Note 252 — PART II THE DIVINE COMEDY COMPARED WITH OTHER MOSLEM LEGENDS ON THE AFTER-LIFE

So great is the wealth of picturesque detail in the descriptions of the Moslem hell that minor features of resemblance to Dante have been omitted as being open to doubt. Thus the Koran repeatedly mentions a tree in hell, called Az-Zaqum (cf. Kasimirski, s.v.), the fruit of which is bitter and repugnant like the heads of demons (cf. Khazin, Tafsir, IV, 18 and 116; Tacholarus, VIII, 326; Ihia, IV, 381; Ithaf, X, 515). In itself this tree bears little resemblance to the human trees into which Dante converts the suicides (Inf. XIII), which cry out when their branches are torn and which Dante admits he copied from Virgil’s episode of Polydorus (Aeneid, III). In Arabian tales of miraculous journeys to hell, however, there are frequent descriptions of trees the branches of which resemble human heads and cry out on being torn (cf. Chauvin, Bibliographie, VII, 33 and 56; Qisas, 222; also René Basset’s “Histoire du Roi Sabour et de son fils Abou’n Nazhar” in Rev. des trad. popul., XI, 273, 278, and 280).