Ibn Tufayl  (1105 – 1185)

Born near Granada, Spain (1105 AD).As a philosopher and novelist, he is most famous for writing the first philosophical novel,  Hayy ibn Yaqdhan 

Ibn Tufail was the author of Ḥayy ibn Yaqẓān 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.

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 distractions.

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.

Hayy's ideas on materialism in the novel also have some similarities to Karl Marx's historical materialism.