Академия Корана:Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān/Angel

Gisela Webb, "Angel" in: Encyclopaedia of the Qurʾān, General Editor: J. D. McAuliffe, Georgetown University, Washington DC.

Heavenly messenger. Like its Hebrew (malʾak) and Greek (angelos) counterparts, the Arabic term malak (pl. malāʾika) means «messenger». The Qurʾān uses the term about ninety times, with some angels designated by name, Gabriel (Jibrīl, see gabriel) and Michael (Mikāʾīl, q 2:97-8; see michael) and others only by function, e.g. reciters, glorifiers, dividers, guardians, ascenders, warners, recorders. Reflection about the role of angels — as described in the Qurʾān and elaborated in ḥadīth and commentary — constitutes a fundamental aspect of Muslim theological contemplation and spirituality.

Historical sources of discussion on the role of the angel

Belief in angels as a tenet of Islamic faith, as well as the theological and philosophical discussions that emerged in the Islamic world as to the nature and function of angels, must be understood within the larger context of three issues: 1) the qurʾānic worldview which affirms many elements of the monotheistic faiths of Judaism and Christianity including the concepts of the one transcendent God, revelation (q.v.), prophets (see prophets and prophethood), angels, an end time and divine justice (see apocalypse; last judgment); 2) the intellectual and cultural flowering that began under ʿAbbāsid rule in the second/eighth century which put Islamic scholars in contact with past and current intellectual traditions including those of Greek, Iranian and Indian origin and 3) the development and reciprocal influence of emerging discourses within the Islamic world particularly between philosophy (falsafa) and theology (kalām, see S.H. Nasr, al-Ḥikma, 139-43). Thus, for example, the most important of Muslim philosophers, Avicenna (Ibn Sīnā, d. 428/1037), integrated Aristotelian and neo-Platonic views on knowledge and experience into a fundamentally Islamic monotheistic revelatory worldview. In his treatment of angels, Avicenna shows how the angelic hierarchy affirmed in Muslim faith corresponds to the gradation of intelligences discerned by the philosophers, providing a philosophical grounding for the canonical imagery and function of angels and a religious grounding for the ontological and cosmological theories of the philosophers. Avicenna’s work in turn was read, critiqued and incorporated in the work of subsequent scholars and popular wisdom teachers, from al-Ghazālī (d. 505/1111) to Ibn al-ʿArabī (d. 638/1240). The most striking use of angelic imagery in Islamic philosophy and mysticism was that of Shihāb al-Dīn al-Suhrawardī (d. 578/1191), founder of Illuminationism (ishrāq), which is a form of mysticism deriving from Neoplatonism and the divine wisdom (al-ḥikma al-ilāhiyya) school of thought in Islam, which integrated qurʾānic, Platonic, Zoroastrian (with its vivid angelology), and Hermetic elements into a view of the universe the reality of which consists wholly of gradations of light (q.v.) with God as pure «Light of lights» (based on q 24:35, the Light Verse), source of all existents and all knowledge — the inner reality of a thing being its «angel». See G. Webb, The human-angelic relation for a summary of the intellectual currents important in the development of commentary and interpretation of angels in the Qurʾān.

Qurʾānic thematic sources on the angels

The role of the angel in classical Islamic thought may be understood by looking at three major themes of the Qurʾān: creation (q.v.), revelation, and eschatology (q.v.) — and the elaboration thereof in ḥadīth — the sayings and stories attributed to Muḥammad — and commentary. The nature and function of angels is clearly meant to be understood in relation to the nature and function of other orders of reality, especially the divine and the human orders. Creation stories point to the theme of the relation between human beings and angels in terms of their differing natures and functions as well as to the theme of a pre-existent covenant (q.v.) between humankind and God. Qurʾānic materials on the «descent» (tanzīl) of the revelation to the Prophet Muḥammad and the «ascent» (miʿrāj, see ascension) of the Prophet become sources of reflection on the nature of prophecy and revelatory knowledge including the role of angels therein. Qurʾānic eschatological materials reveal the intermediary function of the angels, that is, the carrying out of the divine consequences of human accountability, but they also become sources in Islamic spirituality for psycho-spiritual interpretations of the tomb and the end time («the hour», al-sāʿa, or «the resurrection», al-qiyāma, see resurrection).

