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.