Islam and the Divine Comedy [ハードカバー]

Let's be fair: Dante's Divine Comedy was long thought to be the high point of Western art and civilization. But once it became known how deeply Dante was influenced by the great Sufi spiritual teacher, Ibn Arabi, the Comedy was no longer considered quite the same to Christian's with an ideological axe to grind. This is the topic of Miguel Asin's book. Personally, it has always struck me as rather feeble (if not repugnant) that the best Dante's anima, Beatrice, could do is theologize, a la Thomas Aquinas' catholic mis-reading of Aristotle. By comparison, it was Nizam's beauty that moved Ibn Arabi a 100 years earlier, to immortalize her in spiritual rhapsody (and got him into plenty of hot water with other Muslim theologians). For an overview of Asin's thesis, see Joseph Campbell's 'Masks of God 4: Creative Mythology:' "Asin...demonstrated with massive proof the great extent to which Dante and his circle had been moved by Moslem inspiration" [pp. 128-129, Penguin ed. 1977]. In short, it is important to acknowledge the cultural context of Dante's great epic, including the very powerful influence of Ibn Arabi's mystical theology and vision of Divine Love. But does this make Dante a loser plagiarist, as our previous reviewer would have it? Ibn Arabi himself built upon and systematized the spiritual experiences of earlier Sufi mystics. To quote the Wikipedia entry on our author, Miguel Asin: "... notwithstanding these Muslim sources, Dante remained a luminous figure and his poem retains its exalted place in world literature" [page 420 of Asin's book]. So, rather than bang a modernist Crusader drum of Christian vs. Muslim, we might be better off to acknowledge a history of world culture where, to quote the great saint, Ibn Arabi, himself: "If the believer understood the meaning of the saying 'the color of the water is the color of the receptacle', he would admit the validity of all beliefs and he would recognize God in every form and every object of faith." We moderns have much to learn from this model of tolerance. So read Dante, read Ibn Arabi, and read Asin. And see for yourself the faith of each of these individuals, not in what they were told to believe by the prevailing ideologies of their day, but in their own experience. After all, they all move toward the One.

Dante Alighieri's "The Divine Comedy" is still considered to be one of the Great Books of Western Christendom or Western Civilization. Catholic fundamentalists extol it, and presumably the Neo-Cons want it included in the curriculum alongside Plato, Shakespeare and one Alan Bloom. And, of course, Dante places Muhammad and Ali in hell! No political correctness on campus there.

But what if this jewel of the Dead White Male Christian crown is actually inspired by...Muslim sources?

Such is the thesis of Miguel Asin's book "Islam and the Divine Comedy", originally published in Spain in 1919. The English translation and abridgement is from 1926. More recent Western reprints do exist, but none of them seem to be published by respectable university presses. This particular edition is Indian, brought out by a Muslim publisher in New Delhi three years ago. The silence apparently surrounding this book in the West, can mean two things. Either Asin was gloriously wrong, or...

It should be noted that Miguel Asin y Palacios wasn't a pseudo-scientific crackpot. He was a distinguished professor of Arabic and a member of the Spanish Academy. Asin's thesis sparked a lively controversy all over Europe and North America among scholars of similar stature. Nor was he particularly pro-Muslim. According to the English translator's preface, Asin was actually a Catholic priest. In the book itself, he occasionally refers to Muslims as "Mahometans", doubts whether a "polygamist and soldier" such as Muhammad was really spiritual, and points out that the Koran (of course) is inspired by Judaism and - surprise - Christianity. He is also something of a Spanish nationalist, calling the Muslim mystic Ibn Arabi a "Muslim Spaniard", and gleefully pointing out that his influence on the Italian Dante means that Spain, too, has some part in the writing of the famous "Divine Comedy". Italian scholars, as expected, weren't amused.

I guess you can say that the author has all the right, politically incorrect credentials!

This makes his thesis even stronger. Or at the very least more respectable than the writings of a maverick like René Guénon (who claimed that Dante was an esoteric Templar).

"Islam and the Divine Comedy" speaks for itself, but I must say that Asin has uncovered a staggering amount of parallels between Muslim sources and Dante's work. Dante's descriptions of Hell, the frozen lake of the Devil, Limbo, the mount of Purgatory, the Earthly Paradise, the animals blocking his way in the dark forest and even Beatrice all have parallels in Muslim lore, sometimes uncannily close ones. The author analyzes similarities with the Muslim legends of Muhammad's descent to Hell and ascension to Heaven. He also believes that the entire corpus of Dante, not just "The Divine Comedy", shows affinities with the writings of Muslim mystic Ibn Arabi. As for similarities between Dante's poetry and the Provencal or Sicilian troubadours, Asin believes that the Provencals were influenced by the Muslims as well. As for the Sicilian poets, they were active at the imperial court of Frederick II, the most Islamophile Christian ruler of the High Middle Ages!

Since all cultures constantly influence each other, it's not always easy to disentangle all the criss-crossing influences. Islam probably got its elaborate visions of Hell from Syrian Christianity. Zoroastrian influences may have been present. The idea of a gradual ascent to Heaven, where the soul has to pass various intermediate stations and suffer interrogations from spirit-beings, seems to be Egyptian in origin and was later taken up by Gnostics and Eastern Christians. Miguel Asin's point is that these motifs would have been unknown in 13th and 14th century Europe, except in Muslim forms. Hence, a Muslim influence on Dante is the most likely.

Personally, I'm not particularly interested in "The Divine Comedy", but the fact that "Islam and the Divine Comedy" is more popular in India than Europe or the United States, does raise some hard questions. Or eyebrows.

Why haven't we been informed about Miguel Asin Palacios' thesis before?

Well...?