Angels and the creation accounts

The qurʾānic accounts of creation provide models for the distinct nature of the human and angelic species, as well as for the distinction of types of knowledge in the human and angel. God asks the angels and Adam to name things; the angels could not and Adam could (q 2:31-3). Muslim commentators interpret this qurʾānic statement as a demonstration of a human capacity which the angels lacked, that of creative knowledge, the knowledge of the nature of things. By virtue of his knowledge of the names, Adam became master over created things. Some commentators see the story as implying that God had taught Adam all of the divine names reflected in creation; therefore the human being stands in the unique ontological position of — potentially — being a mirror of the totality of the names and qualities of God, which became a prominent theme in Ṣūfī (Islamic mystical; see ṣūfism and the qurʾān) thought (see al-Rūmī, Mathnawī, i, 1234; Ibn al-ʿArabī, The bezels of wisdom, ch. 1). The story is also seen as an affirmation of man’s vicegerency. God creates Adam as his vicegerent (khalīfa, see caliph) on earth (q 2:30) and ordered the angels to prostrate before him (q 2:34; see adoration; bowing and prostration); hence the view that the human being(insān) is superior to angels. The angels plead with God, «Why will you [create one] who will create mischief therein and shed blood while we celebrate thy praises?» to which God responds, «I know what you do not know». A traditional reading of the narrative is humankind’s superiority over the angels because, whereas the angels' nature is to worship God in perfect obedience (q.v.), human beings suffer moral choice, the struggle between good and evil, the tendency toward forgetfulness and heedlessness. Furthermore, man was burdened with the trust (amāna, q 33:72) which heaven and earth refused to undertake — the trust being interpreted variously as responsibility, free will or love. Only Satan does not prostrate himself before Adam; but as Satan in other accounts is described as «of the jinn» (q.v.) those who are made of fire, not clay (q.v.) as Adam or light as the angels (see adam and eve). Satan (Shayṭān) is less identified with the «fallen angel» and more with the force that strengthens the tendencies toward evil and forgetfulness in man which function in tension with the human qualities of goodness and knowledge of the real (see devil; antichrist).

The primordial time envisioned in the creation narratives, where «we were the companion of angels» as the mystic al-Rūmī (d. 672/1273) describes it in his Kullīyāt-i Shams yā Diwān-i kabīr becomes, particularly among Ṣūfī commentators, a source of reflection and of longing for that original time of unity between man and God, when human beings «knew their Lord». Commentators on the primordial experience in which the souls of all future humans are «pulled from the loins of Adam» and testify to God’s sovereignty (q 7:172), see these verses as describing an on-going possibility of such «intimate colloquy» (munājāt) between man and God. Al-Tustarī (d. 283/896) identifies the idea of (spiritual) genesis with the cognizing and re-cognizing of divine lordship. He describes the act of remembrance in prayer (dhikr) as the re-actualization of God’s presence in his innermost being, comparing this state of recollection to the constant celestial celebration of God’s commemoration (tasbīḥ) on the part of the angels, holding that this celebration is their mode of being, their very sustenance (rizq). Just as the angel’s very life (ḥayāt) is by virtue of the commemoration of God, so prayer is the vital part of man’s spiritual life, the provision for the spiritual self (nafs al-rūḥ).

