Note 142 — PART II THE DIVINE COMEDY COMPARED WITH OTHER MOSLEM LEGENDS ON THE AFTER-LIFE

Cf. Qistas, p. 60: “Should someone say to thee, ‘Say that there is but one God and that Jesus is His Prophet,’ thy mind would instinctively reject the statement as being proper to a Christian only. But that would but be because thou hast not sufficient understanding to grasp that the statement in itself is true and that no reproach can be made to the Christian, for this article of his faith, nor for any of the other articles, save only those two—that God is the third of three, and that Mahomet is not a prophet of God. Apart from these two all the other articles (of the Christian faith) are true.” For the influence of Christianity on Islam, and particularly on Algazel, cf. Asín, La mystique d’Al-Gazzali, pp. 67-104, and Abenmasarra, pp. 12-16.