Islam and the Divine comedy

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]