The Book of the Ladder and Arab influences: an unresolved issue

The Book of the Ladder, known in Dante’s time in the Latin version as Liber scalae, is an early Hispano-Arabic eschatological text based on a famous passage from the Qur’an. It recounts the story of Mohammed’s journey into the afterlife, guided by the Angel Gabriel. After reaching Paradise, by means of a shining ladder, Mohammed goes through eight heavens, meeting a prophet in each of them, and finally God, who entrusts the Qur’an to him. The story continues with the journey to the seven infernal lands, alternating the description of torments with lengthy digressions by the Angel Gabriel on the Day of Judgement and the bridge which the souls have to pass. At the end of his journey, Mohammed returns to the earth and reveals his vision to the people of Mecca. The text, whose original version is lost, was highly successful and cited frequently until the end of the sixteenth century. Around 1264, King Alfonso el Sabio commissioned the Jewish doctor Abraham to carry out a translation into Castilian (now lost). There were at least two further translations, also commissioned by the King, entrusted this time to the Italian Bonaventura da Siena: the first, in Latin, exists in a manuscript now held at Oxford, while the second, in old French, is extant in two codices, preserved respectively at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and at the Vatican Apostolic Library. Similarities in theme and to some extent form between the Latin translation of the Arabic text, particularly in relation to Dante’s first cantica led some scholars (Miguel Asìn Palacios, Enrico Cerulli, Maria Corti) to include it in the vast corpus of sources of the Commedia and to reconsider the idea that Mohammedan eschatology may have influenced Dante’s writing. The issue, however, is still much-disputed and meets with strongly-argued resistance among Dantean scholars.