Samedin Kadic, ‘The Politics of Rationalist Philosophy in Arab Andalus, and the Reception of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan in Britain’

Join the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations for a presentation by Samedin Kadic, a visiting Fulbright scholar from the faculty of Islamic theology at the University of Sarajevo. Kadic will discuss “The Politics of Rationalist Philosophy in Arab Andalus, and the Reception of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan in Britain.” In 1671 a bilingual text in Arabic and Latin was published at Oxford, entitled the Philosophus autodidactus. The translation was made by Edwarde Pococke under the supervision of his father Dr. Edward Pococke. Philosophus autodidactus became literally a best-seller within a short period of time. The text was Hayy b. Yaqzan’s, a philosophical novel that was written in Arabic in a twelfth century by Abu Bakr Muhammad ibn Tufayl. Historical impact of this book in world’s intellectual culture was massive. We can find it all over Europe — in philosophy, science and in educational doctrines.

Kadic is a visiting scholar at the Carolina Center for the Study of the Middle East and Muslim Civilizations. This event is sponsored by the Center, and interested guests can email for more information.