Dante Alighieri
Perhaps Asín Palacios is best remembered for his 1919 book, La Escatologia Musulmana en la Divina Comedia, which suggests Islamic sources for the memorable context and perspective used by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265–1321) in his work La Divina Commedia. Specifically, Asín compares the Muslim religious literature surrounding the night journey of Muhammad (from Mecca to Jerusalem and thence up with the prophets through the seven heavens), with Dante's story describing his spiritual journey in which he meets various inhabitants of the afterlife and records their fate. Accordingly, Asín (I) discusses in detail the above night journey in Muslim literature, (II) compares it to episodes in the inferno, the purgatorio, and the paradiso of La Divina Commedia, (III) investigates Muslim influence on corresponding Christian literature predating the poem, and (IV) conjectures how Dante could have known directly of the Muslim literature in translation. Asín remarks that notwithstanding these Muslim sources, Dante remains a luminous figure and his poem retains its exalted place in world literature.
Asín's book inspired a wide and energetic reaction, both positive and negative, as well as further research and academic exchanges. Eventually two scholars, an Italian and a Spaniard, independently uncovered an until-then buried Arabic source, the eleventh century Kitab al-Mi'raj, which describes Muhammad's night journey. This work was translated into Spanish as La Escala de Mahoma by a scribe (Abrahim Alfaquim) of Alfonso X el Sabio in 1264. Information surfaced about another translation into Latin, Liber Scalae Machometi, which has been traced to the Italian milieu of the poet, Dante Alighieri. It appears that Dante's mentor Brunetto Latini met the Latin translator of the Kitab al-Mi'raj while both were staying at the court of the Spanish king Alfonso X el Sabio in Castilla. Although this missing link was not available to Asín, he had based his work on several similar accounts of Muhammad's ladder then circulating among the literary or pious Muslims of Al-Andalus.
Read more about this topic: Miguel Asín Palacios, Works
Famous quotes by dante alighieri:
“There sighs, lamentations and loud wailings resounded through the starless air, so that at first it made me weep; strange tongues, horrible language, words of pain, tones of anger, voices loud and hoarse, and with these the sound of hands, made a tumult which is whirling through that air forever dark, as sand eddies in a whirlwind.”
—Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)
“Let us not speak of them; but look, and pass on.”
—Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)
“O power of fantasy that steals our minds from things outside, to leave us unaware, although a thousand trumpets may blow loud—what stirs you if the senses show you nothing? Light stirs you, formed in Heaven, by itself, or by His will Who sends it down to us.”
—Dante Alighieri (1265–1321)