Ibn Tufail
The Arab Islamic philosophers, Ibn Tufail (Abubacer) and Ibn al-Nafis, were pioneers of the philosophical novel as they wrote the earliest novels dealing with philosophical fiction. Ibn Tufail wrote the first Arabic novel "Hayy ibn Yaqdhan" ("Philosophus Autodidactus") as a response to Al-Ghazali's "The Incoherence of the Philosophers". This was followed by Ibn al-Nafis who wrote a fictional narrative "Theologus Autodidactus" as a response to Ibn Tufail's "Philosophus Autodidactus". Both of these narratives had protagonists (Hayy in "Philosophus Autodidactus" and Kamil in "Theologus Autodidactus") who were autodidactic individuals spontaneously generated in a cave and living in seclusion on a desert island, both being the earliest examples of a desert island story. However, while Hayy lives alone on the desert island for most of the story in "Philosophus Autodidactus" (until he meets a castaway named Absal), the story of Kamil extends beyond the desert island setting in "Theologus Autodidactus" (when castaways take him back to civilization with them), developing into the earliest known coming of age plot and eventually becoming the first example of a science fiction novel.