[138] Cf. François Martin, Le Livre d’Henoch; Eugène Tisserant, Ascension d’Isaie; R. Charles, The Assumption of Moses; R. Charles, The Apocalypse of Baruch. For the Judæo-Christian origin of these legends Cf. Batiffol, Anciennes Littératures chrétiennes; La Littérature grecque, p. 56. Hirschfeld, in his Researches into ... the Qurân, p. 67, note 64, quotes a rabbinical legend of a journey through hell and paradise and points out certain analogies to a hadith of Bukhari. For the influence of the Persian ascension of Ardâ Virâf, see Blochet, L’Ascension au ciel du prophète Mohammed, and prior to Blochet, Clair-Tisdall in The sources of Islam, 76-81. Cf. Modi, Dante papers; Virâf, Adaaman and Dante, a work I have not been able to consult.
[139] The festivity of the Miraj is celebrated on the 27th day of the month of Recheb, the seventh of the Moslem calendar. At Constantinople the Sultan attended with his court at the services held at night in the mosque of the Seraglio. Lane, on p. 430 of his book, An account of the manners and customs of the modern Egyptians, describes the processions and festivals held in honour of the Miraj at Cairo. Throughout Morocco, the Miraj is celebrated in the same manner; it is a day of fast and almsgiving for the stricter Moslems, and the Government offices are closed.
[140] Ihia, IV, 17-23. Cf. Ithaf, VIII, 548 et seq.
[141] Cf. De Haeresibus (Opera Omnia), Paris, vol. I, 110-115, No. 100.
[142] Cf. Qistas, p. 60: “Should someone say to thee, ‘Say that there is but one God and that Jesus is His Prophet,’ thy mind would instinctively reject the statement as being proper to a Christian only. But that would but be because thou hast not sufficient understanding to grasp that the statement in itself is true and that no reproach can be made to the Christian, for this article of his faith, nor for any of the other articles, save only those two—that God is the third of three, and that Mahomet is not a prophet of God. Apart from these two all the other articles (of the Christian faith) are true.” For the influence of Christianity on Islam, and particularly on Algazel, cf. Asín, La mystique d’Al-Gazzali, pp. 67-104, and Abenmasarra, pp. 12-16.
[143] Inf. IV, 45.
[144] Cf. Petavius, Dogm. Theolog. IV (Pars sec.) lib. 3, cap. 18, § 5. The texts Ducange refers to in his Glossarium (s.v.) are later than the twelfth century. St. Thomas in the Summa theologica (pars 3, q. 52) calls the limbo of the Patriarchs infernus and sinus Abrahae, but in the Supplementum tertiae partis (q. 69) he already adopts the name limbus.
[145] Inf. III, 34.
[146] Inf. III, 38.
[147] Inf. IV, 106, 110, 116.
[148] Inf. IV, 28, et seq.
[149] Inf. IV, 28, 42, 45. Cf. Inf. II, 52.
[150] Inf. II, 53, 75.
[151] Cf. St. Thomas, Summa Theol. pars 3, q. 52, and Supplementum, q. 69. Perrone, in his Praelectiones theol., II, 157, says of the limbo: “Reliqua autem, quae spectant sive ad hunc inferni locum, sive ad poenarum disparitatem ... fidem nullo modo attingunt, cum nullum de his Ecclesiae decretum existat.”
[152] Tacholarus, VI, 194, s.v. Ithaf, VIII, 564. Khazin, Tafsir, II, 90. Cf. Freytag, Lexicon, and Lane, Lexicon, s.v.
[153] The theological meaning of the word Al Aaraf may be derived from the eschatology of St. Ephrem (id. 373), who divided the celestial paradise into the summit, slopes and border; in the latter penitent sinners who have been pardoned dwell until the Day of Judgment, when they will ascend to the summit. Cf. Tixeront, Hist. des dogmes, II, 220.