Angels and the revelatory experience

The role of angels is a prominent feature in the qurʾānic theme of the revelatory event itself and the prophetic function, for it is in passages dealing with the revelation of the Qurʾān that we see the close relationship between the holy spirit(rūḥ al-qudus) and angels (q 16:102). «Spirit» (q.v.) is the agency of revelation «that came upon the Prophet’s heart», and the spirit and the angels appear together in several sūras (q 70:4; 97:4; 16:2). As F. Rahman points out (Major themes, 97), the figure of Gabriel in the Qurʾān, who is mentioned as having brought down the Qurʾān, is never given the appellation of «angel» and is always differentiated from «the angels» as if to signify a different rank or even species, a supra-angelic function. The qurʾānic identification of Gabriel with the «bringing down» (nazzalahu) of the very word of God (q 2:97), along with ḥadīth, in which Gabriel is spoken of as an angel, albeit with a special function and rank, contributed to the theological, philosophical and mystical theories which identified these concepts with each other (Holy Spirit = Angel = Gabriel). Note, for example, the «annunciation of Mary (q.v.)» passages in q 3:42-8 and q 19:17. In the former, the angels are messengers announcing to Mary that «God has chosen you and purified you and chosen you above women of all nations». In the latter, the messenger is singular and has the appearance of a man: «Then we sent to her our spirit (rūḥanā, though some translations, e.g. A. Yūsuf ʿAlī, render the phrase „our angel“) and he appeared before her as a man». Other related passages, e.g. «We breathed into her of our spirit» (q 21:91) and «Into whose body we breathed of our spirit (q 66:12)» engender a close association between the concepts of spirit, angel and Gabriel. Rahman argues therefore that strictly speaking the Qurʾān seems to make a distinction between the angels and the agent of revelation sent to Muḥammad. Yet the spirit and angels are not wholly different, «the spirit» being the highest form of angelic nature and closest to God (e.g. q 81:19-21).

There is also a close connection between the qurʾānic «command» (amr), spirit and angels. «The command» in the qurʾānic phrase, «The spirit is by the command of my lord» (q 17:85), is identified with the Preserved Tablet (al-lawḥ al-maḥfūẓ, see preserved tablet), the source of all books — in fact, all reality — including the Qurʾān (q 85:22). It is from thence that the spirit is brought by the angels to the heart of the Prophet and, as the source of all books, ranks «higher» than the angels. These images and associations become food for speculative thought on the nature of «logos», the generation of the cosmos and such cosmogonic metaphysical conceptions as the world of archetypal realities (ʿālam al-mithāl). A common feature of both early and late speculation in Islamic thought — in consonance with numerous qurʾānic passages (e.g. q 2:97; 97:4) — is that the spirit exists as a power, faculty or agency which descends from «above» (nazzalahu), clearly emphasizing the dependency and origin of human knowledge — particularly prophetic and visionary — in God. This power, or faculty, of spirit/Gabriel is described as being located in the Prophet’s heart and Islamic mystical exegesis as early as the third/ninth century develops the notion of the heart (qalb, see heart) as the seat of spiritual vision and intuitive cognition.

Related to the conception of the descent of revelation on the Prophet’s heart — and closely related to the development of eschatological notions, are commentaries and literature about the qurʾānic reference to God sending Muḥammad on a night journey (asrā bi-ʿabdihi) in q 17:1, in which the Prophet travels from «the sacred mosque to the farthest mosque», from Mecca to Jerusalem (q.v.; see also aqṣā mosque) in the usual interpretation and then in a vertical journey to the divine throne («in order that we might show him some of our signs»). By the third/ninth century many of these narratives of the ascension(miʿrāj) had come into the form of ḥadīth, many of which are attributed to Ibn ʿAbbās, a contemporary of Muḥammad, but are more likely the work of the second/eighth-century Egyptian Ibn Wahb (d. 197/813) which in varying versions and degrees of detail describe the awakening of the Prophet by Gabriel followed by the preparation of Muḥammad for his ascent by two angels' washing his breast and filling it with faith and wisdom. Gabriel — in some versions accompanied by the angel Michael — then leads Muḥammad on a night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem, then through the heavens of the Ptolemaic universe to the gates of paradise and finally to the throne of God (q.v.). Muḥammad’s journey always includes the vision of hell and the appropriate punishment experienced by sinners who have committed various kinds of evils as well as a vision of the paradisiacal garden (see reward and punishment; paradise; hell; garden). The paradisiacal scene contains the traditional image of the lotus tree of the boundary (q 53:14) beyond which no human or angel may pass. There is a hierarchy of angels with varying functions, an allusion to q 25:25, which implies descending ranks of angels and q 35:1 whose discussion of the varying number of wings possessed by angels is usually interpreted as their functions, duties or errands. The angels of the heavenly spheres — the association made explicit by Avicenna — down through the sixth sphere are the guardians of the throne and singers of praise. Gabriel ranks above the guardians of the throne. Angels in the highest sphere under the throne are the cherubim whose light is so strong that no angel in the lower spheres may raise its eyes lest it be blinded. Gabriel, the guide of Muḥammad, acts as interpreter of the visions to which the Prophet is witness. Descriptions of the garden are based on the qurʾānic imagery of the fount of abundance (kawthar, q 108:1) and of peace (q 14:23). Angels in these traditions, which have been traced to the second/eighth-century Persian Maysara b. ʿAbd Rabbihi appear sometimes in human form, sometimes as huge and monstrous beings, always radiating dazzling light. At each stage of the journey, Muḥammad experiences fear of being blinded by the brilliant spectacle and Gabriel in many versions intercedes with God so that Muḥammad is granted new vision that allows him to look at the light that had heretofore blinded him. Gabriel furthermore acts as advisor and comforter. Although Gabriel acts as interpreter of the visions for the duration of the ascent, Muḥammad is left by the angel to accomplish the last stage alone.

