Free For Lust of Knowing by Robert Irwin

engaged his favourable interest. The only other Muslims to feature in the Divine Comedy – ‘great Saladin, aloof and alone’, Avicenna and Averroes – are in Limbo with other heroic and virtuous pagans. 51 They are there because, despite their virtues, they did not and could not choose Christ. (Virgil, who acted as Dante’s guide through Hell, was similarly a denizen of Limbo.) However, at the risk of repetition, Dante’s lack of interest in Islam is conspicuous. 52
    Muslims feature in some of the stories of the
Decameron
by Giovanni Boccaccio (
c.
1313–75). The third story in the first day of storytelling presents a favourable portrait of Saladin as a generous and courageous ruler. This is the story of the three rings. In it Saladin asks a wise Jew which is the best religion. The Jew tells the story of aman close to death who had three sons. The sons were led to believe that whoever received the father’s ring would be his true heir. However, they did not realize that the father had had two more rings made that were identical in every way, so that it was impossible to tell who had the exclusive claim to his inheritance. From this tale, the Jew drew a moral: ‘My lord, I say it is the same with the three Laws given by God our Father to three peoples, concerning which you have questioned me. Each of them thinks it has the inheritance, the true Law, and carries out His Commandments; but which does have it is a question as far from being settled as that of the rings.’ (Boccaccio also presented a highly favourable portrait of Saladin in the ninth story of the tenth day.)
    Boccaccio seems to have been familiar with some of the stories that appeared in
The Thousand and One Nights
and he presented reworkings of several famous Oriental stories, such as the tale of the generosity of Hatim Tai in his
Decameron
. 53 Ramon Lull, the Catalan polymath, was similarly familiar with Arabic story lore. Lull (
c.
1232 – 1315) was born to a wealthy Catalan family in Majorca and spent his life as a young rip. Then he experienced a religious crisis. According to one story, he was pursuing someone else’s beautiful young wife. She was virtuous and resisted his suit, but he was persistent. ‘After asking permission of her husband to employ a drastic remedy, she summoned her admirer to attend her in some secluded place – perhaps her own chamber – when, instead of yielding, as no doubt he expected, to his demands, she uncovered her bosom, and displayed a breast that was being slowly consumed by a loathly cancer. “See Ramon,” she cried, “the foulness of this body that has won thy affection! How much better hadst thou done to have set thy love on Jesus Christ, of whom thou mayest have a prize that is eternal!”’
    Lull’s decision to abandon the pursuit of worldly things and leave his family for the service of Christ took place in 1263. Before his conversion, he had composed troubadour love poetry, but afterwards he wrote laments about his past enslavement to lust for women. He particularly dedicated himself to working for the conversion of Muslims and Jews: ‘to give up his life and soul for the sake of His love and honour; and to accomplish this by carrying out the task of converting to His worship and service the Saracens who in suchnumbers surrounded the Christians on all sides.’ It was obvious to Lull that anyone who proposed to do missionary work amongst the Muslims would need to master Arabic, but studying that language was not a straightforward matter in the Middle Ages, for there were no university courses on the language, nor any Arabic grammars. Lull therefore purchased a Moorish slave, intending that the slave should teach him Arabic. One day Lull received a report that the Moor had been blaspheming against Christ and he therefore struck the Moor several times. The Moor, accustomed as he was in his role as a teacher of Arabic to be treated as