[154] Cf. Futuhat, I, 416; III, 567, 577. Tadhkira, 88.
[155] Koran, VII, 44. Cf. Ithaf, VIII, 565; Kanz, VII, 213, No. 2,312. The Koran here refers to the dwellers in the limbo and not, as Kasimirski has it on p. 122 of his French translation, to les réprouvés. Cf. Khazin, Tafsir, II, 91; also Tafsir of Al-Nasafi and Firuzabadi in Tafsir of Ibn Abbas, I, 102.
[156] Compare the passages quoted above of the Ithaf and the Tafsir of Khazin with Inf. II, 52, and IV, 45.
[157] Other less striking features of resemblance might be quoted. Thus the crowd running behind the flag in the Ante-inferno (Inf. III, 52) is reminiscent of many Moslem tales of the Day of Judgment, which depict groups led by standard-bearers.
Thus, Moslems will be led by Mahomet bearing the banner of the Glory of God. The prophet Xoaib with a white banner will lead the blessed that are blind; Job, with a green banner, the patient lepers; Joseph, likewise with a green banner, the chaste youths; Aaron, with a yellow banner, the true friends who loved each other in God; Noah, with a many-coloured banner, the god-fearing; John, with a yellow banner, the martyrs; Jesus will be the standard-bearer of the poor in spirit; Solomon, of the rich; the pre-Islamic poet Imru-l-Qays will be the ensign of the poets in hell; and the traitor will bear a banner of shame. Cf. Ibn Makhluf, I, 154, and II, 8 and 14.
As to the swarms of wasps and flies that plague the inhabitants of the Ante-inferno, the Moslem hell is depicted as “swarming with insects of all kinds, except bees.” Cf. Al-Laali, II, 245.
[158] Cf. Landino, on the 14th page of the preliminary study.
[159] Rossi, I, 139-140. Cf. D’Ancona, Precursori, 28-31, 36, and passim.
[160] Vossler, I, 21.
[161] It is difficult to account for his silence on this point, for evidently any influence the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Phœnicians may have exercised over the Divine Comedy must have been more remote; yet he devotes a separate paragraph to each of these peoples and not a single line to Islam.
[162] Cf. Chantepie, Hist. des rel. Reference to the quotations in the index, s.v. Enfer, will show that the Moslem hell is superior to all others in wealth of descriptive detail.
[163] Cf. Kasimirski’s translation of the Koran, p. 122, footnote and refer to the index, s.v. Enfer.
[164] Cf. Kanz, VII, 244, Nos. 2,756 to 2,791.
[165] Cf. Rossi, I, 140, and see the general plan Figura universale della D.C. in Fraticelli, p. 402. For the Moslem traditions cf. Kanz, VI, 102, Nos. 1, 538; 1,546 and 1,601; and VII, 277, Nos. 3,076/7. The belief that the mouth of hell is situated beneath Jerusalem is still held in Islam, for the Moslems believe that below the subterranean chamber underneath the present Mosque or dome of the rock (Qubbat al-sakhra) standing in the precincts of the Temple, lies the pit of the souls (Bir al-arwah).
[166] This metaphorical interpretation is not justified on philological grounds, for the Arabic lexicons only give the following indirect meanings:—chapter; sum of a calculation; mode, category or condition, etc. Lane in his Lexicon (I, 272), however, suggests that in Egypt the word was applied to a sepulchral chamber, or cave in a mountain, and was derived from the Coptic “bib.”
[167] Kanz, VIII, 278, No. 3,079.
[168] Cf. Kanz, ibid. No. 3,078. Also Tabari, Tafsir, XIV, 25, and Khazin, Tafsir, III, 96. Cf. also MS 234, Gayangos Coll., fol. 100 vᵒ.
“Ibn Abbas says that hell is formed of seven floors, separated one from another by a distance of five hundred years.”
In other hadiths the words gate, floor, and step are replaced by the word pit. Cf. Kanz, III, 263, No. 4,235.
