Abubacer

ABUBACER (Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Tufail). - Arab-Spanish physician, mathematician and philosopher of the Islamic religion, b. around 1100, d. in Morocco in 1185. He is known especially for his Risālat Hayy ibn Yaqzān, in which he seeks to demonstrate that philosophy and religion are in perfect agreement, since the former, the fruit of rational discursive speculation, is reserved for superior minds, while the latter, filled with images and parables, is suited to the common people. Mysticism is reserved for chosen spirits and must not be fed to the vulgar: it is a source of ineffable delights, and to man it is possible only to indicate the method that leads to it.

A. describes the manner in which Hayy, abandoned as a child on a desert island, arrives on his own, by degrees, at philosophy, that is, at the Aristotelian system as it had been expounded by the Arab philosophers. Hayy then ascends to the ascetic and mystical life. A certain Asāl, an Islamic religious man, teaches him the doctrines of the Muslim creed, in which Hayy finds no contradiction with the philosophical doctrines he has reached, but in which he finds a number of images, parables and norms of practical life. The two then go to the island inhabited by Asāl and by other Muslims, but the exposition of Hayy's doctrines meets with no good reception on the part of the population. He therefore returns to his island and devotes himself entirely to the mystical life. In this work of his, A. echoes ideas on the relations between philosophy and religion that were also professed by other Arab Muslim philosophers.

Giuseppe Furlani