The ascension(miʿrāj) literature developed alongside and fused with Muslim eschatological literature. What the angel reveals to Muḥammad in his journey becomes the prototype of the experience of the soul upon physical death and the angel functions both as part of the hierarchy of being and as revealer and interpreter of that hierarchy. Abū Yazīd al-Bisṭāmī (d. 261/874), who first formulated the Islamic notion of annihilation of the self in God (fanāʾ), appears also to have been the first to describe the inner transformative experience of the pious Muslim in terms of the ascension of the Prophet which thereafter becomes the prototype of the various stages and stations of the experience of the Ṣūfī in his experience of attaining the presence of God. Inasmuch as the qurʾānic verses on the nocturnal ascent (q 17:1), Muḥammad’s ecstatic vision of the two bows (q 53:1-18) and the descent of the Qurʾān (q 2:97) all became associated in tradition with an angelic event, the specific relation of the angel to the role of the Prophet — and angelic knowledge to human knowledge — becomes a source of speculation. In L. Massignon’s remarks on the «two bows verse» he states, "In Surah 53, the culminating point of ecstasy is clearly marked by the sentence of verses 8-9: ‘Then he went out, then he returned, near; it was a distance of two bow shots or a little closer (thumma danā fa-tadallā; fakāna qāba qawsayni aw adnā, The passion of al-Hallaj, trans. H. Mason, iii, 295-6). He points out that opinions have differed as to the subject of the sentence: some commentaries consider Gabriel as the one who draws near to Muḥammad who in turn sees him (e.g. Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya); some say it is God who draws near to Muḥammad (al-Ḥasan al-Baṣrī); some suggest Muḥammad as subject (Ibn ʿAbbās and al-Ḥallāj); others suggest two successive subjects, Muḥammad and Gabriel (Fakhr al-Dīn al-Rāzī); finally, others say it is a simultaneous mutual coming together of God and Muḥammad. However, in all cases Muḥammad’s experience is seen as an ecstatic vision of «divine nature by man’s spiritual nature, through the instrumentality of an illuminated angelic nature» (L. Massignon, The passion of al-Hallāj, iii, 298).

Angels in eschatological literature

Parallel to the development of the literature on Muḥammad’s ascension are the traditions which discuss and interpret the process of death and the day of resurrection — eschatological themes — that is, themes referring to the «end time». Murata (Angels) and Smith and Haddad(Islamic understanding) detail the qurʾānic and subsequent interpretive traditions regarding angels in Islamic eschatology. Angels function in qurʾānic end-time — the cataclysmic end of the created order — sources in a number of ways. They usher in the day of resurrection: «The day when they see the angels. No good tidings that day for the sinners» (q 25:22). «The day when the heavens and the clouds are split asunder and the angels are sent down in a great descent» (q 25:25). They are gatherers of souls: «The angel of death, who has been charged with you, will gather you; then to your Lord you will be returned» (q 32:11; cf. 6:93). They guard over hell: «Believers, guard yourselves and your families against a fire whose fuel is men and stones, and over which are harsh, terrible angels» (q 66:6). They shall enter the eternal abode with those human souls who have shown devotion: «The angels shall enter unto them from every gate» (q 13:23). The « Mālik» (q 43:77) who rules over hell is traditionally thought to be an angel. Ḥadīth materials and traditional commentators give names to other angels whose functions are described in the Qurʾān: ʿIzrāʾīl is the angel of death that appears to the person at the cessation of life and Isrāfīl is the angel charged with the blowing of the trumpet at the arrival of «the hour» (al-sāʿa, q 39:68; 69:13). Though not mentioned in the Qurʾān or early ḥadith, the angel Riḍwān became an accepted figure in Arabic literature from the time of al-Maʿarrī onwards, perhaps in relation to the word (riḍwān, q 9:21) indicating God’s favor, or sanction.

