Note 114 — PART I THE LEGEND OF THE NOCTURNAL JOURNEY AND ASCENSION OF MAHOMET COMPARED WITH THE DIVINE COMEDY (continued 2)

It is precisely on account of the abstruseness of these discourses that the analysis of the allegory, which is of extraordinary length, has been curtailed above. Ideas from all branches of philosophical and theological lore are developed in them, and allusions are made to the cabbala of numbers and letters, to magic, astrology, alchemy and other occult sciences. In short, Ibn Arabi endeavoured to introduce into his allegory, as Dante did later into his poem, the whole encyclopædia of his age. A precedent for the literary device of the discourses is provided by versions of the Miraj, in which, as has been seen, theological discussions are attributed to the prophets and Gabriel.