The Arabic philosophical fable Hayy Ibn Yaqzan is a classic of medieval Islamic philosophy. Ibn Tufayl (d. 1185), the Andalusian philosopher, tells of a child raised by a doe on an equatorial island who grows up to discover the truth about the world and his own place in it, unaided-but also unimpeded-by society, language, or tradition. Hayy's discoveries about God, nature, and man challenge the values of the culture in which the tale was...