[169] A collection of hadiths dealing with this division into seven may be found in Qisas, 4-11; on p. 7 is a hadith by Wahb ibn Munabbih, which says:—
“Of almost all things there are seven—seven are the heavens, the earths, the mountains, the seas ... the days of the week, the planets ... the gates and floors of hell....”
[170] Cf. Rossi, I, 141.
[171] Hadith of Ibn Jurayj in Khazin, Tafsir, III, 96-97. Cf. MS 64 Gayangos Coll., fol. 22.
[172] Thaalabi, Qisas, 4. Cf. Kanz, III, 218, No. 3,407. Also Badai az-Zohur, 8-9.
[173] How popular these descriptions of hell were is shown by the fact that they passed into the Arabian Nights Tales. Thus, Tamim Dari and Boluqiya each visit hell, where the latter finds seven floors of fire, containing: (1) impenitent Moslems; (2) polytheists; (3) Gog and Magog; (4) demons; (5) Moslems forgetful of prayer; (6) Jews and Christians; and (7) hypocrites. The severity of torture increases with the depth; the floors are separated by a distance of a thousand years, and in the first there are hills, valleys, houses, castles and cities to the number of seventy thousand. Cf. Chauvin, Bibliographie, VII, 48 and 56.
[174] Inf. XXXI, 86.
[175] The Tadhkira of the Cordovan, or Memorial of the Future Life, is one of the richest of such collections and was popular in the East and West. It is the one mainly drawn upon for the present purpose.
[176] See the list of such names quoted in the index to Fraticelli’s edition of the Divine Comedy.
[177] Tadhkira, 19, 39, 74. Cf. Kanz, III, 76, No. 1,436; V, 217, Nos. 4,479 and 4,484; VII, 245, Nos. 2,777 and 2,784. Corra, 12. Al-Laali, II, 245. Tabari, Tafsir, XXIII, 114. Many of the proper names of the mansions of hell are appellative names taken from the Koran.
[178] Corra, 12 and 31. Al-Laali, II, 196.
[179] St. Thomas finds no precise topography of hell in Christian tradition and can only record the probable opinion of the theologians that “ignis inferni est sub terra,” though formerly he had accepted the statement of St. Augustine: “In qua parte mundi infernus sit, scire neminem arbitror” and of St. Gregory, “Hac de re temere definire nihil audeo” (cf. Summa Theol. Supplementum tertiae partis, q. 97, art. 7). St. Isidore of Seville supposed hell to be “in superficie terrae, ex parte opposita terrae nostrae habitabili,” but in the thirteenth century this opinion was no longer common. Thus in a Mapa mundi extant in MS in the Biblioteca Nacional of Madrid and the Biblioteca Escurialense (cf. Boletín de la Real Sociedad Geográfica, vol. L, p. 207) and attributed to St. Isidore though it really belongs to the thirteenth century, hell is described as lying in the middle of the earth “at the lowest and bottommost spot.” Curiously enough, unlike Dante’s and the Islamic picture, hell is here conceived as being narrow at the top and wide at the bottom; this probably is due to the faulty interpretation of Moslem documents.
[180] Not in the Vedas. Cf. Chantepie, Hist. des rel. 346 and 382. Also Roeské, L’enfer cambodgien (in Journal Asiatique, Nov.-Dec. 1914, 587-606). For the rabbinical hell cf. Buxtorf, Lexicon chaldaicum (Basle, 1639), p. 231 a.
[182] Futuhat, I, 387-396; II, 809; III, 8, 557, 575-577. Other picturesque features might be added to those mentioned above; thus, in hell there is both heat and cold; the heads of sects suffer special torture, and Iblis, the Lucifer of Islam, undergoes the severest torture of all; suffering in hell is of two kinds, physical and moral. As in Dante (cf. Rossi, I, 151), the sufferers may not leave the pit to which they are condemned, but move freely within its limits (Futuhat, III, 227). Finally, Ibn Arabi imparts a strong flavour of realism to his pictures by painting them as if he had actually seen the originals in visions. Thus, on p. 389 of vol. I, he says:—
“In this vision I saw of the circles of the damned ... such as God was pleased to show me. And I saw an abode, called the Abode of Darkness, and descended some five of its several steps and I beheld the tortures in each one....”
