part of us—that is when we’ve understood it, transcending any lecture or reading.
More Than Memorization
Mastery of any given subject in many ways begins when one can then comprehensibly teach the matter to another. Later in the story, Hayy meets other humans through his new friend, Absal, and attempts to teach them what he’s learned. At first he is eager to share his insights but is quickly met with a frustration familiar to many educators: the resistance people show when asked to go beyond what they already believe.
As Ibn Tufayl puts it, the “moment [Hayy] rose the slightest bit above the literal or began to portray things against which they were prejudiced, they recoiled in horror from his ideas and closed their minds.” The deeper truths Hayy uncovered through observation and meditation were unsettling to those who had never questioned their assumptions. Their ideas were not wrong per se, but they were not as nuanced as Hayy’s. They were not yet ready to go beyond what they had read.
In some ways, this reflects modern classroom challenges and the importance of fostering critical thinking through practical experience. Taking knowledge at face value can only go so far. To truly rise above it and understand it beyond mere mimicry or memorization, one has to play with it personally, to discuss it. One has to experience it fully present. One has to—as Ibn Tufayl stated at the beginning—swim in its waters.
Like the material objects Hayy observes, both the teacher and the student, while seemingly different, are alike in many ways. They can be limited by preconceived beliefs or prescribed words. Yet once one makes the knowledge personal or invites others to share in what they’ve gathered along the way, then both teacher and student grow. Hayy may not have reached all those he tried to teach, but he did reach his friend, and together they returned to the island for a quiet life of direct contact with nature.
The Invitation
Ibn Tufayl describes Hayy’s story as one that “belongs to a hidden branch of study.” He warns us, though, that he did not leave “the secrets set down in these few pages entirely without a veil—a sheer one, easily pierced by those fit to do so, but capable of growing so thick to those unworthy of passing beyond that they will never breach it.”
In many ways, these words are true of any teaching. In order to truly learn anything, one must be willing to do the work. Whether you are a student, a teacher, or simply someone who enjoys learning, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan reminds us that the desire to learn and explore matters more than any curriculum. The core learning objectives can be met through a variety of examples and disciplines, even ones that seem distant. There is philosophy in science just as there is language in math or culture in sports. One simply needs to be willing to, like Hayy, contemplate and observe the interconnectivity of ourselves and everything in order to achieve a deeper type of understanding—an understanding that remains with us semesters and years later.
So, the next time you watch water boil or question how X is like Y, study all your observations and make unexpected connections with your life or society at large. The similarities and connections are there—but don’t just take my word for it, go out there and experience it yourself!
Veronica Menaldi is an independent scholar and vice president of the Societas Magica. Previously she served as an assistant professor at the University of Mississippi. She is the author of Love Magic and Control in Premodern Iberian Literature. You can visit Veronica’s YouTube Channel or follow her on Instagram or TikTok.
By Veronica Menaldi
In twelfth-century Iberia under the Almohad caliphate, Andalusi polymath Ibn Tufayl wrote the philosophical tale, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan (Alive, Son of Awake). It is an autodidactic story that greatly influenced contemporaneous Islamic and Jewish philosophy as well as later Enlightenment thinkers.
Hayy’s Story
The story follows the life of a boy raised by a gazelle, isolated from society, as he learns how to survive, communicate, reason, and ultimately understand the universe through direct observation of nature. He contemplates the cosmos and, with only his own self-education as his guide, theorizes the ways in which the divine “oneness” manifests in diverse multitudes. Near the end, he even tries his hand at teaching others his findings before retreating back to his island for a life of quiet reflection.
If the idea of a feral child raised by animals sounds familiar, it is because it has echoes in Rudyard Kipling’s 1894 Jungle Book, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s 1912 Tarzan of the Apes, and even, to an extent, Daniel Defoe’s 1719 Robinson Crusoe. While the chances of any of us being adopted by animals is slim, Ibn Tufayl’s story offers something more universal: a model of learning from life itself. Elsewhere, I have spoken of the text’s value regarding grief and perennial questions; here, I want to focus on its powerful pedagogical message.
Test It Yourself
As the school year ends, many of us—students, teachers, and lifelong learners—reflect on what we’ve learned and how. At any level, teachers are fundamental for inspiring curiosity and a desire to learn, even if the subject matter was not initially our cup of tea. Mirroring current best pedagogical practices, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan reminds us that it is our own active engagement with authentic examples of what is taught that truly helps us learn.
Ibn Tufayl emphasized this in his introduction, encouraging readers not just to accept his ideas but to truly engage with and test them:
I want only to bring you along the paths in which I have preceded you and let you swim in the sea I have just crossed, so that it may bear you where it did me and you may undergo the same experience and see with the eyes of your soul all that I have seen. Then you will not need to confine yourself within the limits of my knowledge.
Yes, a good teacher is knowledgeable about their subject, but even the best of teachers have their limits. There is only so much their words can do. It is in encouraging students to ask their own questions and test things out themselves that a teacher truly ruptures the limitations of the classroom. As Ibn Tufayl states, we shouldn’t be “confined” and just take the teacher’s word for it but rather witness and test things out ourselves—that is how we truly begin to understand.
Experience as Teacher
Throughout the story, Hayy closely observes the natural world. He notices that every material thing is part of a cycle of generation and decay despite their different attributes—ranging from plants and animals to minerals and elements. Hayy notes, after “study and thought,” that “while physical things differed in some respects, they remained alike in others.”
His observations seem simple at first, but it is often in the most simple ideas that profound truths and insightful connections surface. For example, “he perceived that warm bodies grow cold and cold ones hot; he watched water turn to steam, steam to water; burning things to embers, ashes, flame and smoke.” All things change. He notes that nothing “kept the same form. All was in a constant alternation of build-up and breakdown.” Yet despite all these changes, he noticed a unity as well.
Hayy understood this unity through differing spheres of existence, with the highest being “free from matter” and the closest to us manifesting in many seemingly singular entities that all reflect back aspects of this first high sphere which is “too magnificent to be described and too delicate to be clothed in written or spoken words.” Hayy concluded this through years of meditation, contemplation, and observation.
It is through this “line of thinking” that Hayy is able to conclude that despite diversity, there is also unity. Had he simply read this conclusion somewhere, while he might find it poetic and meaningful, it is far more impactful to him with the evidence he gathered first-hand supporting that conclusion. The same is true in a classroom—when students experience or witness a theory, they are more likely not only to retain the information but to understand it. Hayy’s insight did not come from a textbook; it came from his lived experience. That, in part, is the core educational message: we often understand best what we discover for ourselves. Once we have spent time with the material, observed it organically, and digested it—making it part of us—that is when we’ve understood it, transcending any lecture or reading.
More Than Memorization
Mastery of any given subject in many ways begins when one can then comprehensibly teach the matter to another. Later in the story, Hayy meets other humans through his new friend, Absal, and attempts to teach them what he’s learned. At first he is eager to share his insights but is quickly met with a frustration familiar to many educators: the resistance people show when asked to go beyond what they already believe.
As Ibn Tufayl puts it, the “moment [Hayy] rose the slightest bit above the literal or began to portray things against which they were prejudiced, they recoiled in horror from his ideas and closed their minds.” The deeper truths Hayy uncovered through observation and meditation were unsettling to those who had never questioned their assumptions. Their ideas were not wrong per se, but they were not as nuanced as Hayy’s. They were not yet ready to go beyond what they had read.
In some ways, this reflects modern classroom challenges and the importance of fostering critical thinking through practical experience. Taking knowledge at face value can only go so far. To truly rise above it and understand it beyond mere mimicry or memorization, one has to play with it personally, to discuss it. One has to experience it fully present. One has to—as Ibn Tufayl stated at the beginning—swim in its waters.
Like the material objects Hayy observes, both the teacher and the student, while seemingly different, are alike in many ways. They can be limited by preconceived beliefs or prescribed words. Yet once one makes the knowledge personal or invites others to share in what they’ve gathered along the way, then both teacher and student grow. Hayy may not have reached all those he tried to teach, but he did reach his friend, and together they returned to the island for a quiet life of direct contact with nature.
The Invitation
Ibn Tufayl describes Hayy’s story as one that “belongs to a hidden branch of study.” He warns us, though, that he did not leave “the secrets set down in these few pages entirely without a veil—a sheer one, easily pierced by those fit to do so, but capable of growing so thick to those unworthy of passing beyond that they will never breach it.”
In many ways, these words are true of any teaching. In order to truly learn anything, one must be willing to do the work. Whether you are a student, a teacher, or simply someone who enjoys learning, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan reminds us that the desire to learn and explore matters more than any curriculum. The core learning objectives can be met through a variety of examples and disciplines, even ones that seem distant. There is philosophy in science just as there is language in math or culture in sports. One simply needs to be willing to, like Hayy, contemplate and observe the interconnectivity of ourselves and everything in order to achieve a deeper type of understanding—an understanding that remains with us semesters and years later.
So, the next time you watch water boil or question how X is like Y, study all your observations and make unexpected connections with your life or society at large. The similarities and connections are there—but don’t just take my word for it, go out there and experience it yourself!
Veronica Menaldi is an independent scholar and vice president of the Societas Magica. Previously she served as an assistant professor at the University of Mississippi. She is the author of Love Magic and Control in Premodern Iberian Literature. You can visit Veronica’s YouTube Channel or follow her on Instagram or TikTok.
Further Readings:
Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale, translated by Lenn Evan Goodman. University of Chicago Press, 2009
Top Image: A 15th-century Hebrew copy of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan – Bodleian Library MS. Bodley Or. 116 fol. 1v
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