Ibn Tufail

Ibn Tufail (full Arabic name: "Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Abd al-Malik ibn Muhammad ibn Tufail al-Qaisi al-Andalusi"; Latinized form: "Abubacer Aben Tofail"; Anglicized form: "Abubekar" or "Abu Jaafar Ebn Tophail"; c. 1105 – 1185) was an Arab Andalusian Muslim polymath: a writer, novelist, Islamic philosopher, Islamic theologian, physician, astronomer, vizier, and court official.
As a philosopher and novelist, he is most famous for writing the first philosophical novel, "Hayy ibn Yaqdhan". As a physician, he was an early supporter of dissection and autopsy, which was expressed in his novel.
Life.
Born in Guadix, near Granada, he was educated by Ibn Bajjah (Avempace). His family were from the Arab Qays tribe. He was a secretary for several leaders, including the rulers of Ceuta and Tangier, in 1154. He also served as a secretary for the ruler of Granada, and later as vizier and physician for Abu Yaqub Yusuf, the Almohad caliph, to whom he recommended Ibn Rushd (Averroës) as his own future successor in 1169. Ibn Rushd later reports this event and describes how Ibn Tufayl then inspired him to write his famous Aristotelian commentaries:
Ibn Rushd became Ibn Tufayl's successor after he retired in 1182; Ibn Tufayl died several years later in Morocco in 1185. The astronomer Nur Ed-Din Al-Bitruji was also a disciple of Ibn Tufayl. Al-Bitruji was influenced by him to follow the Aristotelian system of astronomy, as he had originally followed the Ptolemaic system of astronomy.
His work in astronomy was historically significant as he played a major role in overturning the Ptolemaic ideas on astronomy. This event in history is called the "Andalusian Revolt”, where he influenced many, including Al-Bitruji, to desert the Ptolemaic ideas. 
Many Islamic philosophers, writers, physicians, and astronomers have been influenced by Ibn Tufail and his work. These people include Nur al-Din al-Bitruji, Abu ‘Abdallah Muhammad b. al-Abbar, Abd al-Wahid al-Marrakushi, Ahmed Mohammed al-Maqqari, and Ibn al-Khatib.
"Hayy ibn Yaqzan".
Ibn Tufail was the author of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān ( "Alive, son of Awake"), also known as Philosophus Autodidactus in Latin, a philosophical romance and allegorical novel inspired by Avicennism and Sufism, and which tells the story of an autodidactic feral child, raised by a gazelle and living alone on a desert island, who, without contact with other human beings, discovers ultimate truth through a systematic process of reasoned inquiry. Hayy ultimately comes into contact with civilization and religion when he meets a castaway named Absal (Asāl in some translations). He determines that certain trappings of religion, namely imagery and dependence on material goods, are necessary for the multitude in order that they might have decent lives. However, imagery and material goods are distractions from the truth and ought to be abandoned by those whose reason recognizes that they are. The names of the characters in the novel, Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān, Salamān, and Absāl were borrowed from Ibn Sina's tales. The title of the novel is also the same as Ibn Sina's novel. Ibn Tufail did this on purpose to use the characters and the title as a small reference to Ibn Sina, as he wanted to touch upon his philosophy.
Ibn Tufail's "Philosophus Autodidactus" was written as a response to al-Ghazali's "The Incoherence of the Philosophers". In the 13th century, Ibn al-Nafis later wrote the "Al-Risalah al-Kamiliyyah fil Siera al-Nabawiyyah" (known as "Theologus Autodidactus" in the West) as a response to Ibn Tufail's "Philosophus Autodidactus".
"Hayy ibn Yaqdhan" had a significant influence on both Arabic literature and European literature, and it went on to become an influential best-seller throughout Western Europe in the 17th and 18th centuries. The work also had a "profound influence" on both classical Islamic philosophy and modern Western philosophy. It became "one of the most important books that heralded the Scientific Revolution" and European Enlightenment, and the thoughts expressed in the novel can be found "in different variations and to different degrees in the books of Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Isaac Newton, and Immanuel Kant." 
A Latin translation of the work, entitled "Philosophus Autodidactus", first appeared in 1671, prepared by Edward Pococke the Younger. The first English translation (by Simon Ockley) was published in 1708. These translations later may have inspired Daniel Defoe to write "Robinson Crusoe", which also featured a desert island narrative. The novel also inspired the concept of "tabula rasa" developed in "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding" (1690) by John Locke, who was a student of Pococke. His "Essay" went on to become one of the principal sources of empiricism in modern Western philosophy, and influenced many enlightenment philosophers, such as David Hume and George Berkeley. Hayy's ideas on materialism in the novel also have some similarities to Karl Marx's historical materialism.
It also foreshadowed Molyneux's Problem, proposed by William Molyneux to Locke, who included it in the second book of "An Essay Concerning Human Understanding".
Other European writers influenced by "Philosophus Autodidactus" included Gottfried Leibniz, Melchisédech Thévenot, John Wallis, Christiaan Huygens, George Keith, Robert Barclay, the Quakers, Samuel Hartlib, and Voltaire.