The Penguin Anthology of Classical Arabic Literature

by Robert Irwin

  the purity of life from turbulent clouds of dust.

  Salma Khadra Jayussi (trans.), in Jayussi (ed.),

  The Legacy of Muslim Spain, pp. 383–4

  With gazelle glances, with her antelope neck, with lips of wine and teeth like bubbles,

  She glided along in her gown embroidered with gold like shining stars entwined around the moon;

  The hand of love enveloped us by night in a robe of embraces which was torn away by the hand of dawn.

  Bellamy and Steiner, Ibn Said al-Maghribi’s ‘The

  Banners of the Champions’, p. 181

  In the course of the early twelfth century, the Almoravids’ power base in North Africa was eroded by a new militant religious movement. In 1125 IBN TUMART raised the standard of revolt and declared himself to be the Mahdi, the Expected One, whose coming heralded the end of the world. Ibn Tumart expressed his claim to be the Mahdi in language which is possessed of a menacing rhythmical eloquence:

  As for whim and prevarication, it is not licit to prefer it over truth, nor is it licit to prefer this world to the next, nor what is invalidated to what invalidates it, nor should atheism be set over piety. Truth should not be adulterated with falsehood. If knowledge is eliminated, ignorance will prevail. If guidance is eliminated, then error will prevail, and if justice is eliminated, tyranny will prevail. If the ignorant rulers take over the world, and if the deaf and dumb kings take over the world, and if the dajjalun [antichrists] take over the world, then only the Mahdi will get rid of falsehood, and only the Mahdi will carry out truth. And the Mahdi is known among the Arabs and the non-Arabs and the bedouins and the settled people. And the knowledge concerning him is confirmed in every place and in every collection of documents. And what is known by the necessity of information before he appears is known by the necessity of witness after his appearance. And faith in the Mahdi is a religious obligation, and he who doubts it is an unbeliever. And he is protected from error in the matters of faith which he invokes. No error is conceivable in him. He is not to be contended with, or opposed, or resisted, or contradicted, or fought, and he is unique in his time and truthful in his words. He will sunder the oppressors and impostors, and he will conquer the world both East and West, and fill it with justice as it had been filled with injustice, and his rule will last until the end of the world.

  Madeleine Fletcher (trans.), in Jayussi (ed.),

  The Legacy of Muslim Spain, pp. 241–2

  Ibn Tumart’s followers were known as the Almohads (or, more correctly, al-Muwahhidun, ‘the proclaimers of the unity of God’). The Almohad movement was, like its Almoravid precursor, a militantly puritanical Berber religious movement which sought to return to a more pristine form of Islam. However, the Almohads drew most of their support from a different Berber confederacy and their puritanism had a somewhat different stamp from that of the Almoravids. For example, whereas the Almoravids had persecuted Sufis, the Almohads were fierce partisans of the sort of Sufism expounded by al-Ghazzali (see Chapter 7). By 1147 the Almoravids were in effective control of Morocco. (Ibn Tumart had died in 1130 and his deputy, ‘Abd al-Mu’min, had assumed the leadership.) In 1145 an Almohad army had entered Spain, and in the course of the next decade the Almohads took control of most of the remaining Muslim territory and established their capital at Seville.

  Abu Bakr ibn ‘Abd al-Malik IBN TUFAYL (c. 1116–85) served the Almohad ruler Yusuf ibn ‘Abd al-Mu’min (reigned 1163–84) both as physician and vizier. He also served as a propagandist for their jihad. After attending the Almohad court in Granada, he subsequently moved to Morocco, where he died. Ibn Tufayl wrote on medicine as well as practising it. However, he is most famous for his philosophical fable about a man stranded on a desert island, Hayy ibn Yaqzan. Ibn Sina had previously written a philosophical fable with the same title (see Chapter 5), but Ibn Tufayl develops his story in quite a different way. Hayy ibn Yaqzan (his name means ‘Living Man, Son of the Vigilant’) was abandoned at birth and cast ashore on an uninhabited desert island. There he was suckled and looked after by a doe. In Ibn Tufayl’s fable, Hayy, since he has no contact with human beings, has to teach himself about the world through observation, experiment and reason. Not only does he learn how to survive and even to discover how the universe works, but he also attains to a vision of the Divine.

