*Please, press play on the track above to enjoy the music believed to be enjoyed during this time period. 

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Although the Autodidctis was created around 1277 this Arabic literature is beyond it’s time with advanced knowledge of biology and human anatomy for that time period.  This literature was originally titled The Treatise of Kāmil on the Prophet's Biography or Risālat Fādil ibn Nātiq. This work of literature coined the first ever science fiction novel. It’s creator, Ibn al-Nafis was an Arabic doctor and was a visionary into the future and into a new genre, science fiction. Ibn al-Nafis’s fascination with the human body is evident in his writings and description of the human body’s’ blood flow that was revolutionary and the first to be recorded in writing. His book’s focus on the future and the marvel of the human body is probably because of his hobby of dissecting dead bodies in the attempts to advance medicine. His book mirrors his desire to see a world that was more advanced than his own.

The story had humble beginnings, with a young, wild boy that lives alone on a dessert island. The boy has no family as he was generated suddenly out of nowhere. He lives totally isolated until a ship wrecks and brings another lives to cross paths with his own. The boy is taken back to the real world with the shipwrecked people and as the plot develops into an elaborate story filled with science fiction influences and finally ends in a type of apocalypse. Along the ride the author plays with the ideas of an afterlife, cosmology, teleology. Prophets of Islam, futurology, geology and more. It is a creative web of exploring the world through new and archaic perspectives of observing the world. This story is actually not thought to have come from sheer spontaneity, but it is believed to be a rebuttal to the first Arabic book ever written.

The biggest difference between the Theologus Autodidctis and the Philosophus Autodidactus is what makes it the perfect addition the curation. This book is not only the precedent for all science fiction but is also a beautiful coming of age tale of a lonely boy that came from nothing that went on to explore the complexities of the world through theatrical science.