Inferno, Canto XXVIII: 30-31. The Prophet Muhammad and the Caliph ‘Alī: (Mis) Representing the Body

Using as a springboard Canto XXVIII: 30-31 of the Inferno, I will analyze how Dante portrayed the Prophet Muhammad (ca. 570-632) and تِطبن أثيٍ ث عهي„ Alī ibn „Abī Ṭālib (601-661)—the Prophet‟s cousin, son-in-law, and fourth Rightly-Guided Caliph (656-661)—as contrite souls suffering eternal and recurring pain for their “alleged” sins while living on Earth. By physically imagining their suffering bodies and “repented” souls as portrayed in Canto XXVIII: 30-31 of the Inferno, I look at how Dante approached, depicted, and condemned the bodies of these “Christian heresiarchs.” Indeed, by doing so, Dante was simply following and perpetuating a common trend in early (476-1000) and late (11th -15th centuries) Medieval Europe, or rather, he misunderstood, hence, (mis)represented, Islam and all Muslims, as in the case of the Prophet Muhammad and the fourth Caliph „Alī. Finally, my analysis will look at how Dante‟s standpoint on and carefully-chosen verses used to physically describe the Prophet Muhammad and the Caliph „Alī opened the doors to centuries of negative visual representations of the Prophet Muhammad and the Caliph „Alī even after the West eventually recognized that indeed Islam is a religion by its very nature and not a heterodox sect of Christianity.