Chapter 1 Introduction: Buried in the Dust of History: A Forgotten Arab Mentor of Modern European Thinkers Chapter 2 Serving God or Mammon? : Echoes from Hayy Ibn Yaqzan and Sinbad the Sailor in Robinson Crusoe Chapter 3 The Man of Reason: Hayy Ibn Yaqzan and His Impact on Modern European Thought Chapter 4 Beyond Family, History, Religion, and Language: The Construction of a Cosmopolitan Identity in a Twelfth-Century Arabic Philosophical Novel Chapter 5 The Book that Launched a Thousand Books Chapter 6 The Extraordinary Voyage Chapter 7 A Philosophical Letter, An Allegorical Voyage, or an Autobiography?: Hayy Ibn Yaqzan as a Model in Modern European Literature Chapter 8 Conclusion: A Humanist Thesis Subverted?
Samar Attar has published widely in both English and Arabic in the fields of literary criticism, philosophy, migration, and gender studies.
This is not only a scholarly book which fills a serious gap in
classical Arabic studies, it is also a timely foray into the ever
intensifying east-west debate. . . . Attar managed to bring
together a wealth of information based on her grasp of Western and
Arab intellectual history, in order to re-establish the lost
connection between the thought of Western enlightenment and the
Arab and Islamic rationalist and philosophical tradition. This is a
tour de force, a must reading for all those who have despaired over
the irrationalist attack on Muslim civilization and its adherents
in recent years. Attar's work is in the finest tradition of
comparative literary criticism and a painstakingly careful study
which finally answers many questions left obscured by the fog of
ideological works, medieval and modern.
*Arab Studies Quarterly, Spring 2008*
Attar's focused study... remains indispensable in a world where the
leader of the current super power has to remind us all about these
longstanding— and ultimately mutually sustaining—connections, which
we ignore at our peril.
*University Of Texas At San Antonio*
Samar Attar's Hayy ibn Yaqzan is a man for our times, a teacher of
toleration and even a relativist of sorts. That will be hard to
accept for those brought up to think of Ibn Tufayl's book as
somehow unfolding 'the secrets of the Oriental wisdom mentioned' by
Avicenna. But Attar has answers for such cavils and is adept at
pointing to the many authors in the early modern Western tradition
who may have drawn, wittingly or not, upon Ibn Tufayl's
philosophical novel.
*Charles E. Butterworth, University of Maryland*
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