Note 400 — PART II THE DIVINE COMEDY COMPARED WITH OTHER MOSLEM LEGENDS ON THE AFTER-LIFE (continued 2)

Corra, 102, 104, 106, 114, and 117. Cf. Kanz, VII, 232, Nos. 2,575, 2,588, 2,608, 2,616, 2,629, and 2,658. In Nos. 2,616 and 2,658, moreover, the bodies of the women of heaven are said to be “translucent like crystal or precious stones,” an idea that reappears in Par. XXXI, 19, and XXIX, 124. The sufis, and particularly Ibn Arabi, held that the souls, until the resurrection of their bodies, lived in bodies of the world beyond the grave, similar in nature to the forms we see in dreams (cf. Asín, La Psicología, 45). This theory may have given rise to Dante’s conception of the spirit-bodies, which cast no shadow. Cf. Purg. III, 16-30. The same property was attributed to the body of Mahomet in this world. Cf. MS 64 Gayangos Coll., fol. 114.