INTRODUCTION By the Duke of Alba

The Spanish original, of which the present is an abridged translation, appeared six years ago under the title of La Escatología musulmana en la Divina Comedia (Madrid, Imprenta de Estanislao Maestre, 1919).

Its author, Miguel Asín y Palacios, a Catholic priest and Professor of Arabic at the University of Madrid, is the disciple of another Arabic scholar of Spain, Julián Ribera, by whom he was initiated in Oriental studies and the methods of historical research. Asín has devoted over twenty-five years of his life to the investigation of the philosophic and religious thought of mediæval Islam—the Islam of the Orient as well as that of Spain—and its influence on the culture of Christian Europe. His training in Arabic philology and his mastery of mediæval scholastics had enabled him several years before to make important discoveries regarding the influence in theology of Averrhoes on St. Thomas Aquinas, of Ibn Arabi of Murcia on Raymond Lull, and of the Ikhwan as-safa on Fr. Anselmo de Turmeda, and so forth. His most important discovery, however, and the one on which his fame is chiefly based, was his discovery of Islamic models the influence of which on the Divine Comedy of Dante forms the subject of the present work. From the very date of its publication in Spanish the book

aroused the curiosity of the general public and caused a great stir among the critics of literary history. The Italian Dantists particularly could with difficulty bring themselves to recognise that Moslem sources should have formed the basis for the Divine Comedy, the poem that symbolises the whole culture of mediæval Christian Europe. The book at [viii]once became the subject of lively and passionate controversy. Over a hundred articles and pamphlets have been written and lectures delivered in favour of, or against, the thesis propounded by Asín Palacios. The principal reviews devoted to literature and literary history, those both of a general and special character, have published articles from the pens of Dantists and Romance and Arabic scholars of note in Europe and America, expounding or criticising the thesis. Asín has intervened in the controversy to sum up the judgments, favourable, adverse or doubtful, and finally refute his opponents; this he has done in different publications,⁠[1] and the present is a translation of the work containing

the original thesis. The balance of opinion is strongly in his favour. Apart from a score or so of adverse critics, mainly of Italian nationality, whose attitude is to be accounted for on the grounds of national or pro-Dante prejudice, an immense majority of critics of all nations, whose competence, whether as Romance or Arabic scholars and whose impartiality are beyond all question, has opted in favour of Asín Palacios’ theory.

Both parties to the controversy have been unanimous and unstinting in their praise of the book.

Pio Rajna, the chief of the Italian Dantists, writing in Nuova Antologia, admits that the importance of the thesis is so far-reaching that “if it were true, it would lead to a conception of Dante differing considerably from that hitherto formed by the Dantists.”

Parodi, another leading figure among the Dantists of Italy, in the Bulletino della società dantesca italiana confesses that “this book has had a more than flattering reception, it has roused a feeling of curiosity mingled with astonishment in all who have read it and has won the approval and assent of not a few.”

Nallino, Professor of Arabic at the University of Rome, [ix]stated in the Rivista degli studi orientali that the book was “of great value as a contribution to mediæval studies in general, as proving the hitherto unsuspected infiltration of Islamic conceptions of the after-life into the popular beliefs of Western Christendom; and, especially, as one of the most important works on the religion of Islam that have of late appeared.”

Bonucci, Professor at the University of Sienna, in the Rivista di Studi filosofici e religiosi, affirms that “a book such as this does more to advance the history of, and comment on, Dante’s thought than a whole century of the minutiæ of the Dantists.”

Friedrich Beck, the famous Romance scholar of Germany, writes in the Zeitschrift für romanische Philologie: “No book on Dante of such importance has appeared for years; we wonder whether the Italians, in their patriotic pride, can find a work of theirs to equal that of the learned Spaniard. Asín has given a great impulse to the study of Dante and has opened up vistas so startlingly new that the students will be bound to seek new bearings and adopt fresh points of view.”

