Chapter IX: Introduction (1)

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]