International Journal of English and Literature (IJEL) ISSN 2249-6912 Vol. 3, Issue 2, Jun 2013, 165-168 TJPRC Pvt.

. Ltd.

INFLUENCE OF ISLAM ON DANTES DIVINE COMEDY

BILQUEES DAR Research Scholar, Iqbal Institute, Kashmir University, Jammu & Kashmir, India

ABSTRACT
The paper intends to bring out the fact that Dante wrote the great poem because he wanted to write something great at par with the fabled Mairaj Nama or Mohammads [PBUH] Ascension to Heaven. Dante was not happy with the fact that Islam was becoming popular in the middle ages and its influence was felt on the culture of the time and wanted to write something that would negate its effects. The paper also wants to show that Dante wrote Divine Comedy after having read the translations of the Arabic accounts of Mohammad,s [PBUH] Ascension to heaven by Bonaventura da Siena, an Italian notary at the court of Castilian court of Alfonsonso el Sabio and was brought to the forefront by Professor Miguel Asin Palacois ,a Spanish scholars book LaEschatologia Musulmana en La Divina Comedy shocked the world of Dante scholars in 1919 when he said that Dante borrowed the central idea of his Commedia from Islamic tradition of Al-miraj.

KEYWORDS: Commedia, Al-Miraj, Liber Scalae Mahomet, Avverroes INTRODUCTION

Dantes crowning achievement, one of the most important works in Western Literature and undisputedly the most important poetic text of the European Middle Ages, is the great poem, he calls his Comedy Commedia.There are two reasons why Dante calls the poem a comedy. The first as explained by Benevento da Imola,one of the early Italian commentators on the poem, that the Comedy is written in Vernacular language-an assertion that gains support from Dantes own Comments in Book 2 of De Vulgari Eloquentia, where he defines Comedy in terms of style and diction. The other reason for the title has more to do with the poets narrative pattern. Commentators in the fourteenth century including Dantes disciple Giovanni Boccaccio, began calling the comedy Divine Comedy both because of its sacred subject and because of its literary significance. Considered an emblem of Christian Middle Ages and a central author of the western traditions,Dante reveals a lot about the influence of Islamic thought and models on Christian Europe in the Divine Comedy. Critics are of the view that Dante wrote this poem because he held a negative and contemptuous view of muslims and Islam. His antipathy for Islamic culture is based not simply on a prejudiced view that he held but rather on his disgust towards its effect on the Christian Church as well as on medieval intellectual life, which was based on his inclusion of muslim mosques and leaders in hell. One can see from the poem that Dante was perturbed by the impact of Islam on medieval Christian life and he would have preferred to have his culture devoid of any Islamic Influence. The basis for this fear evolved from the belief that the muslim religion posed a serious threat to the existence of Christianity for it gave Christianity some unwelcome competition. Dante is even critical of Christian Clergy who use their power with the church to make money by either selling Pardons for ones sins or entries into Purgatory. Simony is one of the many faults of Christianity that Dante tries to redress as he felt that it was one of the faults of Christianity that helped to bring about the

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establishment of the Islamic Religion. While the effect of Arabic Culture on Christianity formed the basis for Dante,s hatred of Islam, its effects on medievial society were also responsible for fuelling his anger. In 1919 Professor Miguel Asin Palacois, a Spanish scholar and a catholic priest, published La Escatologia Musulmana en La Divina Comedy,an account of parallel between early Islamic philosophy and the Divine Comedy. Palacois argued that Dante derived many features and episodes about the hereafter directly or indirectly from the spiritual writings of Ibn-Arabi and from the Isra and Mairaj or the night journey of Mohammad[PBUH] to heaven. Palacois noticed relevant similarities at a symbolic and formal level. The Divine Comedy describes Dante,s journey in the realms of afterlife and represents allegorically the soul,s journey towards God. On the other hand Isra and Mairaj describes the night journey from Makkah to Jerusalem and the Ascension to Heaven that Prophet Muhammad[PBUH] took both physically and spiritually during a single night around the year 621. The controversy regarding the Islamic sources of the most cherished Christian poem lessened when experts found out that in the second half of the thirteenth century a document narrating the Ascension to heaven had been translated into heaven as Liber Scalae Machometi making almost certain Dante,s knowledge about the manuscript. Besides, Arabic culture was well known and widespread in Tuscany in the fourteenth century and Brunetto Latini,the Florentine ambassador to Toledo in 1260, can be theoretically considered as the intermediary between Dante and Liber Scalae Machometi. In Liber scalae Machometi,the most similar manuscript to the Divine Comedy studied by Maria Corti,The Prophet[PBUH] Performs his journey under the guidance of Archangel Gabriel, following an itinerary from the eight circles of Paradise to the seven earths of hell where he receives the mandate to tell people what he has seen in order to save them from external damnation. The same mandate is given to Dante in The Divine Comedy where, just like in Muslim Hell, the damned souls are ordered in different circles and inflicted with abominable pains according to the law of retaliation. Both stories are narrated in first person and provide detailed descriptions of the lower world characterized by seas, liquid, pool, smells, ice and animals.The author who wrote these translation in 1264 was Bonaventura da Siena,an Italian notary at the castillian court of Alfonso el Sabio,and he did not translate them directly from Arabic,but had at his disposal an earlier castillian version supposed to be supplied by a Jewish physician namely Abraham.These translations from Alfonso el Sabios court,although they never gained much diffusion, provided atleast a possible link of textual transmission and could have served as a source for the parallel which Asin had observed by comparing Dante,s Commedia directly with Arabic sources. Gregory B. Stone, Professor of Comparative Literature at Louisiana State University, takes a different view. Beneath the surface of the Commedias rhetorical meaning, Stone perceives an inner meaning. For Stone, the Commedia is concerned with a philosophical worldview as the Convivo [ an unfinished philosophical work by Dante ]only it couches its essentially secular and pluralistic philosophical concerns in religious imagery. This is where Islam comes in or more specifically ,the Islamic philosophy. Dantes rhetorical strategy puts into practice a theory of religious imagination traceable to the Andalusian Muslim philosopher Ibn Rushd(Averroes).Ibn-Rushd held that while reason and revelation deal with the same basic truths, philosophy is comprehensible only to the elite, whereas religion has the advantage of inspiring human communities, putting the prosaic Convivo behind him ,Dante wanted to create what Stone calls a Prophetic Text. Thus it can be concluded that Dante used the Isra and MairajNama for outlining his journey through Hell and eventually upto Heaven, while this assumption may be true, one can argue that Dante used these Arabic works as references in order to write a better, more complete Christian story.Thus,he possibly wanted there to exist a similar story to the muslim legend only which was written by a Christian and that was superior to the muslim story .If this intention was Dantes plan, than his attitude towards Islam is only corroborated,for he attempted to prove how any piece of Christian

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literature could emulate and surpass any Arabic literature, even if the works involved were coveted Muslim legends

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