[183] The theme of the symmetry between the hell and heaven of Islam will be developed further in the discussion of the latter.
[184] Cf. Asín, Abenmasarra, pp. 111 and 161.
[185] Futuhat, I, 388. Cf. Abenmasarra, 109. The figure of the serpent he no doubt derived from Ibn Qasi, a disciple of the Masarri school and head of the Muridin, who ruled as sovereign in Southern Portugal until 1151 A.D.
[186] Futuhat, III, 557.
[187] It is here reproduced from the Turkish author’s two general plans of the Cosmos given by Carra de Vaux in Fragments d’Eschatologie musulmane, pp. 27 and 33.
[188] Infernal tortures based on this principle were found in several versions of the Miraj, but they recur in far greater number in other traditions depicting the torments of the sinners or the scenes on the Day of Judgment.
In them, thieves suffer amputation of both hands; the liar has his lips torn asunder; the nagging wife and the false witness are shown hanging by their tongues; unjust judges appear blind; the vain, deaf and dumb; hired mourners go about barking like dogs; suicides suffer throughout eternity the torture of their death; the proud are converted into ants and trampled upon by all the other sinners. Some categories of sinners are obliged to bear the corpus delicti as a stigma; thus, the drunkard carries a bottle slung round his neck and a glass or a guitar in his hand; the tradesman who gave short weight carries scales of fire hanging from his neck; and the reader of the Koran who was puffed up with pride at his accomplishment appears with a copy of the holy book nailed to his neck; and so forth.
Cf. Corra, 12-25, 31, 37, 43. Al-Laali, II, 195. Kanz, VII, 2,086, No. 3,173. Gayangos Coll. MS 64, fol. 15 vᵒ; MS 172, fol. 33 v°.
[189] Inf. XVIII, 21; XXIX, 53; XXXI, 82. The Koranic texts are LVII, 12, and LXVI, 8, glossed by Ibn Arabi in Futuhat, I, 412, line 14.
[190] Cf. Kharida, 182.
[191] See index of Kasimirski’s translation, s.v. Ad. Cf. Khazin, Tafsir, II, 104, and Qisas, 40.
[192] Inf. V, 89: “l’aer perso.” In Convivio, IV, 20, Dante himself gives a definition: “Perso è un colore misto di purpureo e di nero, ma vince il nero e da lui si denomina.”
[193] Compare Qisas, 40, lines 18 and 21; 24; 22; 27 and 33; 32, 34 and 37 with Inf. V, 31, 49 and 51; 89; 51; 86; 32, 33, 43 and 49 respectively.
[195] Corra, 3 and 20. Kanz, VIII, 188, No. 3,288.
[196] Inf. XIV, XV and XVI.
[197] Kanz, VII, 246, No. 2,800. Ibn Makhluf, II, 41. Cf. Khazin, Tafsir, IV, 348-9.
[198] Kanz, V, 213, No. 4,383; 214, No. 4,415; 217, Nos. 4,479 and 4,484. Ibn Makhluf, II, 37. Tadhkira, 74.
