Producing Islamic philosophy: The life and afterlives of Ibn Tufayi's Hayy ibn Yaqzan in global history, 1882-1947

In recent decades, the trope that classical Muslim thinkers anticipated or influenced modern European thought has provided an easy endorsement of their contemporary relevance. This article studies how Arab editors and intellectuals, from 1882 to 1947, understood the twelfth-century Andalusian philosopher Ibn Tufayl, and Arabo-Islamic philosophy generally. This modern generation of Arab scholars also attached significance to classical Arabic texts as precursors to modern European thought. They invited readers to retrospectively identify with Ibn Tufayl and his treatise, Hayy ibn Yaqzan. Comparisons of Ibn Tufayl to European thinkers, and re-presentations of Hayy ibn Yaqzan as the precedent or genesis of European thought, facilitated these editors' global imaginaries, anti-colonial projects and political fantasies. This article tracks these projects and fantasies through the afterlife of Hayy ibn Yaqzan from early printings and generalist surveys to later editions and studies, as Ibn Tufayl's significance became sutured into his imagined importance for Europe, and for going beyond Europe.