COMPARATIVE APPROACH BETWEEN THE WORKS RISALETU’L GUFRAN (THE EPISTLE OF FORGIVENESS) BY EBU’L-ALA EL-MEARI AND DIVINA COMMEDIA (DIVINE COMEDY) BY DANTE ALIGHIERI

Muhammad's (pbuh) journey to Miraj has become a source of inspiration for numerous Muslim and non-Muslim philosophers, mystics, and authors. A significant number of specifics and topographical outlines of scenes and episodic depictions in the Divine Comedy, the types or analogous models of which did not appear in the various versions of Muhammad's mirage narrative, also have antecedents and models, either akin to or identical in the Qur'an, hadith, or other Islamic literature describing the afterlife. The work Risaletu'l Gufran by Ebu’l-Ala el-Maarri was composed at the beginning of the 11th century, while Dante Alighieri's Divine Comedy was created in the latter half of the 13th century. Regardless of the geographical and temporal distances, these two works share numerous meeting points. The issue of Dante Alighieri's influence by Islamic eschatological themes, despite countless literary and historical debates and controversies, remains unresolved. Similarly unresolved is Dante's boldness in incorporating pagan figures and polytheistic elements in the “Christian masterpiece of the Middle Ages.”