There are a number of manuals and teaching stories describing end-time events which became particularly important in popular piety with regard to issues of death: al-Ghazālī's al-Durra al-fākhira (fifth/eleventh century), Ibn Qayyim al-Jawziyya’s Kitāb al-Rūḥ (an authoritative eighth/fourteenth century text on the life of the spirit after death), al-Suyūṭī's Bushra al-kaʾīb bi-liqāʾ al-ḥabīb (ninth/fifteenth century), the anonymous Kitāb Aḥwāl al-qiyāma (ed. M. Wolff; most likely an adaptation of al-Qāḍī's work, probably fifth/eleventh century, Daqāʾiq al-akhbār fī dhikr al-janna wa-l-nār). Contemporary manuals on death reflect these traditions, such as To die before death by the twentieth-century Sri Lankan Ṣūfī Shaykh, Bawa Muhaiyaddeen . It is clear that the theologians (mutakallimūn) and the Ṣūfī commentators were for the most part not interested — when it came to death themes — in determining a given sequence of events, but rather were concerned with using these traditions to illustrate specific points about the nature of God, the human being and ethics. Qurʾānic discussions on death and resurrection are aspects of the theme of the nature of divine justice; the symmetry of the heavens is a symmetry — a perfection — of justice and accountability for one’s deeds. There is ultimately no evasion from acknowledging the shape that one’s faith(dīn) and piety (taqwā) has taken during one’s life. The Durra and the Kitāb Aḥwāl develop the theme of the death visit of the recording angels, Nakīr and Munkar, who in some narratives allow the deceased a glimpse of the gates of Eden; who question the deceased on their recitation of the Qurʾān, prayers and right conduct; who remove the soul from the body with ease, shock or pain depending on the quality of faithfulness in life, the latter, an extension of q 79:1-5, «By the angels who tear out (the souls of the wicked)… by those who gently draw out (the souls of the blessed)…». The descriptions of the fate of the soul after death parallel the ascension imagery, the overarching theme being the soul’s immediate tasting of the fruits of its religious duties as it ascends on a journey with Gabriel or the angels, sometimes mentioned as two or four, acting as guides through the successive heavens.

Al-Ghazālī's Durra describes the cosmological stages of the journey of the faithful soul through the seven levels of the heavens, through oceans of fire, light, darkness, water, ice and hail, the length of which is a thousand years and, finally, through the covering affixed to the throne of mercy. The fate of the impious soul is described as an attempted journey by the soul in the company of the angel Daqyāʾīl, but he is thwarted in his attempt to lead the soul to the throne. The gates of heaven do not open up to the pair and Daqyāʾīl flings the soul back into the body — even as the corpse is being washed. Thus, the traditions of the soul’s peace or suffering at death as well as the discussions of the symmetry of the cosmological heavens as abodes for various categories of saints and sinners support qurʾānic and theological themes of divine justice and the variety of human responses to the call of faith. Al-Ghazālī also utilizes the figure of the angel Rūmān who visits each newly deceased person even prior to the questioning of Nakīr and Munkar and asks the deceased to write down the good and evil deeds he has done. The dead person protests that he or she has no pen, ink, or paper; Rūmān — or in some traditions, simply Munkar and Nakīr — orders the deceased to substitute his own finger, saliva and shroud. The tradition concludes with the deceased sealing the record and hanging it onto his neck until the day of resurrection, an allusion to q 17:13, «We have fastened the fate of every man on his neck».