Söderhjelm, Professor of Romance languages at the University of Helsingfors, in Neuphilologische Mitteilungen, says: “This book is a revelation and an event; it will doubtless be regarded as one of the most notable, perhaps the most notable of all, literary productions that have marked the Jubilee of Dante.”

The review Analecta Bollandiana states: “The author of this book is universally known. There is scarcely any example of a work on Oriental philology having attracted so great attention. The audacity of the thesis could not fail to rouse the most lively interest in all who are initiated in the problems of literary history. The analogies shown by the author to exist between the Divine Comedy and Islam are so numerous and of such a nature as to be disquieting to the mind of the reader, who is forced to picture to himself the great epic of Christianity as enthroned in the [x]world of Moslem mysticism, as if in a mosque that were closed to Islam and consecrated to Christian worship. At all events, there will always remain to the author of this book the honour of having started one of the most memorable debates in the history of universal literature.”

Caballera, Professor of Ecclesiastical History at Toulouse, although disagreeing with the thesis, admits in the Bulletin de littérature ecclésiastique that “the reader is bewildered by the prodigious learning of the author, his logic, his talent for argument, which are nothing less than astounding; the clearness of his statements makes a profound impression.”

Lastly, the learned Romance scholar Van Tieghem, in the Revue de littérature comparée, states that “this is an honest, objective book, as clear and well arranged as it is rich in matter, which will remain on record as one of the most daring and fruitful attempts to open up new vistas in the history of European literature.”

I need not refer to the flattering opinions this book has earned from the critics in England and America, as they will be known to the English-speaking public. Both Romance and Arabic scholars, such as Arnold, Browning, Cumming, Guillaume, Jordan, Leigh, Macdonald, and Ryan, have expressed themselves frankly in favour of Asín Palacios.

The almost universal applause which this book has gained, has induced me to contribute towards its diffusion by making it available to the English-speaking peoples. The idea was first suggested to me by Lord Balfour, whose interest in matters of philosophy and literature is universally known. Animated by his advice, I have now had the book translated into English, in the hope that it may reach a wider circle of readers, who, whilst finding difficulty in reading Spanish, may be curious to know of a problem that is of interest for the study of literary history in general and particularly of the Divine Comedy of Dante, who has ever counted so many fervent admirers among the English-speaking peoples.

[xi]

The translation has been carefully and faithfully made by Mr. Harold L. Sunderland, who is at home both in the Spanish language and in the subject of the book. In order, however, to attain its diffusion among a wider public, the translator has, in agreement with the author, cut out the documentary evidence and critical apparatus that goes to swell the Spanish original—a complete translation of the Spanish original into French will also be published shortly by Paul Geuthner, of Paris—and is useful and intelligible to the specialists only. Thus, the Arabic texts and the tercets of the Divine Comedy that are compared with them, as well as some of the notes and paragraphs of secondary importance for the argument are not contained in the present translation. The essence of the book remains intact, however, with all its dialectic vigour and literary charm.

If the English reader should concur with my opinion, my aims in promoting the translation of the Spanish book will have been fully achieved.

August, 1925.

[xii]

AUTHOR’S PREFACE TO THE ORIGINAL SPANISH EDITION

In my recent work on the neo-Platonic mysticism of the Spanish Moslem philosopher Ibn Masarra,⁠[2] I had already hinted that his doctrines, filtering through into Christian scholasticism, had not only met with acceptance at the hands of theologians of the Franciscan or pre-Thomist school, but had even influenced a philosopher-poet of such universal renown as Dante Alighieri, whom all critics and historians had hitherto held to be an Aristotelian and Thomist.⁠[3] After enumerating briefly the fundamental reasons underlying my vague surmise, I ventured to call the attention of specialists to the close resemblance that I found between the general outlines of the ascension of Dante and Beatrice throughout the spheres of Paradise, and another allegory of the ascension of a mystic and a philosopher, in the Futuhat, written by the great Sufi of Murcia, Ibn Arabi, who was undoubtedly a follower of Ibn Masarra.⁠[4]

