Islam and the Divine Comedy

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Description

Author: Miguel Asin
Publisher: Goodword
Year: 2002
Pages: 295
Printed: India
ISBN: 8187570202
Binding: Soft Cover
Book Condition: New
Weight: 362gr.
Description from the publisher:

Islam and the Divine Comedy, is an abridged translation of La Escatologia Musulmana en la Divina Comedia, originally published in Spanish in Madrid in 1919. The author, Prof. Miguel Asin Y. Palacios, though a Catholic priest, was attracted by the Muslim philosophers and sufis of Spain, particularly Ibn Massara, Ibn Hazm, Ibn Rushd and the great sufi Ibn al-Arabi. He wrote several books on Hispano-Islamic philosophy and sufism, but the international renown he earned was on account of this book. After years of extensive research, he- discovered parallels between the Islamic lore about the afterlife based on Hadith and The Divine Comedy by the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (1265-1321), a work for which he is justly famed.
The similarities, far from being superficial, pervade the entire poem. Prof. Asin concluded that Dante had derived most of the features of and episodes about the hereafter from (i) the Hadith literature relating to the Prophet Muhammad and his ascension (mi`raj) and (ii) to the spiritual visions of Ibn al-Arabi. In his opinion, The Divine Comedy was not an entirely original work, as Dante had had before him a ready made pattern based on Islamic writings on the after-life.
With the publication of this work, Prof. Asin found” himself in the -eye of a storm, as nationalist Italians, the Roman Catholic clergy, and other European Christians could not reconcile themselves to the thought of their most cherished religious poem being based on non-Christian sources. Prof. Asin, however, faced up to his critics by enumerating the possible sources from which Dante could have obtained the salient features of Islamic eschatology.
The consensus of opinion of all eminent scholars of Europe and America is now in favour of Prof. Asin’s thesis.

Additional information

Weight .365 kg