Note 280 — PART II THE DIVINE COMEDY COMPARED WITH OTHER MOSLEM LEGENDS ON THE AFTER-LIFE
Harold Sunderland translation
Cf. Tadhkira, 81, for a description of the purgatorial fire: The souls raise their voices to Mahomet in lament and pray for his intercession. God orders his angelic ministers to apportion the torture to the measure of the sin by preserving from the fire such members of the sinner’s body as he had used in His service. “And the fire, which is cognisant of the degree of their guilt, reaches in some to the ankles, in others to the knees, and in others again, to the breast.” When God has wreaked his vengeance, He lends ear to the intercession of Mahomet and the prayers addressed to Him directly by the sinners. Finally Gabriel is ordered to withdraw the sinners from the fire, and, as he does so, he immerses their blackened bodies in the River of Life, which flows by the gate of paradise, and thus completes their purification.
In other tales the intercessor is an ordinary human being.