The question so raised was of obvious interest: for if not merely the neo-Platonic metaphysics of the Cordovan Ibn Masarra and the Murcian Ibn Arabi, but the allegorical form in which the latter cast his Ascension may have exercised an influence as models, as they certainly existed as forerunners, of the most sublime part of the Divine Comedy, [xiii]Dante’s conception of Paradise, then Spain may be entitled to claim for her Moslem thinkers no slight share in the world-wide fame enjoyed by the immortal work of Dante Alighieri. And again, the absorbing influence exercised by the latter over our allegorical poets, from the end of the fourteenth to the sixteenth century, from Villena to Garcilaso, not to mention Francisco Imperial, Santillana, Mena and Padilla, would be balanced in a measure by the antecedent influence of our Moslem mystics in the complex genesis of the Divine Comedy.

Such was the starting-point of my research, but soon the horizon opened out unexpectedly before me. On closer study of Ibn Arabi’s quasi-Dantesque allegory I found that it was itself no more than a mystical adaptation of another ascension, already famous in the theological literature of Islam: the Miraj, or Ascension, of Mahomet from Jerusalem to the Throne of God. As this Miraj was preceded by an Isra, or Nocturnal Journey, during which Mahomet visited some of the infernal regions, the Moslem tradition at once struck me as a prototype of Dante’s conception. A methodical comparison of the general outlines of the Moslem legend with those of the great poem confirmed my impression and finally quite convinced me: the similarity had extended to the many picturesque, descriptive and episodic details of the two narratives, as well as to what is called the “architecture of the realms,” that is to say, the topographical conception of the infernal regions and of the celestial abodes, the plans of which appeared to me as drawn by one and the

same Moslem architect. But on reaching this stage of my research, a new doubt arose. How if these resemblances between the Divine Comedy and its hypothetical Moslem model should be due to the fact that both derived from some common source? In other words, might not the features of Dante which appeared foreshadowed in Moslem sources, be [xiv]traced to mediæval Christian legends that preceded his great work? At this juncture, therefore, it became imperative, in the first instance, to turn to those legends, and to make sure that I were not ascribing a Moslem origin to anything in Dante that might be adequately accounted for by those Christian legends.

This further process of inquiry and comparison held in store an even more unexpected conclusion. It not only confirmed that in Moslem sources there were to be found prototypes of features in the Divine Comedy hitherto regarded as original because nothing similar to them had been discovered in the Christian legends, its predecessors; it further revealed the no less Moslem origin of many of those mediæval legends themselves; it let in a flood of light upon the whole problem. The Moslem element thenceforth appeared as a key to much that had already been accounted for, and to what was still obscure, in the Divine Comedy. The conclusion was consonant with what students of Dante had hitherto ascribed to the influence of Christian precursors, and it explained what, as being inexplicable, they had attributed solely to the creative genius of the poet himself.

The above is, in outline, my thesis.⁠[5] It will sound to many like artistic sacrilege, or it may call an ironic smile to the lips of those—and they are not a few—who still conceive an artist’s inspiration as something preternatural, owing nothing to any suggestion outside itself. This is a very common attitude towards works of such universal renown as the Divine Comedy. Ozanam, in his inquiry into its poetic [xv]sources, had already brought out this point.⁠[6] For a long time—he says—this poem was considered as a solitary monument, standing in the midst of the mediæval desert. When, a century ago, Cancellieri pointed to some passages of Dante’s Inferno and Paradiso as being closely modelled upon the Vision of the monk Alberic, the devotees of Dante rose up in wrath at the sacrilege of supposing the Master capable of servile imitation of an obscure monk of the twelfth century: they, who were none too ready to admit even the undeniable fact of his imitation of classic models.