Little is said in the Qurʾān about the state between death and resurrection, the time of angelic visitation and instruction immediately after death. The term partition (barzakh, q.v.) in the Qurʾān (q 23:100) simply refers to the inability of the departed to return to earth — to do or to undo how one has lived his or her faith. The partition or barrier comes to denote, however, the time between death and resurrection and the place or abode wherein the waiting occurs. The imagery of the partition in death and resurrection literature is a further affirmation of the qurʾānic themes of divine justice and human accountability. Moreover, the traditions regarding the barrier emphasize the themes of conscious awareness of the configuration of the life of faith or lived religion (dīn) during one’s earthly existence (al-dunyā) and the angel — mirroring the role of Gabriel in Muḥammad’s ascension — as constant companion, guide and cognitive intermediary in the death process. These traditions regarding the barrier echo qurʾānic end-time themes, focusing on that moment: «When the great cataclysm comes, that day when man will recall what he had been striving for» (q 79:34-5), «the hour» when every human being will be shaken into a unique and unprecedented self-awareness of his deeds in which «We have lifted your veil so your sight today is keen» (q 50:22). The eschatological themes of the transparency of the heart as an ultimate aim of the human being and the questioning of the soul «immediately» after death by the angels and by the guards of the gates of hell (q 39:71-4) — also identified with angels — signify key theological themes in Islam: while God is utterly transcendent, it is through the divine mercy and illumination that self-understanding takes place and this justice mandates that the human being experiences/knows the motivations and consequences of his deeds.

The mystical schools of thought in Islam in particular interpreted the qurʾānic day of resurrection (yawm al-qiyāma), «the day when the earth shall be transmuted into something else» (q 14:48), when «we shall create you in [forms] you do not know» (q 56:61) as referring not only to the end of the world and one’s physical existence but also to an interior state of transformation in this life. The annihilation of all things at the end time, is seen as a spiritual state of having overcome the struggle in the human heart against the lower self (nafs), the world (dunyā) and Satan — a «dying before death». As Böwering describes in The mystical vision of experience in classical Islam (149-58), this experience is one of reintegration into the lasting presence of the one God in which one is granted the encounter with God (liqāʾ al-ḥaqq), the abiding in the divine truth (al-baqāʾ maʿa al-ḥaqq) and the visual perception of God (al-naẓar ilā l-ḥaqq). The heart(qalb) becomes in mystical literature the seat of knowledge «through God’s knowledge» and the angel becomes identified as the purifier of the heart, the spiritual cleansing of which is seen as a prerequisite for clear understanding of God, self and the world. Furthermore, the qurʾānic «expansion» of Muḥammad’s breast: «Did we not expand your breast?» (q 94:1) is read as a widening or opening of Muḥammad to the infusion of divine gifts and is described as being initiated «through the light of the prophetic mission» (nūr al-risāla) and through the «light of Islam» (nūr al-islām). Thus, links are made in early Islamic mystical literature (e.g. Tustarī, Tafsīr, 123, in Böwering, Mystical vision) between the heart of Muḥammad — the essence or living reality of Muḥammad, which receives its pristine light from the divine substance, the light of prophecy — and the symbol of the angel as the agent of the initial expansion of Muḥammad’s breast and, by extension, the expansion (the opening and receptivity) of «whomsoever God desires to guide» to spiritual realities. The early Islamic mystics speak of the peak of mystical experience as a prefiguring of the final day of resurrection in which all humankind will be exposed before God in order to account for their deeds as well as a prefiguring of that final annihilation of the created order (q 28:88; 55:26-7). In the eschatological traditions, Isrāfīl (who is not named in the Qurʾān) is the angel who sounds the trumpet signaling the arrival of the hour, as stated above, and who reads from the Preserved Tablet (q.v.; al-lawḥ al-maḥfūẓ), the account of human creatures' deeds and motivations. In many traditions there is a second blast signaling the final cataclysm at which time all created order must lose itself, even the angels and archangels. We see, then, in classical mystical literature the development of the notion of the unveiling (kashf), that is, the revealing of one’s most secret motivations to oneself by the agency of the angel of God through the light of God himself and the notion of the ultimate goal and end of individual existence as the annihilation of the self (nafs), the realization that all perishes but the «face of God» (q 55:26-7).

Bibliography

Primary

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Secondary

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• id., Major themes in the Quran, Minneapolis 1980
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• J. Smith and Y. Haddad, The Islamic understanding of death and resurrection, Albany 1981
• G. Webb, The human-angelic relation in the philosophies of Suhrawardi and Ibn Arabi, Ph.D. diss., Temple 1989