  Only after Hayy has completed his intellectual and spiritual selfeducation is the island visited by another man, Absal, a devout person who is seeking a spiritual truth within himself. Absal’s and Hayy’s views on religion and the world turn out to agree perfectly and together they set off on a joint mission to the civilized island where Absal grew up. Their aim is to convert the islanders to their spiritually enlightened perception of the Truth. However, they soon come to realize that such a perception can only be shared by a spiritual elite, while ordinary men must be content with esoteric truths of Islam as they are revealed by the Prophet Muhammad. Hayy and Absal returned to the desert island to meditate on the higher mysteries of the Divine. The surface sense of this subtle text – that it is possible to understand this world and the next through the unaided powers of reason – is not its real meaning. Ibn Tufayl boasted that an esoteric veil concealed the true meaning of his book. He was actually concerned to stress the need for men both to study books and to seek instruction from spiritual masters. (Simon Ockley published an English translation of Hayy ibn Yaqzan in 1708, and it may be that Ibn Tufayl’s spiritual fable was one of the sources of inspiration for Daniel Defoe’s more earthy adventure yarn, Robinson Crusoe, published in 1719.)

  They agree that the doe that cared for him was richly pastured, so she was fat and had plenty of milk, to give the baby the best possible nourishment. She stayed with him, leaving only when necessary to graze. The baby grew so fond of her he would cry if she were late, and then she would come rushing back. There were no beasts of prey on the island.

  So the child grew, nourished by its mother-doe’s milk, until he was two years old. By then he’d learned to walk; and, having his teeth, he took to following the doe on her foraging expeditions. She treated him gently and tenderly, taking him where fruit trees grew and feeding him the sweet, ripe fruits that fell from them. The hard-shelled ones she cracked between her teeth, or if he wanted to go back for a while to milk she let him. She brought him to water when he was thirsty; and when the sun beat down she shaded him. When he was cold she warmed him, and at nightfall she would bring him back to the spot where she had found him, nestling him to herself among the feathers with which the little ark had been cushioned.

  When they went out to forage and came back to rest they were accompanied by a troop of deer that went along to graze and stayed the night near where they slept. Thus the child lived among the deer, imitating their calls so well that eventually his voice and theirs could hardly be distinguished. In the same way he imitated all the bird calls and animal cries he heard with amazing accuracy, but most often he would mimic the calls of the deer for alarm, courtship, summons or defense – for animals have different cries for these different contingencies. The animals were used to him and he was used to them, so they were not afraid of each other.

  Hayy discovered in himself an aversion toward some things and an attraction to others even after the things themselves were no longer objects of his immediate experience, for their images were fixed in his mind. He observed the animals from this perspective and saw how they were clothed in fur, hair or feathers, how swiftly they could run, how fiercely they could fight, and what apt weapons they had for defense against any attacker – horns, tusks, hooves, spurs and claws. Then he looked back at himself and realized how naked and defenseless he was. He was a weak runner and not a good fighter. When the animals grappled with him for a piece of fruit they usually wrested it from him and got away with it. He could not defend himself or even run away.

  Hayy saw the fawns his age sprout horns from nowhere and grow strong and swift. But in himself he could discover no such change. He wondered about this but could not
fathom the cause. No maimed or deformed animal he could find was at all like himself. All other animals, he observed, had covered outlets for their bodily wastes – the solid by a tail, the liquid by fur or the like. And the fact that the private parts of an animal were better concealed than his own disturbed him greatly and made him very unhappy.

  When he was nearly seven and had finally lost hope of making up the deficiencies which so disturbed him he took some broad leaves from a tree and put them on, front and back. Then out of plaits of palms and grass he made something like a belt about his middle and fastened his leaves to it. But he had hardly worn it at all when the leaves withered and dried and, one by one, fell out. So he had constantly to get new ones and work them in with the old in bundles. This might make it hold up a while longer, but still it lasted only a very short time.

  He got some good sticks from a tree, balanced the shafts and sharpened the points. These he would brandish at the animals that menaced him. He could now attack the weaker ones and hold his own against the stronger. His self-esteem rose a bit as he observed how superior his hands were to those of an animal. They enabled him to cover his nakedness and to make sticks for self-defense, so he no longer needed natural weapons or the tail he had longed for.

  All the while, he was growing, and soon he was seven. The chore of getting new leaves to cover himself was taking too long, and he had an urge to get the tail of some dead animal and fasten that on instead. But he had noticed that the living wildlife shunned the bodies of the dead and fled from them. So he could not go ahead with his plan, until one day he came upon a dead eagle. Seeing that the animals had no aversion to it, he snatched the opportunity to put his idea into effect. Boldly taking hold of the eagle, Hayy cut off the wings and tail just as they were, all in one piece. He stretched out the wings and smoothed down the feathers, stripped off the remaining skin and split it in half, tying it about his middle, hanging down, half in front and half behind. The tail, he threw across his back; and he fastened the wings to his arms. Thus he got a fine covering that not only kept him warm but also so terrified the animals that not one of them would fight with him or get in his way. In fact, none would come near him except the doe that had nursed and raised him.

  She was inseparable from him and he from her. When she grew old and weak he would lead her to rich pastures and gather sweet fruits to feed her. Even so, weakness and emaciation gradually tightened their hold, and finally death overtook her. All her movements and bodily functions came to a standstill. When the boy saw her in such a state, he was beside himself with grief. His soul seemed to overflow with sorrow. He tried to call her with the call she always answered, shouted as loud as he could, but saw not the faintest flicker of life. He peered into her eyes and ears, but no damage was apparent. In the same way he examined all her parts but could find nothing wrong with any of them. He hoped to discover the place where she was hurt so he could take away the hurt and allow her to recover – but he could not even make a start; he was powerless.

  What made him think there was something he could ‘take away’ was his own past experience. He knew that when he shut his eyes or covered them, he saw nothing until the obstruction was removed; if he stopped his ears with his fingers he could not hear until the obstacle was gone; and if he held his nose he would smell nothing until the passageway was clear again.

  These observations led him to believe that not only his senses, but every one of his other bodily functions was liable to obstructions that might block its work. When the block was removed it would return to its normal functioning. But when he had examined all her external organs and found no visible wound or damage, considering meanwhile that her inactivity was not confined to one part but spread throughout the body, it dawned on him that the hurt must be in some organ unseen within the body, without which none of the external parts could function. No part of the body could carry on its work. Hayy hoped that if he could find that organ and remove whatever had lodged in it, it would revert to normal, its benefits would once more flow to the rest of the body and all the bodily functions would resume.

  He had observed in the past that the parts of animals’ dead bodies were solid, having no hollows except those of the head, chest and abdomen. He felt certain that the vital organ he was looking for must occupy one of these three cavities, and it seemed to him most likely by far that it be in the central of the three. Surely it had to be centrally located, since all the other organs were equally dependent on it. Besides, in his own case, he could feel what must be such an organ in his breast. He could restrict the action of his other organs – hands, feet, eyes, nose, and ears; he could lose these parts and conceivably get along without them. Conceivably he could get along without his head. But when he thought of whatever it was he could feel in his breast he could not conceive of living for an instant without it. For this reason, in fact, when fighting with animals, he had always been especially careful to protect his breast from their horns – because he could feel that there was something there.

  Certain that the organ where the hurt had settled must be in her breast, he decided to search for and examine it. Perhaps he would be able to get hold of the hurt and remove it. Still he was afraid this very operation might be worse than the original damage. His efforts might do more harm than good. He tried to think whether he had ever seen any animal recover from such a state; and, unable to do so, he lost hope of her getting better unless he did something. But there remained some hope of her recovery if he could find the critical organ and take away the hurt. So he decided to cut open her breast and find out what was inside.

  He took chips of stone and dry splinters of wood, sharp as knives, and split her open between the ribs. Cutting through the flesh, he reached the diaphragm. When he saw how tough it was he was certain that this covering must belong to some such organ as he was searching for. If he looked beneath he was sure to find it. Hayy tried to cut through it, but this was difficult, since he had no tools but only stones and sticks.

  He made fresh instruments and sharpened them. Then, cutting very carefully, he pierced the diaphragm and reached a lung. He supposed at first that this was what he was looking for and turned it round and round to see where it was impaired. What he found at first was only one lung, and when he saw that it was to one side (while the organ he was looking for, he was convinced, must be centered in the body’s girth as well as in its length) he went on exploring the mid-chest cavity until he found the heart, wrapped in an extremely tough envelope and bound by the strongest ligaments, cushioned in the lung on the side where he had entered. He said to himself, ‘If this organ has the same structures on the other side as it does here, then it really is directly in the center and it must be the organ I’m looking for – especially since its position is so good, and it is so beautifully formed, so sturdy and compact, and better protected than any other organ I have seen.’

