Hayy ibn Yaqdhan
Ibn Tufail’s 11th-century novel "Hayy ibn Yaqdhan" provides an important antecedent to the concept of the noble savage. Written to explore the idea of natural theology, the novel sees the main character, a savage isolated from society, come to knowledge of God through the observation of nature. The book would come to inspire and influence many Enlightenment thinkers, among them Thomas Hobbes, John Locke, Christiaan Huygens, Isaac Newton and Immanuel Kant.