most famous for his Hayy Ibn Yaqzan (‘The Living Son of the Vigilant’) a charming narrative of the hero Hayy, who is abandoned as a boy on a desert island, and arrives at a complete knowledge of the world and God through his own unaided philosophical efforts; later contact with human civilization leads him to recognize the necessity of religious laws in the imperfect social world. The work was influential through its translation as Philosophus Autodictatus (‘The Self-Taught Philosopher’) in 1671.