Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān is an Arabic philosophical novel and an allegorical tale written by Ibn Tufail in the early 12th century in Al-Andalus. Names by which the book is also known include the Latin: Philosophus Autodidactus ; and English: The Improvement of Human Reason: Exhibited in the Life of Hai Ebn Yokdhan. Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān was named after an earlier Arabic philosophical romance of the same name, written by Avicenna during his imprisonment in the early 11th century, even though both tales had different stories. The novel greatly inspired Islamic philosophy as well as major Enlightenment thinkers. It is the third most translated text from Arabic, after the Quran and the One Thousand and One Nights.
Frontispiece of the Simon Ockley translation from 1708 (re-published in 1929)
Edward Pococke was an English Orientalist and biblical scholar.
Edward Pococke
Bust of Pococke in Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford