PART II

_THE DIVINE COMEDY COMPARED WITH OTHER MOSLEM LEGENDS ON THE AFTER-LIFE_

I

INTRODUCTION

1. The close resemblance that the Divine Comedy has been shown to bear to the legend of the _Miraj_ gives rise to a multiplicity of problems in the history of literature, all relevant to the originality of Dante’s poem. These problems are so important that a more minute examination of the poem in its several parts—limbo, hell, purgatory and the earthly and celestial paradises—is required in order to resolve whether or not many of the descriptive features and even whole scenes and episodes, although successfully standing the test of comparison with the _Miraj_, are, nevertheless, traceable to other Moslem legends and beliefs.

2. As a preliminary, it may be well briefly to set forth the doctrine of Islam on the future life; for it will be possible to admit or reject _a priori_ the likelihood of any resemblance between the conceptions of Dante and the Arabs according as the Islamic doctrine agrees or disagrees with the teaching of Christianity on the same point.

3. Now, on no question are the two religions in closer agreement than on that of the future life, in which, according to both, the souls exist in four different states. By the eleventh century at the latest definite expression had been given to this doctrine by the orthodox clergy of Islam, and notably by the great moralist and theologian, Algazel.[140]

The state of everlasting damnation, reserved for the souls of those who denying God gave themselves up to worldly pleasures is equivalent to the Christian hell; and, just as in the latter the pain inflicted is both physical and moral, so in the Moslem state the soul, in addition to being subjected to the torture of everlasting fire, is made to suffer anguish through its separation from God.

Everlasting salvation, corresponding to the Christian heaven, is the state of those souls that lived in the true faith and died either innocent or repentant, free from all taint of sin. Their reward is double, for over and above the sensual pleasures promised by Moslem revelation, they experience the infinitely greater bliss of the contemplation of the Divine essence.

The two states intermediate between heaven and hell approximate to our purgatory and limbo. According to Algazel, the punishment in purgatory differs from that in hell only in that it is not eternal, but temporary. True, the Christian purgatory is the place where venial sins are expiated, or deadly sins whose guilt has been washed away; whereas the Moslem purgatory is assigned to those souls who, although guilty of deadly sin, have until the moment of death kept the root of faith alive within their hearts and been deprived by death alone of the possibility of repentance. As, according to Algazel, the faith that saves is not the dead but the living faith expressed in religious feeling and good deeds, this act of living faith in God and in the intercession of the Prophet is then practically the same as the spirit of contrition required to save the Christian.

The fourth state, which represents the Christian limbo, is that of the souls who, having neither served nor offended God, are exempt from punishment, although denied eternal bliss. This is the condition of lunatics, idiots, the children of infidels, and those adults who, never having heard the call of Islam, may be said to have died in ignorance of their infidelity.

The brief outlines sketched above will suffice to show how similar are the moral foundations upon which the Christian and Moslem conceptions of the after-life are based. Nor is this a matter for wonder, seeing that so great an authority as St. John of Damascus held Islam to be but an heretical form of Christianity, heretical inasmuch as it denied both the Trinity and the Divinity of Christ,[141] and that Algazel himself confessed the whole of the teaching of the Christian faith, apart from these two points of doctrine, to be infallible truth.[142]

II

THE MOSLEM LIMBO IN THE DIVINE COMEDY

1. The first of the nether regions visited by Dante is that set apart for such souls as have done neither good nor evil. To this place Dante gives the name of “limbo.”[143]

The Latin noun “limbus,” the origin of which is obscure, is used by classical writers, such as Virgil, Ovid, and Statius, with the meaning of “fringe or border adorning the lower part of a garment.” In the sixth century it is used with the meaning of “coast.” In the Bible and ecclesiastical writings the abode of indifferent souls is named the “Bosom of Abraham,” but never the “limbo”; and it is not known who introduced the term into Christian literature. It appears suddenly in the works of the commentators of Peter the Lombard, contemporaries of Dante, who designate by it both the abode of unbaptised children (_limbus puerorum_) and the dwelling of the patriarchs of the Old Testament (_limbus patrum_).[144]

Dante places this abode immediately above hell, as if it were an antechamber of the latter, and divides it into two parts—the ante-inferno, a wide plain inhabited by the indifferent souls,[145] and the angels that remained neutral in Lucifer’s rebellion against God,[146] and the limbo proper, a deep and shaded valley, in the midst of which stands a fortress surrounded by seven walls with seven gates leading to a pleasant meadow.[147]

The limbo is inhabited by children that died innocent, but unbaptised, and, in addition, by a host of men and women who, though righteous, were either pre-Christian pagans or true followers of Mahomet and who, moreover, are famous as poets, moralists, philosophers, or heroes.[148]

The suffering of these spirits is purely moral, and arises from their insatiable longing to behold God. Debarred from the joys of paradise, and exempt from the physical punishment of hell, they may be said to be in suspense (_sospesi_) between heaven and hell.[149] This intermediate state would appear to give them special opportunities of knowing and dealing with both the blessed and the damned. Thus Virgil is in direct communication, from the limbo, with Beatrice[150]; and, as he guides Dante through hell and purgatory, he names and describes to him the sinners and fiends, whose features are evidently well known to him.

2. The absence of almost all Biblical or theological precedents for Dante’s picture need hardly be insisted upon. The name, the picturesque description of the place, the exact classification of the dwellers, who are pagans and at times even Moslems, the many details of their life and condition—none of these can find full justification in Catholic dogma, which is as discreet on these as on most other points of eschatology.[151]

In Islam it is otherwise. The absence of any one and unquestionable authority to distinguish between matters of faith and of free thought enabled a large number of myths and legends to be introduced from other Oriental religions—especially Judaism, Mazdaism, and Eastern Christianity—and, being attributed to the Prophet and his companions, to acquire a weight almost equal with the text of the Koran.

A search in this direction may perhaps provide a clue to the reading of the riddle of Dante’s limbo, which Christian theology leaves unsolved.

3. The Koran (VII, 44, 46) speaks of a mansion “Al Aaraf” that separates the blessed from the wicked. The word “Aaraf” by derivation means “the upper part of a curtain or veil”; it is also used to denote “the mane of a horse, the crest of a cock and, in general, the highest or most prominent part of anything”; in its wider sense it is applied to “any limit or boundary between things.”[152] Thus, it is similar to the classical _limbus_; but, whereas _limbus_ did not acquire the meaning of a region beyond the grave until the thirteenth century, the Arabic word had this meaning, in addition to its ordinary meaning, as early as the time of Mahomet.[153]

The Moslem limbo is variously described in the legends—as a pleasant vale studded with fruit trees; as a valley lying behind a lofty mountain; as a circular wall of great height, with battlements and a gate, rising between heaven and hell; or simply as an eminence or mount. These conceptions, grouped together, present a picture not unlike that of Dante’s limbo; especially, if the picture is completed with the description, recurrent in the _Miraj_, of the Garden of Abraham and the entrance to the Moslem hell, which, like the castle that forms the antechamber of Dante’s hell, also has seven gates. Again, this castle, surrounded as it is by seven walls with seven gates, is an almost exact reproduction of the Islamic castle of the garden of paradise, which is surrounded by eight walls with eight gates[154]; as if Dante, in blending the Moslem designs of heaven and hell, had sought to symbolise the neutral nature of the souls dwelling in the limbo.

The Moslem limbo has, on the authority of Algazel himself, been shown to be the abode of those that lived neither in virtue nor in vice. In keeping with this doctrine, Moslem tradition specifies the following groups: Martyrs of holy warfare who are denied the reward of paradise through having disobeyed their parents; men of learning whose merit was nullified by their vanity; infant children of Moslems and infidels; and, finally, angels of the male sex or genii that believed in the Prophet. These groups correspond very fairly to the groups in Dante’s limbo of the unbaptised children and the heroes, poets and philosophers whose virtues and talents were neutralised by their lack of faith. As regards the angels of male sex, they are indeed as enigmatical as Dante’s neutral angels.

The only suffering that, according to the Koran and the theologians, is inflicted on the inhabitants of the Moslem limbo is a vain longing to enter paradise: “They cannot enter for all their longing.”[155] As the good they have done is balanced by their sins, they neither sink into hell nor rise to heaven, but remain in suspense between the two.[156] Thus placed, they are acquainted and converse with both the blessed and the damned.[157]

III

THE MOSLEM HELL IN THE DIVINE COMEDY

1. Dante lovers of all ages have dwelt admiringly upon the originality shown by the poet in his conception of the architecture of hell. His compatriot Christoforo Landino wrote as follows in the fifteenth century[158]: “Benche questo poeta in ogni cosa sia maraviglioso, nientedimeno non posso sanza sommo stupore considerare la sua nuova, ne mai da alcuno altro escogitata inventione.” And in modern times, Rossi, after showing how feeble were the stereotyped descriptions of hell prior to Dante’s and how poor in this respect were the Biblical and classical sources available to him, concludes by saying: “L’ingegno poderoso e l’alta fantasia del poeta svolsero e rimutarono con piena libertà questo abbozzo, fecondarono quegli elementi e ne trassero un tutto nuovo, originale, grandioso, definito in ogni parte con esatteza quasi matematica.”[159]

The admiration of the critic is justified. But, before the originality of Dante’s conception can be regarded as established beyond all doubt, it must be shown that no similar description existed in the literature of other religions. This demonstration has often been attempted. Vossler, for instance, has given a complete summary of the researches made by Dantists in their endeavour to find religious, philosophical and artistic precedents for the Divine Comedy.[160] With wonderful scholarship he has reconstructed what he calls the _prehistory_ of the sublime poem. The myths contained in religions prior to Christianity, as well as the teaching of the Old and New Testaments, are drawn upon as sources. One religion alone is excluded from his survey—the Mahometan.[161] Yet of all religions Islam is the richest in legends on the after-life.[162] Islam, the spurious offspring of Judaism and Christianity, blended the doctrine of the Old and New Testaments with elements drawn from other Oriental faiths; and the fact that it appeared at a later date and spread rapidly through countries inhabited by the most religious peoples of the ancient world aided the process of assimilation. Accordingly, in no other religious lore do we find so minute and graphic descriptions of the abodes and life of the blessed and the wicked souls as in the Koran and the traditions built up around it; and a comparison of the Moslem hell with Dante’s Inferno may well throw new light upon the question of the originality of the great poet’s conception.

2. Beginning with the general outlines of the two conceptions, we find no precise topography of hell in the Koran.[163] But Moslem tradition agrees with Dante in placing hell beneath the earth’s crust; the tales represent it as a dark chasm, or concave opening in the earth, so deep that a stone or ball of lead dropped into it would take seventy years to reach the bottom.[164] As in the Divine Comedy, its mouth is laid at Jerusalem, near or behind the Eastern wall of the temple of Solomon.[165] Dante maintains the unity of his architectural design by placing the celestial Jerusalem in a vertical line with the city on earth; and the same vertical projection applies, as will be shown later, to the Moslem paradise.

But there are further coincidences. In Version B of Cycle 2 of the _Miraj_ the Moslem hell was seen to be formed, like that of Dante, of a series of concentric circular strata gradually descending from the mouth to the bottom. This conception of the structure of hell was invented by the Moslem traditionists in their endeavour to interpret the Koranic text (XV, 44), which says: “(Hell) has seven gates; to each gate, a separate group.” The commentators could furnish no explanation of this verse, if the current meaning of “door” or “gate” were to be given to the Arabic word _bab_. Accordingly, a metaphorical interpretation was soon applied to the word in the sense of “step” or “circular stratum,” which allowed hell to be conceived as a place of imprisonment consisting of seven pits, each reserved for one class of sinners.[166] To give this interpretation greater authority, it was attributed to Ali, the son-in-law of Mahomet.[167]

“Know ye of what manner are the gates of hell?” he asked his hearers, and they answered, “as are the gates we know”; but he said, “not so, for they are thus,” and, as he spake, he laid one hand flat upon the other.

The idea of parallel planes thus suggested is carried further in other tales, attributed either to Ali or to Ibn Abbas, Mahomet’s uncle. In these the words “step” or “circular stratum” are used in place of “gate”; the seven divisions are expressly stated to lie one above the other; and the distance between each is measured in terms of hyperbole.[168] The division into seven is characteristic of Moslem cosmography. The Koran itself says (LXV, 12): “Seven are the astronomical heavens and seven the earths, as are seven the seas, the gates of hell and the mansions of paradise.”[169] Dante, in dividing each of the realms of hell, purgatory and paradise into ten regions, betrays a similar obsession for symmetry, coupled with a belief in the esoteric virtue of a given number.[170] Although the coincidence does not extend to the numbers themselves, the principle underlying both cosmographies is the same.

Like the different circles of the Inferno, each of the stages of the Moslem hell has a name of its own and certain physical features peculiar to it, and is reserved for one class of sinners condemned to one particular torture. It would be difficult, if not impossible, to reduce to one scheme the heterogeneous descriptions furnished in the tales. Nor is it claimed that they agree in detail with Dante’s description of hell. But a brief review of some of these tales will, notwithstanding the simplicity of the setting, reveal the general features of resemblance mentioned above. Thus a tradition dating from the second century of the Hegira gives the divisions of hell, reckoned downwards, as the following[171]:—

1. _Jahannam_, or Gehenna, for Moslems guilty of deadly sins. 2. _Lazi_, or glowing fire, for Christians. 3. _Al-Hatma_, or greedy fire, for Jews. 4. _As-Sair_, or flaming fire, for Sabians. 5. _Saqar_, or burning fire, for Zoroastrians. 6. _Al-Jahim_, or intense fire, for polytheists. 7. _Al-Hawiya_, or abysm, for hypocrites.

Other traditions classify the seven earths into which God divided our planet and which correspond to the seven stages of hell, as follows[172]:—

1. _Adim_, or surface, inhabited by mankind. 2. _Basit_, or plain, the prison of the winds, inhabited by men that eat their own flesh and drink their own blood. 3. _Thaqil_, or region of distress, the antechamber of hell in which dwell men with the mouth of a dog, the ears of a goat, the cloven hoof of an ox and the wool of a sheep. 4. _Batih_, or place of torrents, a valley through which flows a stream of boiling sulphur to torment the wicked; the dwellers in this valley have no eyes and in place of feet, have wings. 5. _Hayn_, or region of adversity, in which serpents of enormous size devour the infidels. 6. _Masika_, or store and _Sijin_, or dungeon, the office where sins are recorded and where the souls are tormented by scorpions of the size of mules. 7. _As-Saqar_, or place of burning, and _Athara_, place of damp and great cold; this is the home of Iblis, who is chained in the midst of the rebel angels, his hands fastened one in front of and the other behind him, except when set free by God to chastise his fiends.

It need hardly be pointed out how great the distance is that separates this scheme, childish in its simplicity, from the complex moral structure of Dante’s hell. It should be borne in mind, however, that here we are not dealing with the systematic works of accomplished writers—they will be discussed at a later stage—but with popular tales that lived, and still live, in the mouth of the illiterate people; and they are quoted, not as counterparts of the Inferno, but as rough sketches, in which analogies, even of detail, with the poem are to be found.[173] Thus, the second stage is, like Dante’s second circle, a place of winds; and in the fifth region enormous serpents devour the sinners, as in the eighth circle of Dante they do the thieves. Again, the glacial region of the last surface is an exact counterpart of Dante’s lowest circle, with Lucifer corresponding to Iblis the Moslem king of evil; Iblis, moreover, appears chained with one hand in front and one behind, just as does the giant Ephialtes.[174]

As more and more traditions come to be consulted, each adding fresh picturesque details, the description will be found to lose its original baldness and acquire a relief as marked as that of Dante’s picture. These tales were collected by the ascetics of Islam, who have handed the collections down to us in their writings.[175] A comparison of the picture of the Moslem hell with the Inferno shows a remarkable resemblance. Like the latter, the former is depicted with a wealth of orographic, hydrographic and architectural features—rocks, hills and mountains, chasms and valleys; rivers, lakes and seas; sepulchres, dungeons, castles and bridges. As in the Inferno, many of these topographical features bear special names; and, again, in the naming the same principles are followed as in Dante. The latter either names the regions after the sinners suffering in them, such as the abodes of the traitors[176]; or, like the eighth circle, Malebolge, from the physical and moral conditions of the place itself. Apart from the names of the principal stages that are quoted above, the hell of Islam has many names for special topographical features.

Thus, a mountain formed of the smoke of hell is named _Zal Yahmum_; a rock on which libertines are tortured is called _Sijin_, or dungeon; _Khandaq as-sokran_ is the name of a pit from the bottom of which spring water and blood wherewith drunkards seek to quench their thirst; _Maubiq_, or perdition, is a valley through which runs a river of fire; _Atham_, or place of crimes, is the name of another valley; _Al-Wayl_, or misery, is the deepest of the valleys, in which the pus from the sores of the sinners gathers and is drunk by the polytheists; _Al-Khabal_, or ruin, and _Al-Hazan_, or sorrow, are the names of two other valleys; _Lamlam_ is the name of a round valley, the intense heat of which strikes terror into the hearts of all the dwellers in hell; _Al-Gassaq_, or infection, is a spring from which flows sweat exuded by serpents, in the poisonous waters of which the flesh of the damned rots away from the bone.[177] Some regions take their names from famous sinners, such as the abode of tyrants, from Pharaoh; that of the polytheists, from Abu Jahl; and so forth.[178]

From this brief summary it will be seen that the hell of primitive Islam agrees with Dante’s hell in being an abyss of great depth, formed of stages, steps or circular strata, each lying at a depth proportionate to the torture meted out therein; each main stage is subdivided into a number of secondary storeys; and in both schemes the stages or steps bear special names and are set apart for certain categories of sinners.

The agreement in outline between the two conceptions cannot be explained on the ground that both were derived from a common early Christian model; for the eschatology of early Christianity, both Occidental and Oriental, is of marked sobriety.[179] Nor is it in Islam that the origin of this complex architectural scheme must be sought, but farther East, particularly in Buddhism.[180]

3. The outlines of hell, traced by the early Moslem traditionists, were filled in with a wealth of detail by the theologians of later centuries; the mystics, especially, enhanced the tales with fantastic comment and even endeavoured graphically to represent by means of designs the picture thus formed.

Prominent among the mystics living before Dante’s time was Ibn Arabi of Murcia, whose allegorical ascensions have been shown to be curiously similar to the work of Dante.[181] Entire chapters of his monumental work, _Futuhat_, are devoted to the description of hell, which is represented in the traditional manner as a pit or abyss of fabulous depth, formed of seven steps or circular strata.[182] The innovations introduced by the Sufi are, however, of great interest. Above all, the sinners are distributed among the seven circles according to the nature of their sins and the organ, or part of the body, with which they committed them, viz., the eyes, ears, tongue, hands, belly, pudenda, and feet. Thus, the principle governing the distribution is no longer dogmatic, but, as in the Divine Comedy, ethical. Ibn Arabi, indeed, combines both principles, inasmuch as he subdivides each circle into quadrants, reserved for unbelievers, polytheists, atheists, and hypocrites respectively. In addition, and on a different principle, each circle is divided into semi-circles—the one for sinners guilty of _external_ sin, or sin actually committed; the other for those who committed the same sin _internally_, or in thought. Finally, each circle is composed of a hundred secondary circles or steps, subdivided into abodes or cells, the total number of which equals the number of mansions in heaven.[183] But Ibn Arabi goes further than this. Accustomed to the use of geometrical design for the illustration of the most abstruse metaphysical thought, he has recourse to this means for interpreting his conception of hell.[184] As a follower of the school of Ibn Masarra, he, like other Spanish Sufis, conceived hell to have the external aspect of a serpent.[185] And indeed, as the Moslem hell, like that of Dante, consists of a structure of circular layers or strata, the diameter of which decreases with their depth, the whole seen from above in ground plan would provide a figure formed of concentric circles not unlike the spiral formed by the coils of a serpent. This is, in fact, the plan that Ibn Arabi has given us in his _Futuhat_[186] and which is here reproduced in Fig. 1.

The Dantists also, in graphic illustration of the poet’s descriptions, have drawn designs of the architectural plan of hell and the other regions beyond the grave. Thus, Manfredi Porena in his “Commento grafico alla Divina Commedia per use delle scuole” (Milan, 1902) gives a ground plan of Dante’s hell (see upper part of Fig. 2) that is almost identical with Ibn Arabi’s design, the main difference lying in the number of circles, of which there are ten in Dante and seven in Ibn Arabi.

Porena also gives the elevation of the inferno (see lower part of Fig. 2), which resembles the section of an amphitheatre having ten steps or tiers. The same elevation appears in Fraticelli’s edition of the Divine Comedy. Ibn Arabi does not give us this figure, but the elevation of the Islamic hell was drawn by the Sufis and their design appears in the Turkish encyclopædia, “Maʿrifet Nameh,” by Ibrahim Hakki.[187] A glance at the reproduction of this design in Fig. 3 will show it to be identical with the elevation of Dante’s hell.

IV

THE MOSLEM HELL IN THE DIVINE COMEDY—_continued_

1. Having studied the setting, we may now proceed to a consideration of the personages appearing in hell and the tortures they suffer. The comparison with the _Miraj_ revealed general features of resemblance in this respect, such as the observance, in the infliction of the tortures, of what Dantists aptly term the law of the _contrapasso_. Other analogies in the systems of punishment may be passed over as being due possibly to parallel and independent imitation of the mediæval _lex talionis_.[188] More interesting is the resemblance of picturesque detail to be found in actual episodes of the two descriptions.

Setting out on our task in the footsteps of Dante and his guide we are at once struck by the fact that they never turn to the right, but always to the left. To this apparently insignificant detail the Dantists have rightly attributed an allegorical meaning. They seem, however, to have overlooked the fact that this is in reality a Moslem feature; for the mystics, and particularly Ibn Arabi, taught that in hell there is no right hand, just as in heaven there is no left hand. The belief is based on a text of the Koran, which says that the blessed are guided on their way to glory by the light of their virtues shining on their right hand—whence Ibn Arabi infers that the damned move towards the left.[189]

2. In the second circle Dante sees the adulterers swept hither and thither in the darkness of a hellish storm. An outline of this scene appeared in Version B of Cycle 1 of the _Miraj_; and, as has just been seen, in the legends describing the division of the Moslem hell into seven stages or tiers the second is also referred to as the region of winds. In addition, there is a tale attributed to Mahomet that says: “In hell there blows a dark storm of wind, with which God torments such of the wicked as He chooses.”[190] This wind is the same dread gale that God sent to punish the city of Ad for its wickedness, a scene that is repeatedly described in terms similar to those used by Dante, in the commentaries on the Koran and the collections of legends of the Prophet.[191]

A black cloud or storm, a hurricane wraps all in gloom except for the sinister light from what appears to be a flame in its midst; a dry and desolating wind roars as it whirls around; the ground trembles under the perpetual blast, which sweeps all before it; with each violent gust men and women are swept along, thrown up into the air and dashed to the ground; this hurricane is the dread instrument of Divine vengeance, the merciless torture of sinners who gave themselves up to the delights of the senses, to gluttony and lust; tossed hither and thither by the gale and smitten by the wind, they cry out in bitter anguish.

Compare this scene with that described by Dante: A hellish storm, a wind of utter darkness but for streaks of purple light[192] blows furiously without ceasing; roaring like the sea in tempest, it sweeps the lustful along in its whirl, turning them around, vexing and bruising them; it carries them now in this, then in that direction, it throws them up and casts them down; and, as it wounds them, it wrings cries of pain and anguish from the sufferers.

As may be seen, the similarity of the descriptions extends to the very wording of the texts.[193]

3. Let us now descend to the sixth circle of the inferno. Version B of Cycle 2 of the legend of the _Miraj_ told how Mahomet beheld a sea of fire, on the shores of which stood cities formed of countless fiery sepulchres, in which the wicked lie tortured. The literal resemblance of this scene to the city of Dis in the sixth circle, described in Cantos IX, X and XI of the Inferno, was remarked upon above.[194] It may be added here that the punishment of sinners in coffins of fire is mentioned in several other Moslem legends describing the tortures of hell.[195]

4. The torture of the Sodomites in the third ring of the seventh circle also has its parallel in the Moslem hell. Dante depicts them as unceasingly treading the circle they inhabit, under a rain of fire that sears their naked bodies.[196] One of the sinners is his former master, Brunetto Latini, and, as he walks awhile with him, he expresses his astonishment and grief at finding him there, for he remembers the wise teaching he received from him on earth.

A double series of Moslem traditions may be quoted as prototypes of this episode. In the first place, the Moslem hell contains a torture very similar to that of the rain of fire:

A rain of boiling water or molten brass will fall unceasingly upon their heads and, penetrating their skin, will eat away their entrails and emanate from between their feet, when the body will return to its former state.[197]

More specifically, though indeed referring to the fate of the wicked at the final judgment, it is stated in the Koran (LV, 35): “Upon you shall God send down flames of fire and molten brass.”

The second group of tales refers to the punishment of the wise men whose conduct was at variance with their teaching.

“Cast into hell, they will be made to go round and round without rest, even as a donkey in turning the wheel of a well or a mill. Some of their disciples, on beholding them from heaven, will descend and accompany them in their ceaseless rotation, asking, ‘What has brought you hither, seeing that it was but from you we learnt?’ In other versions the disciple exclaims: ‘Master! What has befallen thee? Didst not thou haply teach us what to do and what not to do?’ In other versions again they ask, ‘How came ye to enter hell seeing that we gained heaven but by your teaching?’ To which the sages make reply: ‘We bade you do what was right, but we ourselves did otherwise.’”[198]

As will be seen, the similarity between the two texts, the Moslem and the Christian, extends down to the very form of expression.

5. The first valley of Malebolge, Dante’s eighth circle, contains the panders, who, as they hurry naked through the valley, are scourged by fiends.[199] This is the very punishment allotted by Moslem tradition to those that neglected the rite of prayer or falsely accused people of adultery—angels or fiends, the tradition runs, shall whip both classes of sinners, smiting them cruelly on the face, ribs and shoulders.[200]

As for the flatterers, whom immersed in filth Dante places in the second chasm,[201] their punishment is equivalent to that of the drunkards in the Moslem hell, whose thirst is quenched with the loathsome lees of hell, the sweat, the pus and the blood flowing from the wounds of the other sinners.[202]

The third fosse of Malebolge is set with pits of fire, in which the Simonists are roasted head downwards. A parallel to this scene is the Moslem torture of murderers, who are likewise held in pits of fire.[203]

6. On reaching the fourth pit, Dante meets with a procession of sinners whose necks he describes as being strangely twisted, for their faces are turned towards their backs. More than once he seeks to describe the strange sight, by saying that the tears of these souls fell down their backs, that their shoulders were turned into their breasts, that they walked backwards, and so forth.[204]

This curious torture, the originality of which has often been commented on, would seem to be but an adaptation of a passage in the Koran, which reads:—

“Ye that have received the Scriptures, beware of disbelieving in what God has sent down from heaven in witness of your holy books, _lest We should wipe out your features and turn your faces in the opposite direction_.”[205]

The warning that God is thus supposed to address to the Jews who denied the truth of the Koran, was variously interpreted both in a literal and figurative sense. The ninth century commentator Tabari has recorded the different meanings.[206] But the literal interpretation prevailed, supported as it was by a belief in Islam, based on Talmudic legend, according to which some of the demons appear to man in the same distorted shape.[207] Moslem tales of the Day of Judgment also depict certain sinners as brought to life again in this condition—with their faces turned towards their backs they read their sentence, which is fixed to their shoulders.[208] The very vividness of the picture stamped it on the Moslem mind with the result that it was used both in the popular sermons addressed to the Moriscoes and in the works of thinkers such as Algazel.[209]

7. The torture of hypocrites in the sixth pit of Malebolge also appears to be an adaptation from two scenes, common in Moslem tradition, blended into one. Dante depicts them as walking slowly along, groaning under the weight of leaden mantles, the external gilt of which dazzles the eye.[210] In the Arabian tales of the Day of Judgment misers are punished by being obliged to walk on and on without rest under the weight of the hoards they had gathered on earth[211]; and both the Koran and the traditions of Islam represent sinners, particularly carnal sinners, as being clothed in tunics or mantles of metal glowing with heat.[212]

While conversing with two of the hypocrites the poet is horror-stricken at the sight of the awful suffering of Caiaphas, who lies impaled upon the ground and writhes in agony as he is trampled under foot by the other hypocrites.[213]

This is another instance of the artistic blending of scenes characteristic of the Moslem legends on the after-life. A _hadith_, attributed to Ibn Abbas, describing in pathetic language the tortures of the final judgment and hell, contains the following passage:—

“How many youths of tender age and fresh in features will be crying out in hell: ‘Alas, my unhappy childhood, my luckless youth! Woe is me that my strength should have failed me and my young body been so wretched in its weakness!’ For they will lie in bitter affliction fixed to the ground with stakes.”[214]

The complementary scene is related in the following apocryphal tradition:—

“He who in this life treats his neighbour with contempt will be brought to life again on the Day of Judgment in the figure of an ant and all mankind will trample him under foot. Thereafter he shall enter hell.”[215]

8. The seventh pit of Malebolge is the place where thieves expiate their crimes. Dante sees them rushing hither and thither in a vain attempt to escape the hydras that, after seizing and twining themselves around their victims, sting them in the neck, face and navel with fangs so poisonous that their flesh is consumed and reduced to ashes, only to reappear for the torture to be renewed.[216] Dante enhances his description with features borrowed from the classical poets, more particularly Ovid. If these are eliminated, the picture will be found to agree very fairly with several scenes of torture that abound in Moslem tales of the final judgment and hell, especially the tales of the _Corra_, the collection that has so often been drawn upon for the purposes of this work.[217] If allowance is made for Oriental hyperbole, a comparison with the following will at once suggest a likeness between the two:—

“On the Day of Judgment the miser who had refused to give the ritual alms will find himself face to face with a serpent of great size, with eyes of fire and teeth of iron, which will pursue him saying, ‘Give me thy miserly right hand that I may tear it from thee.’ The miser will attempt to flee, whereupon the serpent will say, ‘Where dost thou hope to find refuge from thy sins?’ and, coiling itself around him, will bite off his right hand and devour it, when the hand will at once grow again. Thereupon the serpent will devour his left hand, which likewise will reappear. At each bite of the serpent, the miser will utter such a shriek of pain that all around him will be stricken with horror.”—“In the valley of hell called Lamlam there are snakes, as thick as a camel’s neck and as long as a month’s journey, that sting all who neglected the rite of prayer; the poison they inject burns the flesh throughout seventy years.”—“There is another valley in hell called the Sad Valley, in which are scorpions like black mules, each provided with seventy fangs swollen with poison to sting the sinners who were remiss in prayer; the virus they deposit burns in the wounds a thousand years, when the flesh of their victims rots away.”—“The drunkard will be taken to a den full of scorpions as large as camels, which will seize hold of him by the feet.”—“Usurers will lie in hell with their bellies open and swarming with snakes and scorpions.”—“Adulterers will be stung by serpents in the very parts of their bodies on which they bestowed their kisses.”—“The infidel will be seized by the hydra of the naked head, which will devour his flesh from head to foot, but the flesh will grow again over his bones so that the hydra may again devour it from foot to head.”

9. As Dante sets foot in the ninth pit of Malebolge he meets with a sight so awful that he is at a loss for words to describe it.[218] A crowd of sinners guilty of having sown discord among men are being driven round the valley by demons who with sharp swords cut them in twain; but as the victim moves on the wounds heal, only to be opened afresh on his return. Three scenes of torture particularly attract the poet’s attention. Mahomet, with his entrails trailing at his feet, is seen following his cousin Ali, who appears cut open from chin to belly. Mosca degli Uberti, whose hands have been cut off, raises his bleeding stumps as he makes himself known to Dante. Finally, Bertrand de Born appears decapitated, holding his head by the hair in his hand like a lantern.

The outlines of this scene in general and of the three episodes already existed in Moslem legend.

“He who takes his own life”—says a tradition[219]—“shall with the same knife be done to death throughout eternity by the angels in the valleys of hell.... At each stab a jet of blood blacker than pitch will spout from the wound, which will heal again at once for the torture to be repeated without end.”

The picture that Dante draws of Mahomet and Ali occurs in many Moslem tales of hell, one of which depicts two groups of sinners as follows:—

“Cursing and wailing they tread the space between two circles of hell; the ones drag their entrails behind them as they go; the others are spewing blood and matter.”

Variants of these legends depict the sinners treading, like an ass that turns the wheel of a grindstone, round and round the valley in hell, with their entrails, torn out by the fiends, trailing behind them. The very same torture, moreover, was allotted to two men notorious throughout Islam for their cruelty, the fifth Ommeyad Caliph Abd al-Malik Ibn Marwan and his bloodthirsty general Al-Hajjaj, whom tradition represented either as walking in hell with their bowels dangling between their legs, or as being assassinated seventy times for each murder they had committed on earth.[220]

The bloody fate of Mosca degli Uberti also has its Moslem counterpart in the torture of thieves and the avaricious:—

“He who bereaves another of a part of his wealth shall on the Day of Judgment appear before God bereft of both hands.”[221]

Lastly, the horrifying apparition of Bertrand de Born would seem to be but an artistic adaptation of a scene in a Moslem description of the final judgment:—

“On that day the victim of murder will appear before God carrying in one hand his head hanging by the hair, with the blood pouring from the veins of his neck and, dragging his murderer with him, will cry out ‘Oh, Lord! Ask Thou of this man why he killed me.’”[222]

10. In the last chasm of Malebolge deceivers and falsifiers of all kinds are seen undergoing various forms of torture; some lie piled one upon the other or drag themselves along on all fours; itching all over, they scratch the scab from off their sores or tear one another with their teeth; others lie with swollen bellies, suffering unquenchable thirst.[223]

In Version B of Cycle 2 of the _Miraj_ three similar scenes were described, showing the tortures suffered by slanderers, usurers and drunkards. Many other tales in Islam also depict the torture of sinners in terms greatly resembling those of Dante. Thus it is said, “The itch will seize upon the sinners, who will scratch themselves to the bone;” or, “They will suffer such pangs of hunger that they will devour their own bodies”; or, again, “A maddening thirst will consume them and they will cry out, ‘Oh, but for a sip of water to slake my thirst!’”[224]

V

THE MOSLEM HELL IN THE DIVINE COMEDY (CONCLUSION)

1. To reach the place allotted to the traitors, Dante and his guide are obliged to cross a deep chasm inhabited by sinners of giant stature who have been guilty of rebellion against God. The chief of these are Nimrod and the giants of classical mythology, Ephialtes, Briareus, and Antaeus. The last-named takes the poets in his hand and gently deposits them in the abyss of the lowest circle.[225] Dante delights in describing the giants in terms of hyperbole. The head of Nimrod appears to him as large as the Cone of St. Peter’s, or rather more than five fathoms in height and width; his other members are in proportion, so that his total stature, according to the commentators, would be forty-three fathoms.

The Christian works prior to the Divine Comedy provide no satisfactory explanation of this scene. True, the personality of the giants is well defined in the Bible and in mythology, but none of these sources warrants their being placed in hell. The Moslem sources, however, at once furnish a key to the riddle. The eschatological books of Islam devote whole chapters to the tales of the Prophet describing the enormous stature of the infidels who, like Dante’s giants, occupy the lowest circle of hell and whose proportions are measured, hyperbolically indeed, but with a mathematical exactitude similar to that displayed by Dante.[226]

“On the Day of Judgment the infidels will appear with black faces, their stature increased to a height of sixty fathoms and their heads crowned with a diadem of fire....” “The bodies of the sinners are of the size of mountains.... Each of their teeth is as large as a man and the rest of their body is in proportion. Their thighs are as big as Mount Albaida (three miles distant from Mecca). The space they fill when seated is as the distance from Mecca to Medina. Their bodies are so massive that a roaring noise, as of wild beasts, is heard between the skin and the flesh. Their total stature is forty-two fathoms.”

The object of giving the victim this monstrous size is simply to provide more material for torture. Finally, the hypothesis of the Moslem origin of Dante’s picture is supported by two facts—the one, that Iblis lies in the lowest circle chained in the same curious manner as the giant Ephialtes, with one hand in front and the other behind[227]; the other, that Islam relegates Nimrod and Pharaoh, as the prototypes of Satanic pride, to the same region in which Iblis suffers punishment for his rebellion.[228] Dante accuses Nimrod of the same sin of rebellion and places him at the entrance to the lowest circle, that of Lucifer.

2. One and the same torture, that of cold, is suffered by all sinners in this lowest circle. The lake Cocytus, which fills the entire space, is kept frozen by the icy blast from the wings of Lucifer; and in its congealed waters traitors of four different classes are shown in diverse attitudes.[229]

It need hardly be remarked that Biblical eschatology makes no mention of any torture of cold in hell. The Moslem doctrine, however, places this torture on the same footing as torture by fire.[230] True, the Koran alludes to it but vaguely in saying that the blessed shall suffer neither from the heat of the sun nor the cold of _zamharir_.[231] But, as comment on this passage, there arose a number of traditions, attributed to Mahomet, in which intense cold is acknowledged as a torture of hell and, indeed, a torture more painful even than that of heat.[232] Its introduction into the Moslem scheme of hell was due, not merely to a desire for symmetry and antithesis in torture, but rather to the assimilation by Islam of a Zoroastrian belief. The theologian Jahiz, writing in the ninth century, says that this torture is peculiar to the Persian hell of Zoroaster, by whose religion fire is held sacred.[233] If, therefore, it is accepted unhesitatingly by Tabari a century later, it is probable that it had in the meantime been introduced by Zoroastrians converted to Islam. More interesting, however, than the question of the remote origin, is the fact that some of the traditions interpret the Koranic _zamharir_ as a frozen lake.[234] “What is the _zamharir_ of hell?” they asked Mahomet, and he replied, “It is a pit into which the unbeliever is cast, in which his members are rent asunder by intense cold.” If it is borne in mind that the word had the scientific meaning of “glacial wind” or “air of the atmospheric region intermediate between the earth and the sphere of the moon”[235] it will be seen that, as in Dante’s hell, the sinners of Islam suffered the double torment of exposure to an icy blast of wind and contact with frozen water.

The picturesque description of the various attitudes in which Dante depicts the different groups of traitors is a feature that constantly recurs in the pictures of the Moslem hell, though not indeed in connection with the torture of cold. Thus, a tradition attributed to Ibn Abbas says that “some are punished standing, some lying on their sides; others lie stretched out on their backs, or stand leaning on their elbows; while many are to be seen hanging head downwards.”[236] A very popular legend of hell adds:

“The fire will be well aware of the guilt of the sinners and the suffering they deserve.... Thus, in some it will reach the ankles; in others, the knees, the waist, the chest, and even the neck.”[237]

One Moslem scene of torture is even identical with the most violent of the postures in which Dante places the sinners in the frozen lake of Cocytus:

“The fiends will seize the sinner from behind, will break his ribs in twain and, bending back his belly, with his hair will tie his feet.”[238]

3. At the bottom of the lowest pit of hell, that is to say, at the centre of the earth, Dante places Lucifer, the king of the realm of pain, set in the ice from the lower part of his chest downwards. Of gigantic stature and monstrously misshapen, he bears on the trunk three faces, underneath which are enormous wings shaped like the wings of a bat; the flapping of these wings produces the icy wind that blows in this region. With his three mouths he devours three traitors. Dante in terror manages to slip between the hairy shoulders of Lucifer and the ice and reach the southern hemisphere through a long subterranean passage. As he escapes, he beholds the enormous legs of Lucifer hanging unsupported in the air; and Virgil explains how the fallen angel, on being cast out of heaven, with his head had struck the surface of the southern hemisphere and, penetrating to the centre of the earth, had remained fixed there to that day.[239]

The originality of this picture has always been greatly admired. Graf, bringing all his erudition and insight to bear on the subject, detects three elements in the demonology of Dante—theological elements, based on Thomistic doctrine; popular elements, in harmony with opinion current at his time; and elements peculiar to Dante, such as he may have acquired in exile, particularly at the University of Bologna.[240] Among the last-named he includes this description, saying, “Questa mirabile immaginazione è, per quanto io so, tutta propria di Dante.”

4. However much the power and beauty of Dante’s description are to be admired, prototypes of it are not lacking in the theological literature of Islam.

The position of Lucifer, fixed in the lowest pit of hell, has been shown to be common to many Moslem descriptions. Nor, given the principle of the division of sinners, could he be conceived in any other place; for the Iblis of Islam being, like Lucifer, the father of all rebellion against God, must necessarily suffer the severest torture.

But the similarity of the two conceptions extends even to the very nature of the torture. Ibn Arabi definitely states that Iblis is exposed to the torture of ice, and this assertion he bases on the fact that Iblis, like all demons, is a genie and thus was created from fire; his punishment, he infers, must therefore by contrast consist in exposure to the severest cold, or _zamharir_.[241] Contemporaries of Ibn Arabi had on similar grounds accounted for the immunity of the fiends from the effect of the fire of hell. Thus, Abu-l-Hasan al-Ashari argues that the demons, being fallen angels, were created from light and, accordingly, are insensible to torture by fire.[242]

As to Lucifer’s monstrous appearance, the multiplicity of faces is the very stigma that for their double-dealing is imposed upon traitors in the Moslem hell; and Lucifer, it must be remembered, as a rebel against God, is the arch-traitor and, as such, is confined by Dante in the traitors’ pit. An early apocryphal tradition says: “He who in this world has a double face and a double tongue, to him shall God give two faces and two tongues in hell.”[243] Other early legends depict the fiends also as two-headed monsters.[244] Even hell itself, considered not as the place, but as the embodiment of tortures, is vividly represented as a hydra-headed monster in Moslem legends of the Day of Judgment; with its many mouths this monster devours sinners of different categories, and some versions even fix the number at three.[245] Finally, the many popular tales of fantastic voyages frequently describe similar monsters—such as the beast named Malikan, which has two wings and numerous heads and faces and devours the animals of the sea that land upon its island; or Dahlan, which is depicted as a fiend that rides upon a bird like an ostrich and seizes on all men that set foot upon its isle in the Indian Ocean.[246]

There remains to be considered Dante’s description of the fall of Lucifer from heaven. The only allusion in pre-Dante Christian literature to the fall of Lucifer is the brief passage in the Gospel according to St. Luke (X, 18): “And he said unto them, I beheld Satan as lightning fall from heaven.” The Koran, on the other hand, describes the rebellion and expulsion from heaven of Iblis in more than seven passages[247]; and, though no details of his descent are given, these were filled in by the traditions depicting the punishment God inflicted on Adam and Eve, the serpent and Iblis.[248] In addition, there exists a cycle of cosmogonical legends, which serve to complete the myth of the fall of Iblis.

Mention has been made in a former chapter of tales describing the division of the earth into seven floors or stages, which were identified with the seven mansions of hell.[249] These tales were intended to explain the cosmogonical legends above referred to; and all are in the end but comment on a passage of the Koran to the effect that heaven and earth were created as one sole mass and only later were separated and each divided into several strata.[250]

“Immediately after their division,” the legend says, “God sent an angel from His throne, who, falling upon the earth, penetrated the seven strata thereof and there remained, sustaining them upon his shoulders, with one hand stretched towards the East and the other towards the West, his feet lacking all support.”[251]

The legend does not indeed identify Iblis with this angel, but the fact that he was sent from the very throne of God and _fell_ to earth would seem to favour the suggestion.

The two myths, blended together, may well have served as a model for Dante’s picture. That there exist grounds for this hypothesis may be shown by a review of the different features of resemblance furnished by the Moslem descriptions. Iblis is an angel cast out of heaven for rebellion against God, who, in falling to the earth, penetrates its several strata and is embedded in the ice, with his feet unsupported; although of gigantic stature—he supports the different strata—he is yet an angel and thus provided with wings; but sin has changed his beauty into hideousness and thus he appears as a many-headed beast that devours men, as a monster that is half man, half ostrich.[252]

VI

THE MOSLEM PURGATORY IN THE DIVINE COMEDY

1. Through the dark and winding passage leading from the centre of the earth to the surface of the southern hemisphere Dante and his guide pass to reach the shores of purgatory, which the poet conceives as a lofty mountain shaped like a truncated cone and set in the midst of a boundless ocean. Seven terraces divide this mountain into as many mansions of expiation, one for each capital sin; and at the foot two mansions form the antechamber of purgatory, where the disobedient and negligent spirits await admittance. On the table-land at the top of the mountain and bordering on the sphere of the ether is the earthly paradise. The mount of purgatory may thus be variously considered as consisting of seven, nine or ten mansions, which are connected by a steep and arduous path. The spirits in purgatory are those guilty merely of venial sin, or of deadly sins for which full penitence has not been done; these they expiate in the successive mansions under the guard of angels who guide them in their ascent—a task that is rendered easier by the prayers of their friends on earth. Dante, too, though only in a mystical sense, is subjected to this progressive purification, the guardian angel marking his brow seven times with the letter P, the symbol of sin, which is washed away in each of the seven terraces. As they rise, the ascent becomes easier and, finally, the poets reach the summit, or earthly paradise, where, by bathing in the waters of two rivers, Dante cleanses his soul and is prepared for his entry into heaven.

2. Nothing in Christian eschatology seems to warrant so detailed and precise a description of the site of purgatory. Not until a century after the appearance of the Divine Comedy did the existence of purgatory as a special condition of the soul, engaged in temporary expiation of sin, become a dogma of the Christian faith.[253] The site was never mentioned, either at the Council of Florence held in that century, or at the Council of Trent, or on any other occasion, for, as a matter of fact, the Church has always endeavoured to avoid fantastic descriptions of the realms beyond the grave, and particularly of purgatory.[254] Not that purgatory was an innovation of the fifteenth century; indeed, the belief in it was deeply rooted in scholastic and patristic tradition, as well as in revealed doctrine. But the dogma never went beyond the admission of its existence as a state of the soul, and ecclesiastical tradition, especially of Western Christianity, was ever discreetly silent upon its site and descriptive detail. Prior to Dante, only a few writers, such as Hugh of St. Victor, St. Thomas and Ricardo de Media Villa, had made timid attempts to portray purgatory, and their conceptions differed greatly from Dante’s picture. Landino, accordingly, concludes his review of all possible models, classical or Christian, with the remark: “Ma Dante, huomo di mirabile ingegno e di mirabile inventione, trovo nuovo sito, il quale niente e contra sustantialmente all opinione christiana.”[255]

3. As has been seen, Islam, the successor of Eastern Christianity, admitted purgatory as a state of temporary penitence to be undergone by all sinners that die in the true faith.[256] To determine its locality and the nature of the trials to which the souls are subjected, it is necessary to have recourse to the plethora of Islamic legends on the after-life. The dogmas of the resurrection of the body and the final judgment caused a certain confusion in the minds of the theologians who were called upon to decide the question of the penalties and rewards awaiting the soul during the time between death and the end of the world. Are the souls alone, or the bodies also, subject to sanction? Can the dead body feel physical pain and pleasure if it is not resuscitated in the tomb? Again, what useful purpose can be served by final judgment, if sentence and sanction are to begin at death? As it is impossible to make a critical selection of the legends or to distinguish between tales dealing with expiation immediately after death and those describing purgation following upon final judgment, a few descriptive features taken indiscriminately from the whole group of legends will be compared with the corresponding scenes in Dante.

To begin with, the purgatory of Islam is represented as being near to, but separate from hell; and, whereas the latter is placed in the interior of the earth, the former is described as lying outside and above the earth. This is clearly borne out by a tradition which, in addition to this topographical feature, gives an outline of the expiation of sin[257]:

“There are two hells, or gehennas; the one the _internal_, the other the _external_ fire. The former none shall ever leave, but the latter is the place in which God chastises the faithful for their sins. Then, when at His will the angels, prophets and saints intercede on their behalf, the blackened bodies of the sinners will be withdrawn from the fire and cast upon the banks of a river in paradise, called the River of Life. When sprinkled with the waters of the river they will come to life again like seeds sprouting in dung. Their bodies made whole, they will be bidden to enter the river and to wash themselves and drink of its waters, so that later they may be called upon to enter heaven. In heaven they will be known as the ‘Men of Hell’ until such time as God shall consent to remove this stigma, when the brow of each will bear the legend ‘Freedman of God.’”

Thus, the final episode of Dante’s purgatory, in which, when the poet enters the garden of the terrestrial paradise, the allegorical mark of sin is wiped from off his brow and he is washed in the rivers of Lethe and Eunoe, is given in this Moslem legend with typical details similar in their turn to those already noted in versions of the _Miraj_.[258]

A tale of another cycle describes purgatory essentially as Dante conceived it, as “a mount rising between hell and heaven on which the sinners are imprisoned.”[259] True, purgatory here is either confused or blended with the limbo, for the region is named _Al Aaraf_, and is said to be inhabited by Moslem sinners whose sins are counterbalanced by their virtues. But, inasmuch as these sinners, after being purified of their sins in the River of Life, are capable of entering heaven, the characteristics of purgatory may be said to prevail.

So far, then, the purgatory of Islam stands revealed as a hill or mount definitely situated outside and above hell and rising between it and heaven. The description is carried further in the legends, adopted by Islam from Persian eschatology, that deal with the bridge or path that has to be traversed by the souls before they can enter heaven.[260] The Persian Chinvat, or luminous bridge, which stretches over the abyss of hell between heaven and a mountain rising from the centre of the earth, assumed in Islam the various forms of a path or road; a lofty structure, vaulted bridge or viaduct; a natural bridge or slippery passage; or, again, a slope or ramp difficult of ascent. With the exception of the image of the bridge, these features reappear in the Purgatorio; and even Dante’s mount is in reality but an enormous bridge, providing as it does the only means of passing from earth to heaven and rising above hell, or, rather, like the _sirat_ or path described in the Moslem books of eschatology, above the back of the abyss of hell.[261]

4. Ibn Arabi, commenting in his _Futuhat_ upon the words attributed to Mahomet on this point says, “the souls that are not cast into hell shall be detained in the _sirat_, where strict account shall be taken of their sins, for which they will be punished.” He adds that “the _sirat_ will be over the back of hell and form the sole means of entering paradise.”[262] In another passage he completes the picture saying, as if indeed he were speaking of Dante’s conception, “the _sirat_ will rise in a straight line from the earth to the surface of the stellar sphere and end in a meadow lying outside the walls of the heavenly paradise; the souls will first enter this meadow, called the paradise of delight.”[263]

In other legends two _sirats_ appear, and the souls that have succeeded in passing the first without falling into hell are subjected to the trial of the second. The latter is often represented as a high structure (_cantara_) between hell and heaven, which serves as a place of temporary expiation of sin: “in it the souls will be detained until they mutually restore the debts that by their guilt they contracted on earth, and they are purified”; whereupon angels will receive them with loving words of welcome and guide them on the path that leads to eternal bliss.[264]

The resemblance of the purgatory of Islam to that of Dante is most striking, however, in the form given to it by the mystics, who multiply the primitive _cantara_, or place of expiation, into a number of chambers, enclosures or abodes. As usual, it is Ibn Arabi who paints the picture with the greatest detail.[265] In the legend of the Prophet that he has handed down to us, there are fifty stations, distributed into four main groups. Of these the last is the most interesting to us, since, like Dante’s purgatory, it consists of seven enclosures, called bridges or slippery passages, beset with obstacles which the souls have to surmount by ascending seven steep slopes of a height hyperbolically couched in terms of thousands of years. The principle on which these different abodes of trial and expiation are distinguished is, as in Dante, ethical; it is based on the seven capital sins of Islam, which consist in the breaking of the rules of faith, prayer, fasting, almsgiving, pilgrimage, ablution, and just dealing with one’s neighbour.