But time has passed and the nineteenth century, the age of cold dispassionate criticism, has peopled the deserts of the Middle Ages with living realities. Labitte, Ozanam, D’Ancona, Graf, a whole host of scholars and labourers in research have studied the legends of the after-life, both classical and Christian, which explain the genesis of Dante’s poem; and the lovers of Dante no longer resent the more sober and more scientific view of poetic inspiration which has gained acceptance. It is now admitted that the essential trait of genius does not lie in the absolute novelty or originality of the work of art; neither can it consist in the power—the prerogative of God alone—of creating both Form and Matter out of nothing.⁠[7]

The greater equanimity of the modern school of Dantophiles encourages me to hope that they will not be moved to ire by the suggestion of Moslem influences in the Divine Comedy. D’Ancona, in his inquiry into its Christian and classical sources,⁠[8] remarks that Dante showed himself ever [xvi]keen to study and to learn, with a receptive mind towards the ideas and sentiments of his age; and surely it will not be denied that his century was steeped in the learning and art of Islam. In the opinion of D’Ancona it may always be difficult to affirm specifically that any one legend was the actual and original model that Dante had in his mind, the pregnant germ from which his divine poem was to grow. Yet I venture to think that the difficulty will not be found insuperable, if only the Moslem originals be considered, to wit: the above-mentioned legends of the Nocturnal Journey and Ascension of Mahomet, completed and adorned as they were with a mass of topographical and episodic detail, whether derived from other Islamic legends of the Life

beyond the grave, from the Apocalyptic scenes of the Day of Judgment, or from the theories and conceptions of certain of the Moslem mystics in respect of Heaven and the Beatific Vision, which in spirituality and idealism were not unworthy of Dante’s own conception of Paradise. To throw into relief such resemblances and analogy, as conducive to the imitation which they suggest, is of necessity the main task of the present work. To complete the demonstration, render the conclusion unavoidable, and forestall all reasonable objection, it will finally outline and enumerate the coincidences of the Christian mediæval legends that preceded the Divine Comedy, with Moslem legends of a remoter date.

Madrid, 1919.

[xvii]

ISLAM AND THE DIVINE COMEDY

[2]

PART I THE LEGEND OF THE NOCTURNAL JOURNEY AND ASCENSION OF MAHOMET COMPARED WITH THE…

[3]

PART I THE LEGEND OF THE NOCTURNAL JOURNEY AND ASCENSION OF MAHOMET COMPARED WITH THE…

I The Origin of the Legend

1. The Moslem legend of Mahomet’s nocturnal journey and ascent to the spheres of after-life originated and developed like most religious legends. Born of a brief passage in Revelations, in its very obscurity it defied theological interpretation. But what baffled the sages in their agnosticism kindled the imagination of the faithful masses, and the details of a story founded upon the sacred text were readily conceived.

One brief allusion only appears in the Koran: “Praised be He [the Lord]”—runs the first verse of the seventeenth chapter—“who called upon His servant [Mahomet] to travel by night from the sacred temple [of Mecca] to the far-off temple [of Jerusalem] whose precinct We have blessed, in order to show him Our wonders.”

2. The mysterious allusion seems from the first to have aroused the curiosity of pious Moslems. A rich crop of legends sprang up as if by magic. The vivid imagination of the East had been fired, and the myth of the nightly journey was soon clothed with a wealth of detail and set in a wonderful variety of episode and scenery.

The entire records of the evolution of the legend in all its ramifications would fill volumes. Around an insignificant verselet of the Koran a plot was woven, and the story [4]developed in the form of hadiths or traditions of the Prophet, who was supposed to describe the wonders he saw on that memorable night. In the following pages an endeavour has been made to lay before the reader some of the principal versions extant. These have been divided into three cycles or groups, which begin with the simple, fragmentary types, and end with those in which Oriental fantasy reaches its climax.

II First Cycle—Versions of the “Isra,” or Nocturnal Journey

1. The simplest cycle seems to be one of the ninth century that is formed of six hadiths, in each of which, with slight variations, Mahomet is made to tell the story of an Isra, or journey by night on earth. Few topographical details, however, are given, and no mention is made of an ascent to celestial spheres.

In the following summaries the two main versions are compared with the Divine Comedy.