Hayy Ibn Yaqzan: A Philosophical Tale

Sunlight in Hayy Ibn Yaqzān symbolizes the influence of God and how the creator’s presence can be felt in the material world. Ibn Tufayl compares the light of the sun to the spirit of God, indicating how that light either passes through or reflects from objects on the earth. The text asserts that “it should be clear that this spirit emanates continuously from God—glory be to Him. It is analogous to the sunlight that constantly floods the earth” (107). This concept of emanation is partially borrowed from Neoplatonism, a philosophical school that postulated that the world was not created from nothing, but rather flowed out from a divine being who was undiminished by the act, in the same way that the sun is not dimmed by shining onto the earth.

Later in the narrative, Hayy’s vision of God during his ecstatic state returns to the image of sunlight to describe divine power. Although Ibn Tufayl reminds the reader that the experience cannot be captured in words, he attempts to relate the concepts that Hayy discovers through metaphor. Hayy sees a series of spheres like the heavens, and “for each sphere he witnessed a transcendent immaterial subject, neither identical with nor distinct from those above, like the form of the sun reflected from mirror to mirror with the descending order of spheres” (152).