Once started in this direction, the imagination of the faithful soon overstepped the narrow limits of the scheme outlined above, and the topography was amplified by the addition of other partial purgatories of ten, twelve, or fifteen sections. Here, again, the principle is ethical; although it must be confessed that the distribution is neither logical nor based on any philosophical or theological system, but is rather the outcome of a desire on the part of the casuist to leave no wrongdoing unpunished. The result is thus a heterogeneity of vices and failings.[266]

Judging by the wealth of detail with which the place of expiation is described in the eschatology of Islam, it is evident, then, that in the matter of topography Dante’s conception can hardly be claimed to be original.

5. As for his description of the punishments of purgatory, no such claim has ever been made. Indeed, having exhausted the whole gamut of suffering in his picture of hell, he would no doubt find it difficult to conceive new torments, so that a very brief comparison of Dante’s with the Moslem scenes will be sufficient for our argument.

The disobedient and neglectful souls are punished merely by being withheld indefinitely from the place of expiation. At the foot of the mount they lie, awaiting the help of friends and relations, the prayers of whom will shorten the term of Divine wrath. It is in this antechamber of purgatory that Manfred of Sicily and Belacqua make themselves known to Dante and implore him to give news of their sad fate to their friends on earth. Under the shade of a rock Belacqua with his head between his knees sits in an attitude of utter dejection.[267]

In the religious literature of Islam similar scenes abound in the form of visions of souls in purgatory, who appear to their relations in their sleep and beseech them to pray for their eternal rest.[268] One scene in particular bears a striking resemblance to Dante’s description; Abu Dolaf al-Ijli, a soldier of the time of Caliph Al-Mamun, appears to his son Dolaf, who thus describes the vision:—

“In a dream I saw my father lying in a place of horror, with dark walls around it and its floor covered with ashes. Naked and sitting with his head resting upon his knees, he called out to me, ‘Dolaf,’ and I replied, ‘May God have thee in His keeping.’ Then did he recite the following verses: ‘Tell our family of the fate awaiting them in this dread purgatory and how account is taken of all our deeds. Hide nothing from them, but thou, have pity on my awful loneliness and terrible fate. If in death we were but left alone, it would at least be a comfort to us! But, alas! We are brought to life again and must answer for all our deeds.’ And with these words he vanished, and I awoke.”[269]

6. The torments of Dante’s Purgatorio, like those of the Inferno, are based on the principle of correlation between punishment and sin. Thus, in the first circle the souls that are being purified of the sin of pride are seen wending their way bowed down under a heavy load of stones. This is the very suffering assigned by Islam to the avaricious and such as grew rich by evil means. Tales attributed to Mahomet say[270]:—

“Men of my persuasion will come to me on the Day of Judgment, their shoulders burdened with the goods of this world, and they will implore my aid.... But I shall turn my back upon them, saying, ‘the faith ye profess is known to me, but your deeds I know not.’ For he who stole but a palm of land shall be obliged by God to bear it upon his neck, down to the bottommost part of the earth.”

Other legends depict the avaricious as vainly endeavouring to cross the _sirat_ under the burden of their riches, or as wandering hither and thither, borne down by the weight of their wealth.

In the second circle Dante portrays the envious with their eyelids sewn together and weeping bitterly as they pray for pardon.

Blindness, though in a milder form, is also one of the punishments reserved in Islam for those that failed to practise the virtues they preached.[271] An apocryphal tradition of Mahomet runs:—

“He who reads the Koran but ignores its teaching shall appear blind on the Day of Judgment. To his cry ‘Oh, Lord! Why hast Thou brought me to life again, deprived of my sight, whereas aforetime I could see?’ God will give answer, ‘Even as my words reached thine eyes and thou didst heed them not, so shall I pay no heed to thee to-day.’”

The wrathful, in Dante’s third circle, are enveloped in a cloud of smoke so dense that although their voices can be heard, they themselves cannot be seen.

This is the very torment, referred to in the Koran as a plague of smoke that God will send on the Day of Judgment to punish them that mocked His prophets.[272] The traditionists, in their comment on this passage, filled in the details of the picture, which thus comes to bear a striking resemblance to Dante’s scene.[273]

“The smoke will be so dense that the whole earth will resemble a house that is on fire; the plague will last forty days and forty nights, until the earth from East to West is full of smoke, which will enter the eyes, ears and nostrils of the infidels, suffocating and blinding them, and even the true believers will suffer from faintness; men will call out one to another, but though their voices will be heard, they themselves will not be seen, so thick will be the fog.”

The punishment meted out in the fourth circle of the Purgatorio to the slothful, who are made to run without ceasing, may be passed over as of slight interest. More striking is the torture of the avaricious, in the fifth circle, who as they lie face downwards on the ground, bound hand and foot, bewail their fate with bitter tears.

Sadness and moral pain are among the typical features of the purgatory of Islam that recur in the descriptions of the different abodes or stations.[274]

“Should the soul have been guilty of any of these failings, it will remain in its allotted abode a thousand years downcast and ashamed, naked, hungered and athirst, until such time as it shall have made restitution unto God.”

The peculiar posture, moreover, in which Dante depicts the avaricious, is that in which, according to Islam, sinners in general, and inebriates in particular, are found on the Day of Judgment and in purgatory itself. A tradition of the Prophet runs: “He, who on earth made you walk upright, may on the Day of Judgment cause you to walk upon your faces.”[275] And the author of the _Corra_ describes the punishment of the drunkard as follows: “He shall come to life again with his hands and feet fettered and be obliged to drag himself along the ground.”[276] Of the passage of the _sirat_ a tradition attributed to Mahomet says:

“Some will pass with the swiftness of a race-horse, of the wind, or of lightning; others will merely run or walk; while others, again, will crawl on all fours, like an infant, or drag themselves along on their bellies.”[277]

In Dante’s sixth circle, where the vice of gluttony is punished, the souls, famished and parched with thirst, are tantalised by the sight and odour of the fruit of two trees, offshoots of the tree growing on high in the earthly paradise.

As has just been seen, the cravings of hunger and thirst are characteristic torments of the purgatory of Islam. It is a further curious coincidence that in a Moslem legend narrating the passage of the soul along the _sirat_, or path of expiation, this incident of the tree should be thrice repeated.[278] Three trees grow by the side of the path at different stages, the last one standing at the gate of paradise. The soul, in its painful progress, begs to be allowed to rest in their shade and eat of their luscious fruit, and God finally grants the prayer. Though the ending is different, the general outline of the incident is very similar in both stories.

The last circle of the Purgatorio is the place of expiation of the sin of lust. Tormented with thirst and scorched by the flames, the souls cry aloud to God for forgiveness. Dante speaks to several who are known to him, and they entreat him to intercede on their behalf.

Fire is the most common of all the torments, occurring as it does in almost every eschatological system; in some, indeed, it constitutes the only form of punishment. It would, therefore, be superfluous to point out parallel scenes in Islamic descriptions of the after-life.[279] The Moslem traditionists, however, are careful to distinguish between the expiatory flames of purgatory and the eternal fire of hell. The former, being temporary and merely serving to purify, are limited both as to duration and extent, proportionately to the nature of the sin for which atonement is being made. Numerous are the legends describing the different degrees of this torture and telling of the laments and prayers, addressed by the sufferers to the angels, Mahomet, and the saints, begging them to intercede with God on their behalf.[280]

VII

THE EARTHLY PARADISE OF ISLAM IN THE DIVINE COMEDY.

1. The summit of the Mount of Purgatory is a broad table-land, which Dante describes as a garden of great beauty. This is the earthly paradise, or Garden of Eden, in which our first ancestors dwelt while yet in a state of innocence. As he treads the ground, which is fragrant with flowers, a gentle breeze, laden with the perfumes of paradise, fans his tear-stained cheeks. In the shade of verdant trees, the rustling of whose leaves murmurs a soft accompaniment to the song of a thousand birds, he comes to a limpid stream, whose course he follows; here he walks, accompanied by a fair maiden, Matilda, who, gathering flowers as she trips along the further bank, explains to him the nature of the garden. Virgil’s mission is now ended, and he is soon to leave Dante; for, of a sudden, they behold advancing from beyond the stream a marvellous procession of maidens and elders, who, richly attired, lead in triumph a car in which, surrounded by angelic spirits and greeted with songs of welcome, appears Beatrice, the poet’s beloved. Calling him by name, she sternly rebukes Dante for his disregard of the holy counsel she gave him in his dreams, for his faithlessness in following other less worthy loves, and for his sins. Dante, confused and repentant, confesses his unworthiness. He is then immersed by Matilda and the maidens that serve Beatrice in the stream of Lethe, on whose banks they are gathered, and upon drinking of its waters loses all memory of sin. Thereafter he succumbs to sleep in the shade of the tree of paradise, and finally, is bathed in the waters of Eunoe, from which he emerges “born again, even as trees renewed with fresh foliage, pure and ready to mount to the stars.”[281]

Graf, after minute study of the mediæval legends bearing on the earthly paradise, has shown that there existed precedents for the site chosen by Dante, inasmuch as others before him had laid this garden in the southern hemisphere and on the peak of a high mountain.[282] But he asserts that no one before Dante had thought of placing it precisely on the summit of purgatory. An examination of Islamic literature will therefore be of interest, as it may furnish the key to this riddle of topography by revealing analogies both in outline and in detail with this closing scene of the Purgatorio.

2. From the earliest centuries in Islam the question of the site of the garden in which God had placed Adam and Eve had given rise to animated controversy. The passages in which the Koran tells the Biblical story in a slightly altered form, led to a confusion between this paradise and the abode of glory, thus causing it to be laid in heaven.[283] According to another interpretation, however, it was supposed to be situated on earth, more precisely, in the East and on the highest of all mountains. This explanation, whilst more in keeping with the Biblical narrative, had the advantage of being reconcilable with the words used in the Koran; for the expulsion of Adam and Eve to the earth would merely mean that God drove them from the summit to the foot of the mountain[284]; it would also account for the delights of the Garden of Eden and its difference from other places on the surface of the earth. This view, though indeed held from early times, was mainly propounded by the _Mutazili_ heretics, the philosophers and the mystics. A Spanish _Mutazili_ ascetic of the ninth century, Mondir ibn Said al-Belloti, who was chief cadi of Cordova, was its most ardent champion; and in the tenth century it became popular throughout Islam through the _Rasail_ or encyclopædia compiled by the _Ikhwan as-safa_, or Brethren of Purity, a heretical sect established in Basra.

“Lying on the summit of the Mountain of the Hyacinth, which no human being may ascend, paradise was a garden of the East; a soft breeze blew day and night, winter and summer, over its perfumed ground. The garden was well watered by streams and shaded by lofty trees; it was full of luscious fruit, of sweet-smelling plants, of flowers of different kinds; harmless animals lived there and birds of song....”[285]

The earthly paradise that is here depicted in terms similar to those used by Dante was situated, therefore, on the summit of the highest mountain of the earth. Exactly which mountain was referred to is not easy to determine, for on this point opinion differed. Some authors placed it in Syria or in Persia; others in Chaldea or in India.[286] Eventually the belief that it lay in the last-named country was the most generally accepted.[287] The Brethren of Purity refer to the mountain as the “Mount of the Hyacinth,” which, according to Arab geographers, is the mountain rising in Ceylon, now known as “Adam’s Peak.”[288] Rising out of the Indian Ocean to a height of seven thousand feet, it is visible from afar at sea, and this fact would no doubt account for the exaggerated height attributed to it, for its summit was supposed to reach to the sky.

The very name the mountain still bears is a perpetuation of the Islamic legend. Ibn Batutah, of Tangier, the famous fourteenth century traveller, who journeyed to the ends of the world, as it was then known, has left us a picturesque description of its difficult ascent, which Moslem pilgrims were wont to undertake in the belief that a rock on the summit bore the footprint of our father Adam.[289]

A high mount, rising in the middle of an island in the ocean covering the southern hemisphere is, in Dante’s conception, the site of the earthly paradise. According to Islam, it is a high mountain rising in the middle of an island in the Indian Ocean.[290] Dante’s, it is true, is but a small isle lying in the antipodes of Jerusalem, whereas the island of Ceylon is larger and is situated on the equator; but the difference in topography is slight.[291]

3. As Graf has pointed out, however, Dante’s conception of the site of the earthly paradise was no novelty in mediæval Christian literature, so that coincidence with Islam on this point alone would not suffice as proof of Moslem influence. But, as mentioned above, there is an element in Dante’s topography that Graf does not hesitate to ascribe to the poet’s inventive genius, to wit, the position of the earthly paradise on the summit of the mount of expiation, and its conception as the goal of the sinner in his arduous ascent and the last stage of purgation, in which the soul is cleansed of sin and made fit to cross the threshold of eternal bliss.[292]

Among the many Moslem legends dealing with the entry of the souls into the theological heaven there is a whole cycle describing their adventures from the time they finally emerge from the _sirat_ or path of purgatory. Close to the _sirat_, and forming as it were the last stage of purgatory, lies the marvellous garden of paradise, which, although not indeed stated to be the earthly paradise, is depicted with all the features proper to it. Its pleasant pastures, gay with flowers, are watered by two rivers, and two only, in which the souls are immersed and cleansed from sin, and of whose waters they drink; upon emerging, the souls rest, as does Dante, in the shade of trees and are then led by a choir of angels to the abode of glory. But a still more remarkable coincidence is, that on the threshold of the celestial mansion the soul is welcomed by a maiden of surpassing beauty, his promised bride, who for long has awaited his coming, yearning to be united with him in a love at once spiritual and chaste.

4. The resemblance to Dante’s picture borne by this brief sketch is such as to call for a more detailed examination of these legends and a comparison of this episode with Dante’s story. Originating in the form of gloss on a verselet of the Koran, the myth in its earliest and crudest version reads as follows:[293]

“The souls that are about to enter paradise first come to two springs; they drink of the waters of the one, and God blots all rancour and hatred from their hearts; they bathe in the waters of the other, and their complexions become brilliant, and the purity and splendour of bliss is seen shining on their faces.”[294]

These bare outlines were soon filled in by the traditionists, who in the course of time built up the story that has been handed down to us in its most complete and classical form by Shakir ibn Muslim, of Orihuela. Composed in rhymed verse, it is of such extraordinary length that only the most interesting passages can be given here.[295]

“When the souls have left hell behind them and have traversed the _sirat_, or path of purgatory, they issue upon the plain that leads to paradise.[296] Accompanying them are the angels of Divine mercy, who cheer and guide them on their way to glory and wish them joy of their victory and salvation.[297] As they approach the entrance to paradise a gentle breeze, laden with perfume, brings balm to their souls and wipes away the memory of the suffering they endured in the course of their judgment and in the various mansions.... At the gate of paradise stand two mighty trees, lovelier than any ever seen on earth. Their fragrance, the richness of their foliage, the beauty of their blossom, the perfume of their fruit, the lustre of their leaves—nothing could ever surpass. The birds on their branches sing in sweet harmony with the rustling of the leaves....[298] At the foot of either tree there springs a fountain of the purest water, clearer than beryl, cooler and whiter than freshly melted snow; these springs are the source of two limpid streams, whose beds are seen to be of pearls and rubies....[299] Along their banks spread gardens and groves of trees in blossom, laden with fruit and harbouring birds of sweet song.... The souls bathe in the two rivers; from the one they emerge whole in body and cleansed from the marks of fire, with the lustre of health and joy upon their faces; they drink of the waters of the river and, as all memory of past affliction leaves them, so is all trace of envy, rancour and hatred blotted from their hearts; they then bathe in the other stream, and later find peaceful repose in the shade of the two trees....[300] And, even as they rest, the angels of the Lord call upon them, saying, ‘Oh, beloved of God, these trees are not your dwelling; nigh unto God is your appointed place. Rise, therefore, and march onward, till ye reach the mansion of rest and everlasting bliss.’[301] And they rise and proceed through the paths of paradise, following the voice of the angel herald, who leads them on from garden to garden until they meet with a brilliant procession of youths and maidens, dressed in rich attire and mounted on coursers ... who greet each one with shouts of joy and congratulation upon his triumph.... ‘Be thou welcome, beloved son of God! Enter thy mansion, covered with glory and honour.’ As he enters, behold! a damsel of surpassing beauty, arrayed in robes of brilliant hue, awaits him seated in a tabernacle ... the splendour of her countenance dazzles him and his heart is enraptured with the perfection, grace, and brilliant beauty with which God has endowed her. Indeed, were it not that God had granted him extraordinary powers of vision, he would be bereft of both sight and sense by the intensity of the light shining in her and the splendour radiating from her presence.[302] The voice of an angel announces to him, ‘Oh, beloved one of God! This is thy precious bride, thy dearly beloved partner in the life of heaven; this is the mistress of the damsels, the coy maiden hidden from the gaze of man.’ But hardly has she caught sight of him when, unable to restrain the impulse of her love, she hastens towards him with fond words of welcome, ‘Oh, beloved of God! How I have yearned to see thee!’”

Of the many points of resemblance shown by this legend to Dante’s story of the earthly paradise, some are so evident as to be hardly worthy of mention. The scenic features, for example, are clearly identical, recourse being had to the same rhetorical figures to depict the beauty of the gardens—such as the wealth of flowers, the perfumed air, the soft climate, and the gentle breeze on which is wafted the sweet song of birds. The rivers in which the souls are washed are two in number in Dante’s poem and in the Moslem story, as against four in the Biblical paradise. Lastly, both gardens adjoin the path of purgatory, of which in fact they constitute the last division, for in them the soul undergoes final purification from the stain of sin and is prepared for entry into the realm of glory. The resemblance even extends to the manner of purification: the soul is bathed in both rivers and, in addition, drinks of their waters. The effects of the double ablution are also similar; all physical and moral trace of sin is blotted out and new life imparted to the soul. After ablution, the pilgrim seeks rest in the shade of a tree. Finally comes the procession of youths and maidens leading in the heavenly bride; the meeting of bride and bridegroom and their mutual recognition.

5. In spite of long and minute research, no literary precedent has so far been found for this latter scene.[303] Yet, as the Dantists justly claim, it is of supreme moment for the whole of Dante’s poem, for it not only sheds light on the riddles that precede it, but also foreshadows the significance of what is to come; and, indeed, but for this scene of the meeting of Dante and Beatrice, neither the descent to hell nor the ascension to paradise would be susceptible of a satisfactory interpretation. At the same time, it must be admitted that the scene bears but little trace of the Christian spirit and is in strange contrast to the asceticism and the horror of sexual love that are characteristic of ecclesiastic literature in general, and that of the Middle Ages in particular.[304] To arrange, as the climax of a journey to the regions beyond the grave, the meeting of the pilgrim with his lost Beloved is a poetic conceit that will in vain be sought for in any of the Christian precursors of the Divine Comedy. Dante was well aware of how singular the note he struck was. So novel did the glorification of Beatrice, which is the avowed object of his poem, appear to him, that many years before, when the plan of the Divine Comedy was shaping in his mind, he remarked about his future poem, “Spero di dire di lei quello que mai non fu detto d’alcuna.”[305] No doubt this glorification of Beatrice has its immediate roots in the spirit of chivalry that inspired the troubadours of Provence and the Italian poets of the “dolce stil nuovo”; in the spiritual and romantic love of woman underlying that literary movement; and in the mixture of mysticism and sensuality revealed in the temperament of Dante, the man and poet. These explanations may, indeed, lay bare the inner workings of the poet’s mind, but they leave unsolved the riddle of the outer literary form in which his mentality manifested itself in this episode of the earthly paradise. In a later chapter of this work it will be shown that the origin of the “dolce stil nuovo” movement itself is most probably to be sought outside Christianity and that long before the appearance of the troubadours in Europe romantic love had inspired the poets of Arabia, and provided food for the speculative minds of Moslem mystics.[306] Here it will suffice to point to the outstanding fact that an episode so typical of the Divine Comedy as the meeting of Beatrice and Dante, and, being foreign to the very spirit of Christianity, unprecedented in Christian legend, has a striking parallel in Moslem tradition. Nor is the tale translated above unique; rather is it the final stage in the evolution of a series of legends that tell the fantastic story of the entry of the blessed soul into paradise. The Moslem heaven, as will be seen later on, is not exclusively the paradise of coarse delight, as depicted in the Koran and many of the traditions, that has become stamped on the mind of educated Europe. By the side of that picture there is another, painted by the ascetics and mystics, that reveals a heaven of purer love, in which, in addition to the large-eyed houris and the wives the blessed knew on earth, a spiritual bride also awaits him. This is his Heavenly Betrothed, who from on high has been waiting and watching for the advent of her lover, guiding him on the path of virtue, inspiring him with lofty aims and ever encouraging him to persevere to the triumphant end, when they will be united in eternal bliss. When death at last leads the blessed soul to paradise, it is she who sallies forth to welcome him, radiant indeed with beauty, yet not as an instrument of carnal delight, but rather as a spiritual companion and moral redemptress who wishes the soul joy of his victory and reproves him for having on occasions forsaken her for other, earthly loves. The picture of this Heavenly Bride is so strikingly like that of Beatrice that it will not be amiss to quote some of the legends on this subject.

6. A very interesting description of the entry of the blessed soul into paradise is contained in the tenth century work _Corrat Aloyun_.[307]

The angel Ridwan leads him to the tabernacle where his bride awaits him. She greets him with the words, “Oh, friend of God, how I have longed to meet thee! Blessed be the Lord, who has united us! God created me for thee and engraved thy name upon my heart. While thou on earth wast serving God in prayer and fasting, day and night, God bade his angel Ridwan carry me on his wings so that I might behold thy good deeds from heaven. The love I felt for thee caused me to watch over thy progress unbeknown to thee. When in the dark of night thy prayer went up, my heart was glad within me, and I said to thee, ‘Serve and thou shalt be served, sow and thou shalt reap! God has advanced thee in glory, for thy virtues have found favour in His sight, and He will bring us together in heaven.... But, when I found thee neglectful and half-hearted, I felt sad.’”

Another legend of the same cycle, attributed to the eighth century traditionist Ibn Wahab, introduces the reproaches of the bride for her bridegroom’s earthly loves.[308]

“They will say to a woman in paradise, ‘Would’st thou see thy spouse who is yet on earth?’ and, as she assents, they will draw aside the veils that separate her from him, so that she may look upon his face and long for the moment of his coming, even as on earth a woman longs for her absent man. It may be that between him and his spouse on earth there have been grounds for resentment such as are common among wives and husbands, and she will reproach him saying, ‘Oh, wretched man! Why dost thou not forswear (such loves) that, compared with mine, shall last thee but a night or two?’”[309]

The similarity between these two descriptions and the two scenes in which Beatrice comes to the moral aid of Dante is surely evident. Beatrice, when from on high she sees that her beloved poet is in danger of forfeiting salvation and, therewith, her companionship in paradise, descends from heaven to implore Virgil’s assistance in setting the pilgrim on the right path. The scene forms, as it were, the prologue to the poem.[310] When Dante reaches the earthly paradise, she again descends and to her greeting adds reproof for his backsliding, his indulgence in earthly loves, and his neglect of the holy counsel she gave him in his dreams.[311]

Tales of visions, based on the legends of the same cycle, are common in Islamic literature. They all tell of a beautiful and angelic maiden who appears to the devout in their dreams, to inspire them with holy thoughts and urge them to serve God with the promise that she will be theirs in the life to come.

A tale attributed to Ali al-Talhi, who lived prior to the tenth century, reads as follows[312]:—

“In a dream I beheld a woman fairer than any of this world. ‘Who art thou?’ I asked, and she replied, ‘I am a houri.’ I said to her, ‘Pray let me be thy husband,’ to which she replied, ‘Ask me in marriage of my Lord and name my dowry.’ I asked, ‘What is thy dowry?’ and she answered, ‘That thou shouldst keep thy soul unspotted from the world.’”

Another story, attributed to the ninth century ascetic Ahmed ibn Abu-l-Hawari, runs:—

“In a dream I saw a maiden of the most perfect beauty, whose countenance shone with celestial splendour. To my asking, ‘Whence comes that brilliance on thy face?’ she replied, ‘Dost thou remember that night spent by thee in weeping (and devotion)?’ ‘I remember,’ I answered, and she said, ‘I took those tears of thine and with them anointed my face, since when it has shone in brilliance.’”

A tale, attributed to Utba al-Ghulam, certainly dates before the eleventh century:—

“In a dream I saw a houri of beautiful features, who said to me, ‘I love thee passionately and trust thou wilt do no deed that might keep us apart.’ I replied, ‘Thrice have I abandoned the things of this world and hope never to regain them, so that I may be able to meet thee (in heaven).’”

Sulayman ad-Darani, a great ascetic of the ninth century of our era, is the protagonist of a similar tale[313]:—

“I saw in a dream a maiden of a beauty ‘as splendid as the moon,’ clad in a mantle that ‘seemed as if made of light.’[314] Said the maiden to me, ‘Thou sleepest, oh! delight of my soul. Perchance thou knowest not that I am thy bride? Rise, for thy prayer is light and thy Lord deserveth thy thanks...!’ and, with a cry, she flew off through the air.”

Other legends tell of the visions seen by martyrs of holy warfare, the soldier ascetics of Islam, who later had their counterpart in the knights of the Christian military orders. In those quoted below, the meeting with the heavenly bride, who appears either alone or accompanied by her handmaidens, is described in terms similar to those used by Dante, and the subject of the earthly loves of the protagonist is also alluded to.

A tale told by Abd ar-Rahman ibn Zayd, of the eighth century, runs as follows[315]:—

“A youth, moved to devotion by spiritual reading, distributes all his patrimony among the poor, keeping only enough to buy a mount and arms, with which he sets off to the holy war. Whilst on service, he fasts during the day-time and spends the nights in prayer and vigil as he guards the horses of his sleeping comrades. One day he cries out in a loud voice: ‘Oh, how I long to be with the large-eyed maiden!’ and to his companions he explains how in a dream his soul found itself in a lovely garden watered by a river; on the bank of the river stood a group of fair maidens in rich attire, who welcomed him saying, ‘This is the bridegroom of the large-eyed maiden whom we serve.’ Proceeding on his way, he comes to a second river, where other maidens again welcome him.[316] A few steps further, and he meets the heavenly maiden herself enthroned on a seat of gold within a tabernacle of pearl. When she beholds her betrothed, she wishes him joy of having come to her, but warns him that his present coming is not final. ‘The spirit of life yet breathes within thee, but to-night thou shalt break thy fast in my company.’”[317]

The following legend was told by Abd Allah ibn al-Mubarak in the eighth century[318]:—

A soldier in the holy war tells of a vision he had when faint from wounds received on the field of battle. “I seemed to be led to a mansion built of rubies, wherein I saw a woman whose beauty enraptured me. She bade me welcome, saying she was not like my wife on earth, whose behaviour she then related to me. I laughed and would fain have clasped her in my arms, but she held me at a distance saying, ‘To-morrow in the evening thou shalt come to me,’ and I wept because she would not let me draw nigh to her.” The legend ends by saying that on the morrow that same soldier died in battle.

A legend, related by Ismail ibn Hayyan, of the ninth century, also tells of a vision seen by a martyr of holy warfare as he fainted away:—

He finds himself led by a man to the mansion of the heavenly maiden, through palaces of paradise inhabited by youths whose beauty is painted in hyperbolic terms. Finally there comes to greet him the beautiful woman who tells him she is his bride and who reminds him of the women of this world with such detail that she appears to be speaking from a record made in a book.

7. The features of resemblance found in this comparison of Dante’s story of the earthly paradise with Islamic legend may be summarised as follows: On either hand, this paradise is represented as a garden of delight, situated on the summit of a high mountain rising on an island in the ocean; other Islamic legends tell of a garden lying at the gate of paradise and forming both the antechamber to glory and the last stage of purgatory, where the souls undergo final purification by being washed in the waters of two streams; in this garden also the soul is met and welcomed by the heavenly bride, a figure who in appearance and attitude bears a striking resemblance to the Beatrice of Dante.

Versions of the _Miraj_ described a similar garden as being watered by rivers in which the souls are purified before they enter heaven. That garden was called the Garden of Abraham. Thus, in Islam, there was a threefold garden beyond the grave—the Garden of Abraham, or Limbo; the Garden of Eden, or earthly paradise; and the garden of paradise, lying between purgatory and the theological heaven. Features of all three gardens appear blended in the Divine Comedy in a form foreign to Christian legend, as it existed prior to Dante.

The _Risala_ of Abu-l-Ala al-Maarri, the literary imitation of the _Miraj_ that was quoted in a former chapter, depicted a similar scene. In a garden lying at the gate of the celestial paradise the traveller, on the banks of a river, meets a maiden who has been sent by God to welcome and guide him; she leads him to the presence of the beloved of the poet Imru-l-Qays, who appears in the wake of a procession of beautiful maidens.[319]

It would thus seem that there was nothing to prevent the legend of the ascension from being extended to include the legends quoted in this chapter, dealing, as they also do, with the after-life. The idea might indeed prove tempting to so consummate an artist as Dante, who, saturated with classical and Christian learning, might well know how to weave into the outline of the story of Mahomet the scenes provided in these legends and the features available in mythology and ecclesiastical tradition, in order to paint his picture of the earthly paradise, in which elements from the Garden of Eden, the Parnassus of the Ancients, and the Paradise of Islam are blended into one.

VIII

THE CELESTIAL PARADISE OF ISLAM IN THE DIVINE COMEDY

1. As we have now reached a point in our argument when it might appear that we were treading on dangerous ground, a few words by way of preface to this chapter may not be amiss. The very suggestion of a comparison between Dante’s paradise and the paradise of Islam will most likely occasion surprise even in the minds of people of moderate culture. Surely, it will be thought, any such comparison can only serve to show up the utter antagonism between the two conceptions. Indeed, the spiritualism of Dante’s paradise seems so far removed from the coarse and sensual materialism of the paradise depicted in the Koran that, if the question were to be decided on that issue alone, there could be but one answer. The Koran, however, as has already been pointed out, does not stand for all Islam, nor does it constitute the main source of its dogma. The traditions early attributed to Mahomet, the explanations of the commentators, and the speculations of theologians and mystics, played at least as great a part as the letter of the Koran in determining the essential points of the creed of the Moslem paradise. Of outstanding interest in this connection is the tradition of the ascension of Mahomet. This legend in its various forms, and particularly in Version C of Cycle 2, showed very clearly that paradise was by no means generally conceived on the gross and sensual lines described in the Koran; on the contrary, the picture drawn there was almost exclusively one of light, colour and music, which are the very elements that Dante used to express his conception.

The spiritual interpretation of the delights of paradise must have begun in the first centuries of Islam. The famous traditionist and kinsman of Mahomet, Ibn Abbas, was of old credited with a saying which is significant of its early origin: “In paradise there is none of the things of this world; only their names are there.” The earliest traditionists even place in the mouth of the very Prophet who had described in such glowing terms the sensual joys awaiting the blessed, the same sublime words by which Isaiah and St. Paul had represented the glory of heaven; for a _hadith_ attributed to Mahomet says, “I have prepared for my holy servants such things as the eye hath not seen, nor the ear heard, nor the mind of man imagined.”[320] To this Divine promise the Prophet added the verse of the Koran (XXXII, 17): “The soul knows not of the delights awaiting it in reward for its good deeds.” The Moslem books on eschatology record many similar _hadiths_ attributed to Mahomet, in which the Beatific Vision is represented as the supreme bliss reserved for the souls in paradise.[321] It will thus be seen that from the very first centuries Islam had begun to conceive, apart from the sensual paradise of the Koran, a spiritual and essentially Christian heaven, in which beatitude consists in the contemplation of the splendour of the Divine essence.

2. To trace back each of the many controversies that arose in the centuries following would be to exceed the limits of our task. In the end the idealistic conception of paradise emerged triumphant alike over the exegesis of the Koran and the arguments against the anthropomorphism of God of the Mutazili and Kharijite heretics.[322] By the time that the dogma of Islam was given definite shape by its greatest theologians, the Beatific Vision was considered to be the principal, if not the only prize of heaven, and the sensual delights extolled in the text of revelation were discreetly ignored.

The mystics and the philosophers, imbued as they were with Christian theology and neo-Platonic metaphysics contributed to the gradual elimination of the sensual conception of paradise by giving its material delights a mystical or allegorical meaning. And this line of thought was followed by the two great thinkers of the twelfth century, the theologian and mystic, Algazel, and the theologian and philosopher, Averrhoes.[323] Algazel states that, with the exception of the materialists, who denied the immortality of the soul, all cultured minds in Islam more or less openly scouted the idea of any sensuality in connection with the delights of paradise[324]; the philosophers averred that these delights were purely imaginary; the mystics went further and denied their existence; and both philosophers and mystics for the joys depicted in the Koran substituted the sole and sovereign delight of the intellectual vision or contemplation of the essence of God, the enjoyment of which they made equivalent to all the physical and ideal pleasures that man is capable of feeling.[325] This denial, more or less complete in substance, was, however, attenuated in form, to avoid disappointing the masses, who were incapable of so lofty a conception. To save appearances, the philosophers and Sufis affected acceptance of the material descriptions of the Koran on the grounds that they were symbols, the spiritual meaning of which was the patrimony of the enlightened. Algazel and Averrhoes, the champions alike of faith and reason, found means to reconcile the points of view of both the learned and the vulgar by declaring that heaven, as the supreme aim and ultimate bliss of all men, would be a state in which each would attain his particular desire. Those who in this life were tied down to things material, would in heaven be capable of deriving joy only from sensual delights, though they could not say of what these were to consist; whilst those whose conceptions and desires were free from all material taint, would find delight in the enjoyment of the Beatific Vision alone.

Thus, Algazel and Averrhoes in their picture of the mediæval beliefs of Islam provide us with two heavens—the one, material, and the other, ideal. A few years later, Ibn Arabi of Murcia expressed his views on the question in the same concise terms.[326]

“There are two heavens—the one, sensible; and the other, ideal. In the one, both the animal spirits and the rational souls enjoy bliss; in the other, the rational souls alone. The latter paradise is the heaven of knowledge and intuition.”

Not content with this formula, he proceeds to explain the psychological motives that led Divine Providence to lay greater stress upon the sensible than upon the ideal paradise in the Koran, in contrast to the teaching of Christian revelation. And Ibn Arabi’s explanation, arguing as it does the Christian origin of the spiritual conception of paradise in Islam, is so significant that it is worthy of literal transcription.[327]

“God has depicted paradise in accordance with the different degrees of man’s understanding. The Messiah defined the delights of paradise as purely spiritual, when, in concluding the instructions given to his disciples in his testament, he said, ‘Should ye do as I have bidden you, ye will sit with me to-morrow in the Kingdom of Heaven by the side of my Lord and your Lord and behold around His throne the angels singing His praise and glorifying His holiness. And there ye will enjoy all manner of delights and yet will partake not of either food or drink.’[328] But, if the Messiah was so explicit on this point and had recourse to none of the allegories found in our Book, it was simply because his words were spoken to a people conversant with the Torah and the books of the prophets, whose mind was thus prepared for his words. Not so with our Prophet Mahomet. His Divine mission fell among a rude people, who dwelt in deserts and on mountains; who lacked the discipline of learning and believed neither in the resurrection nor in the future life; who were ignorant even of the pleasures of the princes of this world, let alone those of the kings in heaven! Accordingly, most of the descriptions of paradise in his book are based on the body, in order that they might be understood by the people and serve as an incentive to their minds.”

3. The evidence furnished by the Moslem thinkers, Algazel, Averrhoes and Ibn Arabi, is fully confirmed by the writings of the two Christian scholastics who were most versed in Islam—the Spaniards, Raymond Lull and Raymond Martin. Far from falling into the common error of attributing to all Moslems the belief in a voluptuous paradise, they repeat almost literally what those thinkers had affirmed; and Raymond Martin even quotes passages from Algazel, full of the loftiest metaphysical thought, in which this prince of Moslem mystics pictures the sublime delights of the Beatific Vision.[329]

If, therefore, at the very time at which Dante was composing the Divine Comedy two Christian theologians knew of a Moslem paradise just as adaptable as Dante’s to the purest and most spiritual Christian doctrine, the idea of comparing the two conceptions, based as they are on dogmas that are so much alike, can no longer be considered as out of place. That a connection between the two artistic conceptions does exist will appear the less unlikely if it is borne in mind that Dante’s paradise has no precedent in Christian mediæval literature. Dantists have shown that in none of the so-called “precursors” of the Divine Comedy could the poet have found inspiration for his delicate picture. Whereas, to Dante paradise is pure light, and the life of the blessed, one of ecstatic contemplation and Divine Love, in the rude conception of most of his Christian predecessors—who were merely monks or _jongleurs_—life in heaven is but a grotesque exaggeration of the life of the refectory and the choir, or of the life at the court of a feudal lord.[330] Thus, the question of determining the values to be attributed to the conceptions of paradise current in the Middle Ages may in all fairness be reduced to the following terms: In the Moslem world two antithetical ideas flourished almost simultaneously—the coarse and sensual paradise of the Koran, and the spiritual picture of the philosophers and the mystics. In the Christian world, the same two ideas existed—the materialistic conception, equivalent to that of the Koran, which flourished prior to the Divine Comedy, and the spiritual picture, which was solely the work of the Florentine poet.[331] Dante himself appears to disdain the conceptions of his Christian predecessors when, in announcing his ascension to paradise, he says, “If God ... wills that I may behold his court in a manner quite outside modern use.”[332]

Once the mind is free from the prejudice, as common as it is ill-founded, that regards all Islamic conception of paradise as materialistic, it will the more readily grasp how it came about that Islam, as early as the eighth century of our era, conceived so spiritual a picture of heaven as that found in Version C of Cycle 2 of the legend of the _Miraj_. The many striking features of resemblance borne by that description to the paradise of Dante were exhaustively dealt with in the first part of this work, and the wealth of coincidence afforded room for so minute a comparison that but little is now needed to complete the parallel.

4. To begin with the general scheme of the Paradiso, we know that Dante’s paradise is formed of the nine astronomical heavens of the Ptolemaic system. In the first seven heavens it is only by chance that the poet sees the blessed, who are distributed according to their merits. Their real residence is in the Empyrean, or immobile sphere, which is thus the true paradise or theological heaven. There Dante pictures them as seated on thrones, benches or seats of light in the form of an amphitheatre, which gives the whole assembly the appearance of an immense rose of light, in the centre of which God stands revealed to the contemplation of His Chosen. The Empyrean is the celestial Jerusalem and lies in the vertical projection of the earthly Jerusalem, whilst beneath the latter opens the abyss of hell. The most perfect symmetry exists between the realm of reward and the realm of punishment. Both contain ten mansions and, just as the depth of each infernal mansion indicates the gravity of the sin punished therein, so does each degree of merit find its reward in a correspondingly high mansion in heaven.[333]

Most, if not all, of the architectural features of this plan have already been shown to exist in one or other of the versions of the legend of the _Miraj_. Thus, many of those versions represent the astronomical spheres as being inhabited by saints, prophets, and angels, who were seen to be allotted to the spheres according to their merit.[334] This conceit, though shared by Dante and Islam, had however no Biblical foundation; for neither the Old nor the New Testament definitely mentions the astronomical heavens as being the dwelling-places of the blessed. The idea can only have been derived either from the Cabbalists or some of the apocryphal Christian writers[335]; for the Fathers of the Church and the early ecclesiastical writers were careful not to attempt any specific localisation of the theological heaven.[336]

One outstanding feature of Dante’s general scheme of paradise has been universally admired for its originality. The site of glory, or celestial Jerusalem, he places directly above the Jerusalem on earth, which according to the poet occupies the centre of our northern hemisphere.[337]

Exactly the same conception existed in Islam as early as the seventh century, that is to say, in the time of Mahomet himself. A legend attributed to the famous traditionist and companion of the Prophet, Kaab al-Akhbar, a Jewish convert who introduced many rabbinical myths into Islam, runs: “Paradise is in the seventh heaven, opposite Jerusalem and the rock (of the Temple); if a stone were dropped from paradise, it would surely fall upon the rock.”[338] Similar rabbinical sayings, attributed to the same traditionist, or to another Jewish convert, Wahb ibn Munabbih, and sometimes to the kinsman of the Prophet, Ibn Abbas, must have contributed to spread the belief that paradise lay in the vertical projection of Jerusalem and its Temple. Indeed, geographical treatises of the tenth century describe Jerusalem as follows[339]:—

“Jerusalem is the navel of the earth. The Gate of Heaven stands open on its temple. In Jerusalem is the Divine Light and the Divine Fire. To visit Jerusalem is to enter heaven. God said of the rock (of the Temple), ‘Thou art My lower throne; from thee heaven rises unto Me; underneath thee stretches the earth; in thee lie My heaven and My hell.’ From Jerusalem Jacob saw the ladder that rose to heaven. Jesus ascended into heaven from Jerusalem and thither He will descend again. That part of the earth that is nearest to heaven is Jerusalem.”

It should be remembered that in several versions of the _Miraj_ Mahomet began his ascension from the same rock of the Temple of Jerusalem, and this the commentators explain by quoting in a slightly altered form the legend mentioned above as told by Kaab al-Akhbar: “The Gate of heaven, named the Mount of the Angels, lies opposite Jerusalem.”[340]

This obsession for symmetry in design is characteristic of Moslem eschatology, in which the world beyond the grave was conceived on the lines of this world. All versions of the Mahometan ascension tell of a temple in heaven called the “House of Habitation,” which is but the counterpart of the Holy Shrine at Mecca; and, as the Caaba is supposed to have been built by Abraham, so the latter is represented as residing near the heavenly temple. Moreover, in some legends this temple of paradise is supposed to lie in the vertical projection of the Caaba, just as the Celestial Jerusalem lies directly above the Jerusalem on earth. One of these legends Ibn Arabi quotes: “Were the House of Habitation to fall to the earth, it would assuredly fall on the temple of the Caaba.”[341]

Nor does this desire for symmetry, which so imbued the minds of Moslem traditionists, end there. The realms of pain and of reward, hell and heaven, correspond in design just as perfectly as they do in Dante’s design. This may be seen from the general plan that Ibn Arabi traces with almost mathematical precision.[342]

“The degrees of heaven are as many in number as the degrees of hell; for each degree in the one has its counterpart in the other. This is but natural, for man can but comply, or fail to comply with any one precept. If he complies with it, he gains a degree of glory commensurate with his merit; but, if he fails to do so, he suffers condign punishment in hell. Thus, were a stone to fall from any one degree in paradise, it would of a surety fall in a straight line on the corresponding degree in hell.”

5. The actual description of Dante’s abode of glory is contained in Cantos XXX, XXXI, and XXXII of the Paradiso.[343] As the rays spread from the centre of Divine Light throughout the Empyrean, they create a number of luminous circumferences of immense diameter on planes that lessen in extent as they gradually descend. Each of these circles, like the tier of an amphitheatre, is formed of a row of seats, benches or thrones. The ranks thus formed Dante likens to the petals of an immense rose, each petal of the mystic flower representing a seat in glory, and the petals on one and the same plane, a circle or tier of the celestial amphitheatre. Dante also compares the abode of bliss to a realm, a garden, or a hill around which the blessed are grouped in ecstatic contemplation of the Divine Light; but the simile he mainly uses is that of the mystic rose, which, although he never actually employs the figure, he derived, no doubt, from the more graphic image of an amphitheatre.

The moral principle underlying the distribution of the blessed in the various tiers of the amphitheatre is applied with as strict a regard for symmetry as is shown in the geometrical design. All is governed by law and nothing is left to chance. The greater or lesser height of each circle corresponds to the greater or lesser degree of holiness attained by the souls, who, again, occupy a position on the left or right in each circle according to the nature of their faith before or after the advent of Christ. Further, the saints of the Old Testament are separated from those of the New Testament by subdivisions within each sector, some of which are in a vertical, others in a horizontal, sense. Men and women, children and adults, all are grouped in their respective classes in the various parts of the rose. Perfect symmetry marks the whole scheme throughout. Thus we find that Eve, the mother of human sinners, sits underneath Mary, the Mother of Christ the Redeemer; on the left of Mary sits Adam, the father of mankind, and on her right, St. Peter, the father of the Church. The blessed occupy their seats in Glory for one or the other of two reasons—either owing to their works plus grace, or to Divine grace alone; in the former category are the adults, in the latter, the children who were only saved through the faith of their parents. A third class, formed of the children and adults who sit in the places left vacant by rebel angels, might indeed be added. In conclusion, the spirits occupying the principal seats in the first circles, though not actually so classified by Dante, fall into three groups—the patriarchs and apostles, such as Adam, Moses, John the Baptist, St. Peter, and St. John the Evangelist; beneath them, the holy doctors of the religious orders, such as St. Francis, St. Benedict, and St. Augustine; and, still lower, the laymen and clergy who followed the teaching of these doctors.

In spite of these differences in degree, the life of the blessed is essentially one and the same. With their gaze fixed on the focus of Divine light, they contemplate God and know Him more or less perfectly according to the strength of their vision, which, in turn, depends on the purity and intensity of the Divine love they felt on earth. The difference in degree is made outwardly manifest by the greater or lesser brilliance each spirit emits; but it does not imply any essential difference either in the vision itself or in the spiritual delight of the souls; nor can it give rise to any desire on the part of those in the lower ranks to occupy a higher seat, and still less can it cause any feeling of envy, for this would be incompatible with the spirit of brotherly love that unites them in the love of God; each, moreover, is aware that the joy experienced in the degree allotted to him is greater than he could possibly deserve.

6. Of this clearly defined scheme the Dantists have been able to trace but little to other Christian authors; indeed, with the exception of the situation of paradise in the Empyrean, almost the whole of Dante’s architecture of heaven has been attributed to the inventive faculty of the poet himself. Again, therefore, before pronouncing final judgment on the originality or otherwise of the conception, we would suggest that the Moslem sources be consulted. In this respect especial interest attaches to the works of the mystical writers of Islam, and more particularly to the detailed and picturesque descriptions of the realm of glory given by the Sufi of Murcia, Ibn Arabi.

The division of heaven into seven mansions, in diametric opposition to the seven stages of hell, dates from the early centuries of Islam. Ibn Abbas, in a _hadith_ that is repeated again and again in the holy books of Islam, refers to these divisions indiscriminately as gardens, gates, mansions, stages or circular strata; and with names derived from the Koran he enumerates them in the following order[344]: The first and highest is the mansion of the Divine Majesty; the second, the mansion of peace; the third, the Garden of Eden; the fourth, the garden of refuge; the fifth, the garden of eternity; the sixth, the garden of paradise; and the seventh, the garden of delight. Other versions of the _hadith_ change the order of the mansions, add one to their number, or vary the names given above.

As early as the tenth century a moral principle, in the form of a graduation of the bliss of glory, was introduced into the architectural scheme. The author of the _Corra_, who lived at Samarcand in that century, says that at intervals, according to their merits, God grants the Beatific Vision to His blessed; they, for example, who mortified their flesh and gave their whole life to His service, shall enjoy the vision every Friday; those who indulged in the pleasures to which youth is prone, shall behold it but once a month; and they who only served God toward the end of their days, but once a year; whilst such as spent their life in sin and only repented on their death-bed, shall see the vision but once throughout eternity.[345]

Other _hadiths_ attempt to connect the seven or eight mansions of bliss with as many categories of blessed.[346] One such classification may serve as an example: The first heaven is reserved for the prophets, the envoys of God, the martyrs, and the saints; the second for such as fulfilled the rites of prayer and ablution; the third for men of holy meditation; the fourth, for the devout in religious practice; the fifth, for the ascetics; the sixth, for those militant in the spiritual strife with passion; the seventh, for pilgrims; and the eighth, for those who were chaste and charitable towards their neighbours.

From these _hadiths_ the mystics gradually elaborated their doctrine of the Beatific Vision, which, besides being originally Christian, was influenced by the neo-Platonic tradition of Moslem philosophy. Ibn Ayshun, of Toledo, who lived in the first half of the tenth century, describes the vision of the countenance of God as being like the contemplation of the sun or moon when unhidden by clouds.[347] Two centuries later, Shakir Ibn Muslim, of Orihuela, enumerates the different aspects in which God appears to the blessed according to his attributes of perfection, beauty, eloquence, mercy, bounty, wisdom, and kindness.[348] The author of the _Tadhkira_, in the middle of the thirteenth century, completes the doctrine by stating that even after each vision of the Divine essence the eternal light continues to reign in the souls of the blessed, so that the bliss of glory may be uninterrupted.[349] The Cordovan ascetic further establishes a difference of degree in the enjoyment of the vision, according to the merit of the soul; to each precept of the Divine law there corresponds a degree of bliss that can only be attained by compliance with that precept.[350] In the twelfth century, the famous Oriental theologian and philosopher, Fakhr ad-Din ar-Razi, availed himself of the elements contained in the Koran and the _hadiths_ to trace a general scheme of paradise showing eight main divisions, subdivided into a hundred degrees or stages.[351] Thus, in the centuries immediately preceding the Divine Comedy the structure of paradise, as conceived in the mind of Eastern and Western Islam, appears complete in outline and detail.

IX

THE CELESTIAL PARADISE OF ISLAM IN THE DIVINE COMEDY—(CONCLUSION)

1. Of the doctrine of paradise in general it may be safely said that nobody succeeded like the Murcian, Ibn Arabi, in blending all previous conceptions into one harmonious whole. Not only is Ibn Arabi’s scheme embellished by the artistry of its author, but it is so illustrated by means of geometrical sketches that the general plan of his various heavenly mansions can be seen at a glance. This, from our point of view, is its most interesting feature.

In the cosmology of Ibn Arabi, the entire universe is represented by a circle or sphere[352]; and the plan of the cosmos consists of a series of concentric spheres, which rise one above another with progressively increasing radii. At present we are only concerned with the units comprised between the earth and the Divine Throne. These, beginning at the bottom, are in turn[353]: the spheres of the earth, water, air and ether; then, in the astronomical world, follow in succession the spheres of the moon, Mercury, Venus, Sun, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, and that of the Fixed Stars; still further is the sphere without stars or the _primum mobile_, where the astronomical world ends, and, finally, above all, shining like a focus of eternal light, the Throne of God Himself.

The paradise of the elect Ibn Arabi places between the heaven of the Fixed Stars and that of the _primum mobile_. Here, other eight concentric spheres, rising, as before behind and above each other, represent the eight mansions of the celestial paradise. These appear in the following order: 1. The abode of grace; 2. The mansion of perseverance; 3. The abode of peace; 4. The garden of eternity; 5. The garden of refuge; 6. The garden of delight; 7. The garden of paradise; 8. The Garden of Eden.[354]

Each of these eight spheres[355] is divided into innumerable _grades_—Ibn Arabi, like Dante, claims that the number of these is considerably more than several thousand—which are grouped to form one hundred different categories. These in turn represent a still more limited number of classes of the chosen, which, if the followers of Mahomet only are considered, do not number more than twelve. Each grade contains countless individual _mansions_ or _dwelling-places_.[356]

2. Now, no great effort of imagination is required to trace the analogy between this fantastic conception and Dante’s rose. True, Ibn Arabi does not employ the simile of the rose in his text; but a mere glance at his plan, which, drawn with geometric precision, he himself has handed down to us, will at once suggest such a simile.

The figure given here (see Fig. 1) is as it appears in the _Futuhat_, III, 554, with the Arabic names translated. In its construction it is identical with the figure appearing under the number 32 in Manfredi Porena’s _Commento grafico alla Divina Commedia_ as the plan of Dante’s rose (see Fig. 2). Porena in his description compares it to an amphitheatre the tiers of which are occupied by the elect.

3. Apart from this similarity in geometrical design, there is a further affinity between Dante’s rose and a Moslem myth whereby paradise is likened to a tree. Ibn Arabi, availing himself of a tradition very popular in Islam,[357] introduces into his plan a mighty tree depending from the heaven of the _primum mobile_, or roof of the abode of glory, whose foliage spreads throughout the seven celestial spheres and each branch of which penetrates one of the countless individual mansions of bliss. This tree he calls the tree of happiness, or bliss (see Fig. 1). Now, if this tree were to be depicted on Ibn Arabi’s plan of the mansions of glory, the effect of its myriad branches extending to their set places on each of the seven strata of paradise would be to give the whole figure the appearance of seven concentric circles of leaves; and this is exactly the impression one gets on looking into a rose.[358]

Nor does this mythical tree of Islam, growing downwards from the heaven of the highest sphere, appear to have been out of Dante’s ken. His conception of the astronomical spheres (and they also from time to time serve as mansions of the blessed) is likewise that of a huge inverted tree, each one of whose branches corresponds to one of the astronomical spheres and whose roots are in the Empyrean. This image he forms when he reaches the sphere of Jupiter.[359] It must be admitted, however, that Dante’s simile is not nearly so closely related to the Moslem model as is the same simile of one of his imitators. We refer to Federigo Frezzi in his _Quadriregio_[360]:

“Poscia trovammo la pianta più bella Del paradiso, la pianta felice Che conserva la vita e rinnovella. _Su dentro al cielo avea la sua radice_ _E giù inverso terra i rami spande_ Ov’era un canto che qui non si dice. Era la cima lata e tanto grande Che più, al mio parer, che duo gran miglia Era dall’una all’altra delle bande.”

The other similes Dante uses in describing paradise—when he compares it to a walled garden, to a kingdom over which Christ and Mary reign, and to a hill around which the elect gather to contemplate the Divine light—are also to be found in Ibn Arabi. To him, indeed, the whole of paradise is simply a huge garden divided into seven circular parts by means of seven walls or luminous spheres[361]; and its most sublime mansion, Eden, Ibn Arabi terms the palace or mansion of the King,[362] because here there rises a “hill of exceeding whiteness around which the elect gather to contemplate the Almighty.”[363]

4. We will now proceed to compare the moral structure of Dante’s paradise with that of Ibn Arabi. The outstanding feature of both works is the tendency of the writers to exaggerate the number of divisions and subdivisions of the various categories in which the elect are placed. Ibn Arabi, indeed, insists that “no good deed that ever was performed is without its own appropriate reward in paradise.”[364] The chief categories are eight in number, just as in the human body there are eight organs, controlled by the soul: the eyes, ears, tongue, hands, stomach, pudenda, feet, and heart. It will be remembered that this principle formed the basis of the moral structure of hell, for Ibn Arabi, as well as Dante, held that the strictest symmetry should be observed in the conceptions of the two worlds of the after-life. Of the eight categories in question, then, each has its reward in one of the eight spheres or strata of the celestial paradise.

Further, these eight rewards are subdivided into a multiplicity of grades, each one of which is assigned to a specific virtuous deed. The age of the blessed—to cite but one example, which is eminently Dantean—is taken into consideration when the rewards are administered, so that an old man, who has led a sinless life in the faith of Islam, is appointed to a higher grade than a younger man of equal innocence, even although both may have been distinguished for the same virtue.

Another striking similarity between the two works is to be found in the allotment of the various places that the elect occupy in each of the eight spheres of glory. According to Ibn Arabi, three reasons determine the allocation: the first, grace alone, in which category are placed children who died before reason came and adults who lived according to the natural law; the second, personal virtue or good deeds performed by adults; and the third, inheritance of the celestial mansions left unoccupied by the damned.[365] To strengthen the parallel, Ibn Arabi points out that the second reason does not imply that the happiness of glory is only the due reward for good done on earth. It is, he explains, something much greater than a mere recompense.[366]

By way of exemplifying how the elect are distributed, Ibn Arabi enumerates four of the principal categories in the higher grades: first, the prophets or God’s messengers, who occupy pulpits in the highest grade; secondly, the saints, who, as disciples of the prophets, are seated on thrones in the next grade; thirdly, the wise men, who, having in life acquired a scientific knowledge of God, are placed in chairs in a still lower grade; and fourthly, the pure in heart, who, having only gained a knowledge of Divine things through revelation, occupy gradins beneath the others.[367] Dante’s distribution is on the same lines. In the highest seats he places the prophets, such as Adam and Moses, and the apostles, St. Peter, St. John, and so forth; beneath these, the doctors of the religious orders, St. Francis, St. Benedict, and St. Augustine; and lastly, the faithful, who obeyed the commandments.[368] It is also worthy of note that Dante in his description of the seats of the blessed uses the same terms as Ibn Arabi, namely, _thrones_ or _chairs_, _gradins_ or _forms_.[369]

In the four general categories in question Ibn Arabi again distinguishes, although somewhat vaguely, between the Moslem elect and those who, before Islam, professed the other religions revealed by the prophets of Israel, of whom, according to Moslem theology, Christ was one.[370] This vagueness is surprising, seeing that the Dantean division of the two elects had been established in Moslem tradition long before Ibn Arabi’s time. A _hadith_, attributed to Ali, son-in-law of the prophet, clearly defines it[371]:

“At the Divine Throne are two pearls, one white and the other yellow, each of which contains 70,000 mansions. The white pearl is for Mahomet and his flock; the yellow for Abraham and his.”

The analogy between this idea and Dante’s distribution is obvious. In the mystic rose the prophets, patriarchs and saints of the Old Testament are placed in the left sector and those who lived after Christ in the right.[372] The similitude, however, extends to the actual details. Just as Ibn Arabi couples Mahomet with Adam in the same degree of the Beatific Vision, so does Dante place Adam with St. Peter in the mystic rose.[373]

5. Let us now study awhile the scene of the glorious triumph of the elect as depicted by the Murcian mystic. Briefly, the _Futuhat_ description is as follows:

“The blessed gather around the snow-white hill to await the epiphany of the Lord. As they stand, each in his respective grade and place and magnificently arrayed,[374] a dazzling light shines forth before which they fall prostrate. Through their eyes into the inmost recesses of their bodies and souls the light penetrates, so that each of the blessed becomes all eye and ear and sees and hears with his entire spirit, such is the virtue conferred on them by the light. Thus are they prepared for the presence of the Almighty. And then the Prophet appears before them, saying, ‘Prepare, then, ye chosen, for the manifestation of the Lord.’ The three veils that enshroud the Almighty—the veils of glory, majesty and power—are drawn aside at His will, and the truth is revealed, one vision, yet in the dual epiphany of the two names, the beautiful and the good. The magnificence of the Lord leaves the elect spellbound, and the brilliance of the wonderful vision pervades their beings.”

“This vision, although in itself one and the same so far as the elect are concerned, has, nevertheless, different aspects.[375] Those prophets, who only acquired their knowledge of God through the faith received from God Himself and did not increase that knowledge by reason and contemplation, will behold the vision through the eye of faith. The saint whose faith in God was inspired by a prophet will see it through the mirror of that prophet. If, however, he also gained a knowledge of God through contemplation, then will he have two visions, one of science and the other of faith. And so also will it be with the prophet. Similarly, the saint who, unenlightened by any prophet, acquired his knowledge, either through his own reason or direct from the Almighty, or in both of these ways, will be ranged in the Beatific Vision with the men of science or those of simple faith, or with both of these classes. Those who obtained from God the mystic intuition only will occupy a grade in glory apart from all the other elect. To sum up, the three aspects which God presents to the elect correspond to the different ways in which a knowledge of Him was gained on earth; and he who acquired that knowledge in all three ways will witness three Divine manifestations in the same instant. The visions of the elect in these three categories are graded thus: the prophets who received supernatural inspiration from God excel those saints who followed their teaching; while those who were neither prophets nor their disciples but simply saints and friends of God will, if they achieved the desired end by rational contemplation, be inferior in the Beatific Vision to the mystics, because reason, like a veil, will intervene between them and the Divine truth, and their efforts to raise it will be of no avail. In like manner the followers of the prophets will be unable to raise the veil of prophetic revelation. And so it is that the Beatific Vision, pure and unalloyed, will be the heritage exclusively of the prophets and those mystics who, like the prophets, received Divine inspiration on earth.”

“In each grade of vision a relative degree of bliss will be experienced.[376] Thus, the joy of some of the saints will be purely intellectual and that of others, emotional, physical, or imaginative, as the case may be. As for the mass of the faithful, the enjoyment derived by each from the Beatific Vision will also be proportional to his capacity for understanding the theological dogmas of his master. Further, as the mentality of the multitude is chiefly imaginative, so will be their knowledge of God and their participation in the Beatific Vision. This, too, will be the lot of the majority of the men of rational science, few of whom, although superior to the multitude, are on earth able to conceive the absolute abstraction from all matter. Hence it is that the greater part of the truths revealed by God through religion have been presented to the multitude in a form adapted to its understanding, though invariably accompanied by vague allusions, which are intelligible only to a select few of those of superior intellect.”[377]

Continuing, Ibn Arabi from time to time gives further interesting details[378]:

“In the Beatific Vision God manifests Himself to the elect in a general epiphany, which, nevertheless, assumes various forms corresponding to the mental conceptions of God formed by the faithful on earth. There is, then, one single epiphany, which is multiple only by reason of the difference of forms in which it is received. The Vision impregnates the elect with Divine light, each experiencing the Vision according to the knowledge of the Divine dogma or dogmas gained by him on earth.”

“The Divine light pervades the beings of the elect and radiates from them, reflected as if by mirrors, on everything around them. The spiritual enjoyment produced by the contemplation of this reflection is even greater than that of the Vision itself. For, at the moment when they experience the Beatific Vision, the elect are transported and, losing all consciousness, cannot appreciate the joys of the Vision. Delight they feel, but the very intensity of the delight makes it impossible for them to realise it. The reflected light, on the other hand, does not overpower them, and they are thus able to participate in all its joys.”

The fact of there being different grades of glory engenders no bitter feeling, much less envy, in the minds of those of the elect that occupy the lower grades. Ibn Arabi makes this point clear.[379]

“Each knows his allotted grade and seeks it as a child seeks its mother’s breast, and iron, the lodestone. To occupy or even aspire to a higher grade is impossible. In the grade in which he is placed each sees the realisation of his highest hopes. He loves his own grade passionately and cannot conceive that a higher could exist. If it were not so, heaven would not be heaven but a mansion of grief and bitter disillusion. Nevertheless, those in the superior participate in the enjoyment of the lower grades.”

6. From this description, so rich in detail, in picturesque images and in philosophico-theological ideas, we may now select those cardinal theses that are prominent in Ibn Arabi and compare them with Dante’s ideas.[380]

Firstly, the life of glory, according to the Murcian mystic, consists fundamentally in the Beatific Vision, which is conceived as a manifestation, revelation, or epiphany of the Divine light. God is a focus of light, the rays of which serve to prepare the elect to look upon the Almighty.

The parallel between this conception of Ibn Arabi and that of Dante need not be insisted upon; both in idea and artistic execution the two are identical.[381] For the latter, mediæval Christian literature furnishes no precedent whatever. The former, however, the idea or theological thesis of the necessity of a Divine light with which to behold the Almighty, had been conceived and discussed by the scholastics long before Dante’s time. St. Thomas Aquinas freely refers to a _lumen gloriae_, which strengthens the human understanding for participation in the Beatific Vision.[382]

At the same time it is certain that St. Thomas Aquinas himself admits seeking inspiration, not among the Holy Fathers and scholastic theologians, but among the Moslem philosophers.[383] It is the authority of Alfarabius, Avicenna, Avempace and Averrhoes that he quotes, when he attempts to explain the Beatific Vision in terms of philosophy, and it is the theory of Averrhoes, of the vision of the substances separated by the soul, that he accepts as the one most suitable for the elect’s vision of God.[384]

That Aquinas should not have recourse to patristic or scholastic literature was but natural, seeing he would find there little or no information about so abstruse a theme. The chroniclers of dogma recognise that the philosophic explanation of this article of the Christian faith is not to be found in the Holy Fathers nor in the early theologians. St. John Chrysostom even denies the vision of the Divine essence. St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and with the latter all the Latins up to the eighth century, placed the blessed, according to the Scripture, _face to face_ with the Divinity in the Vision; and they make the least possible comment on the sacred text to avoid falling into any anthropomorphic error, maintaining that it is impossible for the human eye to look upon the Vision.[385] Those that go more deeply into the subject, like St. Epiphanes, merely arrive at the conclusion that the soul requires assistance before it can look upon God.[386] What the nature of this assistance is, neither the Scriptures nor the Holy Fathers have determined. This is admitted by Petavius. Although the sacred texts tell of a Divine _lumen_, this has no bearing on the scholastic theory of the _lumen gloriae_. St. Thomas, indeed, held that the _lumen gloriae_ is a principle of vision, as it were a habit or faculty of seeing (akin to the sensitive faculty inherent in the eye), by means of which principle the human mind is trained to behold God. On the other hand, the _lumen_ of the Psalms (XXXV, 10), “In lumine tuo videbimus lumen,” was regarded by Origenes, St. Cyril, the pseudo-Dionysius, and St. Augustine, as a synonym of Christ, in Whose light we should see the Father. From which Petavius concludes that the theory of the _lumen gloriae_ is a novelty introduced by the scholastics.[387] He finishes by citing Plotinus as the only thinker that saw even vaguely the necessity, for the Vision of God, of a _lumen_ which is God Himself. Had there only been added to his great store of patristic learning some knowledge of Moslem theology (which was unknown in his century), he would have completed the cycle of his historical investigations and filled the gap of centuries that separates Plotinus from the scholastics.

He would have found, indeed, in Algazel and in the Spaniards, Ibn Hazm and Averrhoes—to mention but three great theologians—the roots from which the theory of the _lumen gloriae_ sprouted. Algazel dedicates a complete chapter of his _Ihia_ to the development of this theory.[388] Long before St. Thomas, he defined the Beatific Vision as a perfection of the understanding and, in order to convey an idea of the vision of glory, he establishes a complete, although metaphorical, parallel between it and the physical vision. He says:

As the physical vision is a complement and perfection of the fantastic representation of the object, the Beatific Vision is a clearer and more perfect perception of God as He appears to the mind in this life. He proceeds[389]: “God will reveal Himself to the elect in all the splendour of His manifestation. This epiphany, compared with the knowledge of God possessed by the elect, will be like the manifestation of an object in a mirror compared with a fantastic representation of it. That epiphany of God is what we call the Beatific Vision. It is, then, a real vision, provided it is clear that here we do not understand by _vision_ a complement of the imaginative representation of the imaginable object, represented in a concrete form, with dimensions, site, etc. The knowledge which you have gained of God on earth will be completed in heaven and will become presence or experience. Between this presence in the future life and the knowledge acquired on earth there will be no more difference than what comes from a greater manifestation and clearness.”

Ibn Hazm, the great eleventh-century theologian of Cordova, expounds a similar doctrine:

“We do not admit the possibility of seeing God with a sort of human vision. We simply maintain that God will be seen by means of a power distinct from that which we have in our eyes, a power that will be inspired in us by God. Some people call it a _sixth sense_. And the proof lies in the fact that, as we now know God with our souls, which in this life He has strengthened to that end, so afterwards God may strengthen our vision in order that we may behold Him.”[390]

We have already seen how Averrhoes’ theory was accepted by St. Thomas as an explanation of the Beatific Vision. But he goes further. In one of his theological treatises,[391] dealing with the texts of the Koran which compare God to a light, he says:

“God, being the cause of the existence of all beings and the cause of our being able to see them, has rightly been called _Light_; for the same relation exists between light and the colours, that is to say, light is the cause of their existence and also of our being able to see them. Nor can any doubt exist about the dogma of the vision of God, which is a light, in the life to come.”

And after refuting all objections, he concludes, like Algazel, by asserting that the Vision will consist in an increased knowledge of the Divine essence.

7. The analogies, however, between Dante’s conception and that of Ibn Arabi are not limited to the general theory of the _lumen gloriae_. Other even more striking similarities are:

Secondly. In both descriptions the elect are in the same attitude, their gaze fixed on the focus of Divine light.[392] The different grades in the Beatific Vision depend, according to Dante, on the degree of love that each of the elect shows for God, whereas in Ibn Arabi it appears to be the nature of the knowledge that the souls possessed of the Divinity that counts.[393] It would seem, then, that Dante adopted the point of view of a voluntaryist, and Ibn Arabi, that of an intellectualist. The difference, however, is more apparent than real. For Dante frequently appears to adopt Ibn Arabi’s standpoint as an intellectualist; on several occasions he attributes the grade of glory to the nature of the faith or the illuminating grace with which the soul knew God.[394] Further Ibn Arabi, like all Moslem mystics, is essentially a voluntaryist; virtue, in his opinion, is based, not on theological knowledge or dead faith, but on divine love, at once the cause and the fruit of the knowledge that the soul has gained of God. He therefore reserves a prominent grade in the Beatific Vision for the contemplative mystics and places in an inferior position such saints as were also philosophers.[395] This doctrine was expounded by Algazel before Ibn Arabi. The happiness of heaven—he writes in his _Ihia_[396]—will be proportionate to the intensity of the love for God, just as this love will be commensurate with the knowledge of God gained by the elect on earth and called by Revelation, faith.

Thirdly. The difference in grades is shown, not in the Beatific Vision itself, but in the variety of forms in which the Divine light is made manifest to the elect and in the greater or lesser brilliance of the light they receive and reflect.[397] These three ideas of Ibn Arabi have also their respective parallels in Dante’s conception. In _Par._ XXX, 121, he says: “There, distance makes no difference, for where God governs the natural law has no power whatever.” In this way Dante establishes the essential unity of the vision in its different grades. If in these grades there is any difference, it is not in the thing seen but in the way of seeing it. Accordingly, in _Par._ XXXIII, 109, he adds: “Not because there were more than one aspect of the light I saw, which itself is immutable, but because my vision, strengthened by its contemplation, was able to see it in another manner.”

Finally, that the light acquired is reflected by the elect, and its greater or lesser brilliance distinguishes their greater or lesser glory, are points frequently alluded to by Dante in the Paradiso.[398] The Dantists have explained this theme by the Thomist doctrine of the endowments of the glorious body, one of which is the radiance it derives from the glory of the soul.[399] Now, we have already seen how Ibn Arabi, before St. Thomas, likewise explains the radiance of the elect by the superabundance of Divine light, which pervades the body of each blessed and is reflected from all around it. Nor was this an original idea of Ibn Arabi’s, but merely a repetition of the doctrine of the _Ishraqi_ mystics. Indeed, in the tenth century of our era, the author of the _Corra_, having discovered it in some _hadiths_ of a still earlier date, used the theme in his description of paradise. In those pictures of the glorious life, the external brightness of the elect indicates the grade of glory of each. The following passages put the matter beyond all doubt[400]:

“He who belongs to the highest category of the elect so illumines the others that the whole of heaven is bright with the radiance of his face.” Again, it is stated that “the elect see one another in paradise as we see stars shining in the sky”; that “if one of the elect were to descend to earth, he would eclipse the light of the sun”; that Fatima, the daughter of Mahomet, is called the Brilliant, the Splendid, on account of the intensity of her light; that “the robes of the blessed reflect the Divine light”; that “when the Almighty appears in the Beatific Vision and the light of the Divine countenance falls on the faces of the elect, it causes them to shine with such brilliance that they appear transfigured with ecstasy”; and, lastly, that after the Beatific Vision the elect marvel at their own greater brilliance, increased by the reflection of the countenance of God.

Fourthly. The Beatific Vision will engender joy or delight, proportional to the various grades of the Vision, but so intense as to produce ecstasy in the soul. As is well-known, this idea of Ibn Arabi’s reappears in full in Dante’s work.[401] The idea of proportion may, it is true, have been taken from the Thomist doctrine rather than from Islamic sources.[402] Not so the idea of the ecstasy; of this there is not a word in the Thomist doctrine, which confines itself to an explanation of the philosophic origin of the three endowments of the blessed soul: vision, delectation, and comprehension of the Divine essence. Whereas, if the ecstasy in Dante be psychologically analysed and compared with that in Ibn Arabi, various constituent elements common to both will be found: loss of memory, somnolence or semi-consciousness, produced on the soul by the intensity of delight.[403]

Fifthly. The fact of there being different grades in the Beatific Vision excites no feeling of envy or sadness among those in the lower grades. Each accepts his share of the glory as if it were impossible even to desire anything greater. And this is so, because all love the grade they occupy; and, further, because, if it were not thus, heaven would not be a mansion of peace and delight.[404]

Dante puts the same explanation in the mouth of Piccarda[405]: “Our desires, awakened only by the love of the Holy Spirit, are satisfied in the way that He determined.” To Dante’s inquiry whether there is no desire on the part of the souls to attain to a higher place, Piccarda replies: “Brother, a feeling of charity quells such a desire, and we long for nothing more than what we have. Were we to aspire to a higher sphere, our wish would be at variance with the will of the Almighty, and such disagreement does not exist in the kingdom of heaven.” Dante, satisfied with the explanation, concludes: “Then I understood why in the heavens all is paradise, notwithstanding the different degrees of bliss.”

8. The identity thus established between the five fundamental theses of the Murcian Ibn Arabi on the Beatific Vision and Dante’s is strong enough to render comment unnecessary. In comparison, the other similarities, such as picturesque details and artistic devices, used in both descriptions in an attempt to delineate by geometrical figures the Divine truth as seen in the glorious vision, are vague.

The analogy that was revealed in the discussion of Version C of the second cycle of the _Miraj_[406] between the apotheosis witnessed by Mahomet and that described by Dante need not be dwelt upon. It is as well to recall, however, that the image representing the Divinity in that version, which dates back to the eighth century, is identical with that employed by Dante: a focus of light, surrounded by concentric circles, composed of tiers of resplendent angels. This description was perpetuated in Islam, and Ibn Arabi frequently reproduced it in his _Futuhat_, notably in his portrayal of God at the final judgment.[407]

But the similarity extends further. Dante, having arrived at the spiritual cusp of his glorious ascension, attempts to explain the mystery of the Trinity by means of the same geometrical circular symbol: three circumferences, of equal size and multi-coloured, the first two of which seem to be a reflection of the other, after the manner of two rainbows, and the third as of fire, emitted by the other two.[408] Now, the more shrewd among the commentators, although acknowledging the ingenuity shown by Dante in his conception, admit that this geometrical symbol of the three circles, as a representation of the persons of the Trinity, is more of an enigma than it is explanatory. No details are given of the colour of the first two circles or of the geometrical relationship between the three, whether they are concentric or eccentric, whether they are tangent to or cut each other—in fact, no help whatever to interpret the symbol is given.[409] One fact, however, stands out: Dante uses the symbol of the circle to represent God in all His aspects—as One in the Essence, as the Father, as the Son, and as the Holy Ghost. Thus, the symbol of the circle represents God conceived both as the principle of emanation and as the emanation itself.

Now, it is well known that the same use of the circle as a symbol of the Divinity was made in the Plotinian metaphysics.[410] The _Apocryphal Theology_ of Aristoteles, as also the apocryphal book of Hermes Trismegistus and the _Liber de Causis_, made this symbol known to the Moslems and the scholastics; but it was the Moslems, the _Ishraqi_ mystics in particular, who had recourse to the circle on every possible occasion to explain their ideas on emanation, both in their metaphysics and their cosmology.[411]

The Murcian Ibn Arabi, more than any of the _Ishraqis_, employs circles, concentric and eccentric, secant and tangent, to represent the Almighty, whether in His abstract individuality, in His attributes, names and relations, in His manifestations _ad extra_, or in His emanation.[412] A circle of white light on a red background, also of light, with two radii projecting from it, as it gently moves but never changes, is the symbol by which he represents the individual essentiality of God.[413] The procession of the beings who emanate from God the essence is also symbolised in the _Futuhat_ by a circle.[414] The centre, like a focus of light, is God, from Whom the contingent beings emanate, just as the radii of a circle proceed from one central point to terminate in a series of points which, when joined together, form the circumference, symbolical of the cosmos; and just as these points are in their essence indistinguishable the one from the other, so also in the emanation of God is there a unity of substance and a multiplicity of epiphanies; the beings are merely the aspects, or the names and forms under which the Divine light appears.

These emanations likewise are represented by circles[415]; at the innumerable points on the first circumference, the centre of which is God, an infinity of other circumferences cut the circle; and these in turn produce other circles, secant as before, and so on _ad infinitum_. As the circles multiply, the centre of their origin, God, becomes hidden, nevertheless, all reflect the light of His first epiphany. All the ingenious and paradoxical similitudes which Ibn Arabi deduces from this symbol of the Divine emanation are founded upon one main idea, the basis of his pantheism, half emanative, half immanent. God and the creatures are one and the same substance; the multiplicity of the emanations in no wise changes the essence of their origin; and these emanations are merely distinct affinities, who represent the immanence of the origin from which they spring.

This general plan of the Divine emanation becomes less involved when Ibn Arabi proceeds to represent the ontological categories alone by the symbol of concentric circles.[416] The supreme series of these consists of three substances, hypostases or emanations from the One Absolute: first, the Spiritual Substance, from which proceed all those beings who are not God; secondly, the Universal Intellect, which is the Divine light by which the beings of the Spiritual Substance receive objective reality; thirdly, the Universal Soul, likewise an emanation from the One, through the Intellect.[417] This triad of substances, which to Ibn Arabi represents the essence of God, is shown in the _Futuhat_ by a geometrical figure composed of three circles: the largest, which encircles the whole figure, represents the Spiritual Substance; inside, two smaller eccentric circles, almost tangent to one another, symbolise the Intellect and the Soul. Ibn Arabi gives no reasons for these graphic details of his plan, but the mere fact of his using the three circles as a symbol for the three hypostases of his Trinity, to wit, the principle of prime aptitude for the existence of all beings, the principle of active potency to give such existence, and the principle of life of the cosmos, is in itself an interesting point and one that will repay the study of those who, while appreciating the subtle ingenuity of the Florentine poet, are not content merely to admire his artistic creations but are eager to find out whence he derived his ideas.[418] For, in spite of there being an abyss of differences between the pantheistic triad of Ibn Arabi and the Catholic dogma of the Trinity,[419] this in no wise affects the symbolical representation of the two conceptions by a geometrical plan. To adapt this plan to a representation of either conception would constitute neither an absurdity in metaphysics nor a danger from the point of view of dogma, provided that the key to the enigma were kept discreetly hidden and concrete details in its interpretation were omitted; and this is exactly what Dante did. In describing his symbol of the three circles, he confines himself to stating that the three are one only as regards “continenza,” i.e., substance, and that they are of different colours, to distinguish the Three Divine Persons, in the unity of essence.[420]

X

SYNTHESIS OF ALL THE PARTIAL COMPARISONS

1. The many minute comparisons made in this second part of our work will now enable us to present, in the form of a synthesis of the partial results, the following conclusions:

A considerable number of the details and topographical descriptions in the Divine Comedy, although they have no parallels in the _Miraj_, have, nevertheless, their precedents in Islamic literature, whether it be in the Koran, in the _hadiths_, in the Moslem legends of the final judgment, or in the doctrine of the theologians, philosophers, and mystics.

2. Among all the Islamic thinkers, the Murcian Ibn Arabi stands out as the most likely to have furnished Dante with his model for the hereafter. The infernal regions, the astronomical heavens, the circles of the mystic rose, the choirs of angels around the focus of Divine light, the three circles symbolising the Trinity—all are described by Dante exactly as Ibn Arabi described them. This similarity betrays a relation such as exists between copy and model. That it should be a mere coincidence is impossible. The historical facts are these: in the thirteenth century, twenty-five years before the birth of the Florentine poet, Ibn Arabi introduced into his _Futuhat_ plans of the hereafter, all of which were circular or spherical in design. Eighty years after, Dante produces a marvellous poetical description of the after-life, the topographical details of which are so precise that they enabled the poet’s commentators in the twentieth century to represent them graphically by geometrical plans; and these plans are essentially identical with those designed by Ibn Arabi seven centuries before. If imitation by Dante can be disproved, the manifest similarity is either an insolvable mystery or a miracle of originality.[421]

3. Over and above this identity in construction there is a striking analogy in decoration. Indeed, the Aaraf seems to be the prototype of the limbo: the Gehenna, the model of the Inferno; the Sirat of the Purgatorio; the meadow between purgatory and hell, of the Terrestrial Paradise; and the eight gardens, of the Mystic Rose or Dantean Paradise.

4. The same unity in architectural design and the same hankering after symmetry, physical as well as moral, are exhibited in both descriptions. Jerusalem is the pivot on which the other world revolves; beneath it is hell, in the last storey of which Lucifer is imprisoned; vertically above Jerusalem is the theological heaven, where dwell the Divinity and the elect; here, the number, as well as the subdivision, of the mansions is identical with that of the infernal regions, with the result that each place in hell has its antithesis in heaven.

5. The likeness between the two extends to many of the episodes and scenes, some of which are literally identical. For instance, the classification of the inhabitants of the limbo and their moral suffering are analogous to those of the Aaraf; the black tempest of the adulterers is the Koranic wind of Ad; the rain of fire that beats down upon the Sodomites, who are driven round in a circle; the punishment of the soothsayers, whose heads are reversed; Caiaphas, crucified upon the ground and trampled upon; the robbers, devoured by serpents; the authors of schism, with their bowels protruding and their arms cut off, or with their head, talking, in their hands; the giants, whose abnormal proportions are described in parallel terms; the torture of the ice, which is the Moslem _zamharir_, suffered by traitors; the picture of Lucifer, fast in ice like the Islamic Iblis; the dense smoke that envelops the passionate in purgatory, identical with that which, according to the Koran, will appear on the Day of Judgment; the double ablution in the two rivers of the earthly paradise, and the meeting of Dante with Beatrice, which is a parallel scene to that of the entry of the soul into the Islamic paradise, after ablution in two rivers, and of the meeting with its heavenly bride; and, lastly, the description of the Beatific Vision as a Divine _lumen_, which produces outward brilliance, intellectual clarity, and ecstatic delight.

6. If to all these analogies of architecture, topography, and setting, are added those that were brought out in full relief in the first part of this work, it will be apparent that the religious literature of Islam alone, in the sole theme of the after-life—a theme mainly developed around the _Miraj_—offers to investigators a more abundant harvest of ideas, images, symbols, and descriptions, similar to those of Dante, than all the other religious literatures together that have up to now been consulted by Dantists in their endeavours to explain the genesis of the Divine Comedy.

7. And here our study might be concluded, were it not for one important doubt that may assail the mind of the investigator.

The artistic devices and theological-philosophic conceptions introduced by Dante into his poem are attributed by Dantists to the poet’s own inventive genius, stimulated to a certain extent by his acquaintance with sundry popular legends that were broadcast throughout Europe in the centuries immediately preceding his appearance. These mediæval legends are technically referred to as the “precursors of the Divine Comedy.”

Now, it is certain that none of these furnishes the same explanation for so many elements of Dante’s work as does the legend of the _Miraj_, and, taken altogether, they fail to throw light upon many details which the _Miraj_ and Islamic literature in general explain in full. Further, the analogies between the Divine Comedy and its precursors are too slight to establish any relation such as exists between model and copy.

In spite of all this, however, it might be possible to ignore the hypothesis of Moslem influence over Dante’s poem and fall back on the theory that the poem was conceived in the womb of Christian literature and evolved from the seeds of eschatology contained in its mediæval precursors. To rebut this theory and render the argument in favour of our hypothesis conclusive, further investigation is, therefore, necessary. The origin of the eschatological elements in the precursory legends must be inquired into, in order to ascertain whether they were indeed all of native Christian growth, or whether they do not also show signs of Moslem ancestry such as the Divine Comedy has revealed to us.