Editing Divine Comedy (section)

=== Islamic ===
Dante lived in a Europe of substantial literary and philosophical contact with the Muslim world, encouraged by such factors as [[Averroism]] ("Averrois, che'l gran comento feo" Commedia, Inferno, IV, 144, meaning "Averrois, who wrote the great comment") and the patronage of [[Alfonso&nbsp;X of Castile]]. Of the twelve wise men Dante meets in Canto&nbsp;X of the ''Paradiso'', [[Thomas Aquinas]] and, even more so, [[Siger of Brabant]] were strongly influenced by Arabic commentators on [[Aristotle]].<ref name="copleston">{{Cite book |last=Copleston |first=Frederick |title=A History of Philosophy |volume=2 |publisher=Continuum |year=1950 |location=London |page=200}}</ref> Medieval [[Christian mysticism]] also shared the [[Neoplatonism|Neoplatonic]] influence of [[Sufi cosmology|Sufis]] such as [[Ibn Arabi]]. Philosopher [[Frederick Copleston]] argued in 1950 that Dante's respectful treatment of [[Averroes]], [[Avicenna]], and Siger of Brabant indicates his acknowledgement of a "considerable debt" to Islamic philosophy.<ref name="copleston" />

In 1919, [[Miguel Asín Palacios]], a Spanish scholar and a Catholic priest, published ''La Escatología musulmana en la Divina Comedia'' (''Islamic [[Eschatology]] in the Divine Comedy''), an account of parallels between [[early Islamic philosophy]] and the ''Divine Comedy''. Palacios argued that Dante derived many features of and episodes about the hereafter from the spiritual writings of [[Ibn Arabi]] and from the [[Isra and Mi'raj]], or night journey of [[Muhammad]] to heaven. The latter is described in the ''[[ahadith]]'' and the ''[[Kitab al Miraj]]'' (translated into Latin in 1264 or shortly before<ref name="Heullant">I. Heullant-Donat and M.-A. Polo de Beaulieu, "Histoire d'une traduction," in ''Le Livre de l'échelle de Mahomet'', Latin edition and French translation by Gisèle Besson and Michèle Brossard-Dandré, Collection ''Lettres Gothiques'', Le Livre de Poche, 1991, p.&nbsp;22 with note 37.</ref> as ''[[Liber scalae Machometi]]'', "The Book of Muhammad's Ladder"), and has significant similarities to the ''Paradiso'', such as a [[Seven Heavens|sevenfold division of Paradise]], although this is not unique to the ''Kitab al Miraj'' or Islamic cosmology.<ref>{{cite book |title=Ascent to Heaven in Islamic and Jewish Mysticism |last1=Uždavinys |first1=Algis |pages=23, 92–93, 117 |isbn=978-1-908092-02-1 |publisher=Matheson Trust |year=2011}}</ref>

Many scholars have not been satisfied that Dante was influenced by the ''Kitab al Miraj''. The 20th-century Orientalist [[Francesco Gabrieli]] expressed skepticism regarding the claimed similarities, and the lack of evidence of a vehicle through which it could have been transmitted to Dante.<ref>{{cite journal |first=Francesco |last=Gabrieli |title=New Light on Dante and Islam |journal=Diogenes |volume=2 |issue=6 |pages=61–73 |date=1954 |doi=10.1177/039219215400200604 |s2cid=143999655}}</ref> The Italian philologist [[Maria Corti]] pointed out that, during his stay at the court of Alfonso&nbsp;X, Dante's mentor [[Brunetto Latini]] met Bonaventura de Siena, a Tuscan who had translated the ''Kitab al Miraj'' from Arabic into Latin. Corti speculates that Brunetto may have provided a copy of that work to Dante.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.emsf.rai.it/interviste/interviste.asp?d=490#3 |title=Errore|access-date=7 September 2007|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20140714061911/http://www.emsf.rai.it/interviste/interviste.asp?d=490#3|archive-date=14 July 2014|url-status=dead}}</ref> [[René Guénon]], a Sufi convert and scholar of Ibn Arabi, confirms in ''The Esoterism of Dante'' the theory of the Islamic influence (direct or indirect) on Dante.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Guenon |first=René| author-link=René Guenon |title=The Esoterism of Dante |year=1925}}</ref> Palacios' theory that Dante was influenced by Ibn Arabi was satirised by the Turkish academic [[Orhan Pamuk]] in his novel [[The Black Book (Pamuk novel)|''The Black Book'']].<ref>{{cite journal |journal=Journal of the American Academy of Religion |volume=70 |issue=3 |pages=515–537 |year=2002 |last1=Almond |first1=Ian |title=The Honesty of the Perplexed: Derrida and Ibn 'Arabi on "Bewilderment" |doi=10.1093/jaar/70.3.515 |jstor=1466522}}</ref>

In addition to that, it has been claimed that ''[[Risalat al-Ghufran|Risālat al-Ghufrān]]'' ("The Epistle of Forgiveness"), a [[satirical]] work mixing [[Arabic poetry]] and [[prose]] written by [[Al-Maʿarri|Abu al-ʿAlaʾ al-Maʿarri]] around 1033 CE, had an influence on, or even inspired, Dante's ''Divine Comedy''.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Glassé |first=Cyril |url=https://archive.org/details/newencyclopediao0003glas/mode/2up?q=risalat |title=The New Encyclopedia of Islam, 3rd Volume |publisher=Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers |year=2008 |isbn=978-0-7425-6296-7 |edition=3rd |pages=278 |language=en-us}}</ref><ref>{{Cite book |last1=Watt |first1=Montgomery W. |url=https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315083490/history-islamic-spain-montgomery-watt-pierre-cachia |title=A History of Islamic Spain |last2=Cachia |first2=Pierre |year=2017 |pages=125–126 |doi=10.4324/9781315083490 |isbn=978-1-315-08349-0 |access-date=7 August 2022 |archive-date=7 August 2022 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20220807182938/https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/mono/10.4324/9781315083490/history-islamic-spain-montgomery-watt-pierre-cachia |url-status=live}}</ref>
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