Hayy Ibn Yaqzān is the protagonist of the philosophical tale and the only character for the majority of the text. He is a human man who lives alone on a remote equatorial island.

Ibn Tufayl offers two explanations for his origin; the more conventional that he was the abandoned son of a princess who entrusted her baby to the ocean, or the alternative that he was spontaneously generated in the clay of the island due to its perfectly balanced climate. Ibn Tufayl explains how a baby could be conceived in this way, relating that “those who claim Hayy came into being spontaneously say that in a pocket of earth on that island, over the years, a mass of clay worked until hot and cold, damp and dry were blended in just the proper way, their strength perfectly balanced” (106). The ideal combination of the elements of physical matter eventually forms a heart with a spirit inside and then a body forms around it. This explanation aligns with Hayy‘s eventual perfection of spirit, his physical formation from basic matter to higher complexity paralleling his education through observation, deduction, and eventually, intuition.

The text revolves around Hayy’s development and process of spiritual enlightenment, dividing his life into a sequence of 7-year periods.