  He probed on the other side and there too found the diaphragm and the other lung, just as before. Now he was sure this was the central organ he wanted. He tried to split or cut its protective pericardial cover; and finally with a tremendous effort he was able to lay the heart bare.

  On all sides it seemed firm and sound. He looked for any visible damage and found none. Squeezing it in his hand, he discovered it was hollow and thought, perhaps what I actually want is inside this organ and I have not yet reached it. He cut open the heart and inside found two chambers, a left and a right. The right ventricle was clogged with a thick clot of blood, but the left was empty and clear.

  ‘What I’m looking for,’ he said to himself, ‘must live in one of these two chambers. In this one on the right I see nothing but clotted blood – which cannot have congealed until the whole body got the way it is –’ for he had observed how blood thickens and clots when it flows out of the body, and this was simply ordinary blood, ‘I see that blood is found in all the organs, not confined to one as opposed to others. But what I’ve been looking for all along is something uniquely related to this special positi
on and something I know I could not live without for the batting of an eye. Blood I have often lost in quantity fighting with the animals, but it never hurt me; I never lost any of my faculties. What I’m looking for is not in this chamber. But the left one has nothing in it; I can see that it is empty. I cannot believe it serves no purpose, since I have seen that every organ exists to carry out some specific function. How could this chamber, with its commanding position, have none? I can only believe that what I was searching for was here but left, leaving the chamber empty and the body without sensation or motion, completely unable to function.’

  Realizing that whatever had lived in that chamber had left while its house was intact, before it had been ruined, Hayy saw that it was hardly likely to return after all the cutting and destruction. The body now seemed something low and worthless compared to the being he was convinced had lived in it for a time and then departed.

  Goodman (trans.), Ibn Tufayl’s ‘Hayy ibn Yaqzan’, pp. 109–14

  COMMENTARY

  Having cut open the heart and searched in vain for the source of life, Hayy is about to leave the doe’s body to rot, when he sees a raven burying another raven. Thus inspired, Hayy gives his foster-mother a decent burial before resuming his investigations into the nature of existence. He discovers fire, experiments with vivisection, dresses himself in animal skins, and so on.

  Sufi themes infuse the text of Ibn Tufayl’s Hayy ibn Yaqzan. From at least the eleventh century onwards, Sufis made a major contribution to Arabic literature. The writings of al-Hallaj have already been discussed in previous chapters and those of al-Ghazzali and Ibn al-Farid’s poetry will be discussed in Chapter 7. Muhyi al-Din Abu Bakr Muhammad IBN AL-‘ARABI (1165–1240) was perhaps the most influential as well as one of the most prolific of Sufi writers. His honorific name, Muhyi al-Din, means ‘Reviver of the Religion’. Ibn al-‘Arabi was born in Murcia in southern Spain where his father had been in the service of the ruler, but after the place was conquered by the Almohads, the family moved to Seville. Ibn al-‘Arabi was educated in Seville, but subsequently he extended his education by travelling from teacher to teacher (for this was the age of the wandering scholar). At first he pursued his peripatetic studies in Spain and the Maghreb, but in 1201 he went on the hajj to Mecca. There he met and fell in love with a young girl from a family of Persian Sufis – or so he claimed, but one should bear in mind that falling in love with a woman seen on the hajj had long been a stock theme in Arabic prose and poetry. Although Ibn al-‘Arabi’s love for this girl was never consummated, it was to inspire him for the rest of life, in much the same way that the vision of Beatrice was to inspire Dante. After a sojourn in Mecca, Ibn al-‘Arabi travelled more widely in the Middle East, encountering many other famous Sufis. At some point in his travels he received a special initiation by al-Khidr, ‘the Green Man’, a supernatural figure who served God as the guardian of the Spring of Eternal Life. In 1223 he settled in Damascus and devoted his time to prayer, meditation and writing until his death in that city. His tomb there remains an important centre of pilgrimage.