ABSTRACT
The conclusions arrived at by Nardi are more than sufficient to indicate that, as in his artistic representation of the after-life, so in his trend of thought Dante betrays signs of Arabic influence. Should further proof of our thesis be required, the poet's philosophical system might be traced back to its actual sources in Islam, which are to be found not so much among the philosophers as in the works of the Illuministic Mystics, and of the Murcian Ibn Arabi in particular. The Illuministic, or Ishraqi and pseudo-Empedoclean school, was founded by Ibn Masarra of Cordova ; and from Spain its ideas were transmitted to the so-called Augustinian scholastics, among others to Alexander Hales, Duns Scotus, Roger Bacon, and Raymond Lull. As has been shown in the discussion of the Paradiso, an essential part of Ishraqi teaching—the metaphysical doctrine of light —reappears in the Divine Comedy, where it is illustrated, moreover, by the same symbols as are used by the Moslem mystics. Creation, too, is conceived as an emanation of Divine light, the teleological cause of which is love, and its primary effects, universal and formless matter. 650 Thus a new vista is opened up. Seen in this wise, Dante would appear to have been but one more follower of the Illuministic school, and pre-eminent by his art alone. It has been demonstrated above that almost all of the artistic forms used in Ibn Arabi's picture of the realms beyond the grave were reproduced a century later in the Divine Comedy. The suggestion now presents itself that many of the Illuministic theories of Dante were derived from the same Ibn Arabi, the leading exponent of Ishraqi ideas, rather than from the other Arabic philosophers with whose systems Nardi compares them.