[199] Before leaving the circle in which Dante finds Brunetto, Virgil explains to him the hydrography of hell, the four rivers of which have their common source in the island of Crete. On Mt. Ida stands a monument, in the form of a statue of a Great Old Man, composed of gold, silver, brass, iron and clay; in every part, except the gold, there is a fissure from which drop tears, which flowing downhill form the rivers (Inf. XIV, 94 et seq.). Whatever be the esoteric meaning of Dante’s allegory and however evident the analogy with the statue of Daniel is, it is of interest to note that tales dealing with the common source of the four rivers of paradise were very popular in Islam. According to these tales, the Nile, Euphrates, Jihun and Sihun spring from a monument in the form of a dome, made of gold or emerald, standing on a mountain and having four mouths or fissures. The obscure origin of the sources of the Nile gave rise to similar legends, which describe its waters as flowing from the mouths of eighty-five statues of bronze, or else from a mountain on which stands the figure of an old man, the mythical Khidr. Cf. Badai az-Zohur, 21-23.
[200] Corra, 8; Al-Laali, II, 195. Cf. Inf. XVIII, 35.
[201] Inf. XVIII, 113.
[202] Al-Laali, II, 195. Tadhkira, 77. Corra, 17. Ibn Makhluf, II, 83. Cf. Koran, XXXVIII, 57; LXXVIII, 25.
[203] Inf. XIX. Corra, 72. Their peculiar posture is also mentioned in some descriptions of hell attributed to Ibn Abbas. Cf. MS 234, Gayangos Coll., fol. 105.
[204] Inf. XX, 11, 23, 37, 39.
[205] Koran, IV, 50.
[206] Tafsir, V, 77.
[207] Cf. Qazwini, I, 373.
[208] Tadhkira, 47, line 10.
[209] Colección de textos aljamiados by Gil, Ribera and Sánchez (Saragossa, 1888), pp. 69 and 71. Algazel, Ihia, IV, 21-22; Ithaf, VIII, 561.
[210] Inf. XXIII, 58-72.
[211] Kanz, III, 251, No. 4, 013.
[212] Koran, XIV, 51. Cf. Tabari, Tafsir, XIII, 167-8; Corra, 26.
[213] Inf. XXIII, 110-126.
[214] MS 234 Gayangos Coll., fol. 100.
[215] Al-Laali, II, 195.
[216] Inf. XXIV-XXV.
[217] Corra, II, 25, 37, 65. Kanz, VII, 280, No. 3,087.
[218] Inf. XXVIII.
[219] Corra, 71.
[220] Kanz, VIII, 188, No. 3,288; V, 214, No. 4,415; Suyuti, Sudur, 30 and 121.
[221] Kanz, V, 327, No. 5,717. Corra, 65.
[222] Kanz, VII, 287, No. 3,201. Cf. also Nos. 3,218, 3,220, 3,221, 3,223, 3,224.
[223] Inf. XXIX-XXX.
[224] Kanz, VII, 247, No. 2,826. MS 172 Gayangos Coll., fol. 34. Corra, 12.
[225] Inf. XXXI.
[226] Tadhkira, 75. Cf. Kanz, VII, 212, No. 2,301; 237, Nos. 2,668, 2,671 and 2,801-2,808. Moreover, the existence of giants in hell was traditional in Islam, for the dwellers in Ad, who were condemned to hell by the Koran, were of gigantic stature. In Qisas, 39, the head of one of these giants is compared to the dome of a great building. The coincidence in stature of the giants of Dante and those of Islam is also curious. According to the Tadhkira (p. 75, line 4 inf.) the latter measure 42 fathoms; and Landino, basing his calculations on Dante’s text, says of Nimrod: “Adunque questo gigante sarebbe braccia quarantatre o più” (p. 30 of his prologue to the Divine Comedy).
[228] Ihia, III, 240, and Futuhat, I, 393. Cf. Al-Laali, II, 196.
[229] Inf. XXXII—XXXIV.
[230] Futuhat, I, 387.
[231] Koran, LXXVI, 13.
[232] Cf. Gayangos Coll. MS 172, fol. 34, and MS 234, fol. 105.
[233] Jahiz, Hayawan (Book of Animals), V, 24. A summary of the life and writings of Jahiz is given in the author’s Abenmasarra, Appendix I, 133-137. According to Oscar Comettant, Civilisations inconnues (quoted in Larousse, Dict. Univ. s.v. Purgatoire), torture by cold also occurs in the Buddhist hell.
