Muhammad

Profile

Muhammad, the founder of Islam, is placed in the ninth bolgia of Hell, reserved for the sowers of schism and discord. Dante encounters him as the first figure in the band of schismatics, and describes him split in two by the blow of a devil armed with a sword, with his entrails hanging out of his body, in a punishment presented as the most grievous of the bolgia. He himself speaks to Dante in the third person, indicating his own cruelly mutilated condition, and warns him to report in life to another schismatic still living (such Fra Dolcino, according to the notes) the danger hanging over him. In the canto Muhammad also shows a human feeling toward the pilgrim: he urges him to remember, once he has returned to the world, to warn the living of his condition.