Q. & A. 711 to 1707 with solved Papers css 1971 to date

Ibrahim ibn Sahl (1208-1251)
Ibrahim ibn Sahl, a Seville Jew who was converted to Islam towards the end of his life, was one of the most important poets of the ”decadence” period. He was the author of a series of remarkable love verses, distinguished by lightness and simplicity, blended with gracefulness and boldness of imagery. A place of significance in Andalusian literature is accorded to the fine philosophical novel known as ”The Romance of Hayy ibn Yakzan,” written by Ibn Tufayl (died 1 185), a noted philosopher and scholar. This, a kind of parable romance describing the greatness of the mind, the process of becoming a perfect human personality, and the ways to attain knowledge of the highest truths, belongs rather to the class of history of philosophy. It is a reflection of that subtle alloy of rationalism and mysticism which owed its emergence in medieval Arab thought to the cross-influence of ancient Greek philosophical ideas and Oriental
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(Indian and Muslim) mysticism. The plot of the romance and the vivid poetry of its presentation has earned the romance a place in the treasury of Arab belles-lettres.
The philosophical and the mystical meaning of the novel is evidenced by its title: the Arabic name ”Hayy ibn Yakzan” means ”living son of the waking”. From infancy, Havv ibn Yakzan lived on a desert island. According to one version, he was ”of those who are born without father or mother”. According to another version, he was tlv son of a certain Yakzan. His mo’her. who had borne him in secret, threw the infant into the sea, which finally cast him ashore on a desert island. A gazelle suckled him and he grew up among wild beasts, far from his own kind. By observation of nature, analyzing and interpreting certain natural phenomena, Hayy graduall> attains, though his reasoning powers, an understanding of the laws of life and the foundations of the world. This process of cognition of the world is described by Ibn Tutavl in an exciting and poetic manner. It forms a kind of hymn in praise of the self-sufficient mind capable of working out, by its own powers and without the aid of society, the laws of thought, and then. b\ force of loga and the faculty for generalization, of completeK masiennu all human knowledge of the world. But Ibn Tufayl’s perfect man does not attain the highest truth by intellect alone: Hayy’s spiritual path culminates in the mystical revelation, the intuitive cognition of the ”Essence of the Needfully Existing” and the ecstatic mergence wifli this Essence.
This information the author merely imparts to the reader, excusing himself from describing the ways of divine revelation and the state of ecstatic mergence with the Highest by declaring it impossible. After the culmination of Hayy’s spiritual formation, the pious Asal arrives at the island in search of solitude when Hayy encounters Asal, he realizes that this is one of his own kind, but, since he knows no human tongue, he cannot communicate with him. Asal teaches him human speech, whereupon Hayy reveals his own spiritual experience. In his turn, Asal tells him about the way in which people live in society and imparts to him the teaching of the Qur’an and certain beliefs, which amaze Hayy by their anthropomorphism. Why, he wonders, instead of plainly revealing the Highest Essence, the Prophet spoke in parable attributing fleshly characteristics to the deity? And then - the ineptitude of social establishments. (”Why should the Prophet permit the accumulation of property.... so that people devote themselves to trivial affairs and

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are distracted from truth?”) Hayy sets out in search of human society, to elucidate the truth to people. But they do not understand his teachings. After studying society, with its vicious relations between people and false conceptions, Hayy despairs of improving people, who lack the power to rise ’’to the heights of thought”, who lack the power to rise ”to the heights of thought”, and returns to solitude on his desert island.
The plot of the book shows an inclination towards the philosophical parable of a perfect man the paths to cognition of truth. The basic situation - man who, though alone, face to face with nature, reaches an understanding of the world which he is discovering - embellishes all the events that follow in the course of the narrative with a kind of poetry and endows the whole work with an unfading charm.