Note 182 — PART II THE DIVINE COMEDY COMPARED WITH OTHER MOSLEM LEGENDS ON THE AFTER-LIFE

Futuhat, I, 387-396; II, 809; III, 8, 557, 575-577. Other picturesque features might be added to those mentioned above; thus, in hell there is both heat and cold; the heads of sects suffer special torture, and Iblis, the Lucifer of Islam, undergoes the severest torture of all; suffering in hell is of two kinds, physical and moral. As in Dante (cf. Rossi, I, 151), the sufferers may not leave the pit to which they are condemned, but move freely within its limits (Futuhat, III, 227). Finally, Ibn Arabi imparts a strong flavour of realism to his pictures by painting them as if he had actually seen the originals in visions. Thus, on p. 389 of vol. I, he says:—

“In this vision I saw of the circles of the damned ... such as God was pleased to show me. And I saw an abode, called the Abode of Darkness, and descended some five of its several steps and I beheld the tortures in each one....”