[234] Tadhkira, 69.
[235] Cf. Qazwini, I, 93.
[236] MS 234 Gayangos Coll., fol. 105. Cf. Inf. XXXII, 37; XXXIII, 92; XXXIV, 13.
[237] Tadhkira, 82; and Kanz, VII, 246, No. 2,810. Cf. Inf. XXXII, 34; XXXIV, 11.
[238] MS 172 Gayangos Coll., fol. 34. Cf. Inf. XXXIV 15.
[239] Inf. XXXIV, 28-139.
[240] Graf, Demonologia di Dante, in Miti, II, 79-112.
[241] Futuhat, I, 391.
[242] MS 64 Gayangos Coll., fols. 1-27.
[243] Al-Laali, II, 196.
[244] Qazwini, I, 373, gives a hadith, telling of the dealings of Solomon with genii and demons, that is of interest for the study of the demonology of Islam, which shows marked resemblance to that of Dante, particularly in the matter of the names. On this point cf. Damiri, I, 237; Khazin, Tafsir, III, 201; and Dharir, 188.
[245] Kanz, II, 109, No. 2,652; Tadhkira, 70; Gayangos Coll., MS 64, fol. 24, and MS 234, fol. 94.
[246] Kharida, 87 and 95.
[247] Cf. Kasimirski’s translation, Table des matières, s.v. Eblis.
[248] Qisas, 26, ch. 7.
[250] Koran, XXI, 31.
[251] Qisas, 3, line 10 inf. The immediate purpose of this legend was indeed to explain the stability of the earth in the midst of space, but the adaptation to other purposes of a picturesque description is a common feature in literary imitation.
[252] So great is the wealth of picturesque detail in the descriptions of the Moslem hell that minor features of resemblance to Dante have been omitted as being open to doubt. Thus the Koran repeatedly mentions a tree in hell, called Az-Zaqum (cf. Kasimirski, s.v.), the fruit of which is bitter and repugnant like the heads of demons (cf. Khazin, Tafsir, IV, 18 and 116; Tacholarus, VIII, 326; Ihia, IV, 381; Ithaf, X, 515). In itself this tree bears little resemblance to the human trees into which Dante converts the suicides (Inf. XIII), which cry out when their branches are torn and which Dante admits he copied from Virgil’s episode of Polydorus (Aeneid, III). In Arabian tales of miraculous journeys to hell, however, there are frequent descriptions of trees the branches of which resemble human heads and cry out on being torn (cf. Chauvin, Bibliographie, VII, 33 and 56; Qisas, 222; also René Basset’s “Histoire du Roi Sabour et de son fils Abou’n Nazhar” in Rev. des trad. popul., XI, 273, 278, and 280).
[253] Cf. Tixeront, II, 200, 220, 350, 433 and III, 270, 428.
[254] Cf. Perrone, II, 122: “Omnia igitur quae spectant ad locum, durationem, poenarum qualitatem, ad catholicam fidem minime pertinent, seu definita ab Ecclesia non sunt.”
[255] Landino, prologue to Purg., fol. 194 vᵒ; also to Inf. III, fols. 25 vᵒ and 26.
[257] Kanz, VII, 242, Nos. 2,725 and 2,730; VII, 218, No. 2,376.
[259] Ithaf, VIII, 566. The hadith, attributed to Ibn Abbas, cannot date later than the tenth century.
[260] For a collection of these legends cf. Tadhkira, 58 et seq.; Ibn Makhluf, II, 25; Ithaf, X, 481 et seq.
[261] It should be borne in mind that Dante’s mount of purgatory rises above the southern hemisphere, which is entirely covered with water, and reaches to the ether, the last sphere of the sublunar world, bordering on heaven; its base stands on the back of hell, the entrance to which is in the northern hemisphere, near Jerusalem.