Azrael

Also Known As: Arabic ʿAzrāʾīl or ʿIzrāʾīl; Hebrew ʿĂzarʾēl, “God has helped”; Classical Ethiopic Ezrā’ēl; known in the Qur’an only by the title Malak al-Mawt, the Angel of Death, and in hadith as Qābiḍ al-Arwāḥ, the Seizer of Souls
Region/Culture: West Asia/Middle East
Mythos: Islamic Mythology, Christian Mythology
Primary Type/Nature: Gods and Deities
Mythical Attributes: He separates the soul from the body at the appointed moment, gently or violently according to the life that was lived, and keeps the register on which every human name is entered at birth and struck out at death.
Role in Mythos: One of the four archangels of Islam, charged by God with taking every soul and acting on no authority but God’s.
Relation to Humans: He comes for everyone without exception and without malice, and the tradition is insistent that he takes neither pleasure nor initiative in it. Ordinary people are said to be collected by his subordinates, while prophets and the friends of God meet the archangel himself, often in a shape mild enough to be borne.

Forty days before a man is due to die, one tradition says, a leaf falls from the tree that grows beneath the Throne of God, and an angel stoops to read the name written on it. The leaf offers no reason and no appeal. It gives a person and an hour, and the angel goes.

Muslims know him as Malak al-Mawt, the Angel of Death, and that is the title the Qur’an uses: say that the angel of death, who has been given charge of you, will take your souls, and then you will be returned to your Lord. The word Azrael is nowhere in that verse. It is nowhere in the Qur’an at all, and it does not appear in the sound collections of hadith either. Ibn Kathir put it down to Isra’iliyyat, the seepage of Jewish and Christian story into Muslim tradition, and later scholars from al-Albani to ‘Umar Sulayman al-Ashqar have refused it outright. The being is scripture. The name is a borrowing that would not go away.

Where it came from is genuinely murky. The oldest surviving text to attach it to anything resembling this work is the Classical Ethiopic Apocalypse of Peter, where an angel called Ezrā’ēl is set over the punishments of hell and takes the part of those who were wronged in life. Older still, Jewish households in seventh-century Mesopotamia buried clay incantation bowls face down beneath their floors, and on some of them, in Aramaic ink spiralling in from the rim, the name ʿzr’l sits in a list of protective angels with nothing said about what he does. Rabbinic Judaism has an angel of death and has never called him this; that one is Samael, covered in eyes, standing at the sick man’s pillow with a drawn sword and a bead of gall trembling on the point.

The Muslim tradition explains how he came by the job, and the explanation has a neatness the rest of his story lacks. Before Adam existed there was a handful of dirt to fetch. In an account carried by al-Tabari, al-Tha’labi, al-Kisa’i and Ibn Kathir, God sent his archangels down to take clay from the earth for the making of the first man, and the earth begged each of them not to do it. Gabriel listened and came back empty-handed. So did Michael. So did Israfil. The fourth angel heard the same plea and answered that he too took refuge with God from returning without carrying out what God had commanded, and he scraped his handful from the face of the world. The reward was the office. The one who fetched the material was made the one who comes to take it back.

His body is described often and inconsistently, and the sources do not seem troubled by that. Al-Qurtubi, in al-Tadhkira, passes along a report that he has the shape of a blue-grey ram with eyes beyond counting scattered across him. Ikrimah, a scholar of the generation after the Companions, said his scale was such that the whole earth set on one shoulder would sit there like a single bean dropped in an open field. He is credited with four thousand wings in two kinds, wings of mercy and wings of punishment, the second sort forged from iron rods, hooks and shears. Muqatil ibn Sulayman, whose reliability the tradition argued over for centuries, wrote that the angel wears a face and a hand for every living creature, each one tethered to a single life, and that when a face goes dark the thing it belonged to is already gone.

The taking itself has a texture in the sources. Surah 79 opens with an oath by those who tear out harshly and those who draw out gently, read for centuries as the two ways a soul comes loose. For the good it slides free like water tipped from a skin. For others it is hauled back through the body the way a barbed spit is dragged through wet wool. He does not always arrive as something monstrous. Al-Jili held that he appears to each soul in the form of that soul’s own strongest image of him, which means a great many people have met him and reported very different things. Rumi, in his last illness, is said to have looked up from the bed and seen a man standing there.

Not everyone has taken it well. A hadith recorded by Bukhari and by Muslim, from Abu Hurayra, has the angel sent to Moses, and Moses striking him hard enough to burst one of his eyes. The angel went back to God and said, plainly enough, that he had been sent to a servant who did not want to die. God restored the eye and sent him down again with an offer: let Moses lay his hand flat on the back of an ox, and he would have a year of life for every hair his palm covered. Moses asked what came after that. Death, he was told. Then now, he said.

The most travelled story about him is a smaller one. Rumi tells it in the Masnavi. A man at Solomon’s court catches the angel staring at him, reads the look as a sentence, and begs Solomon to have the wind carry him to India that same day. Solomon obliges. Afterwards Solomon asks the angel what the stare had been about, and the angel says he had been ordered to take that man’s spirit in India, and was wondering how the man was ever going to get there in time. The tale is older than Rumi and probably older than Islam, with an Indian ancestor and a Talmudic cousin in which the destination is Luz. It reached English through translation and reached most readers through Somerset Maugham, who moved the appointment to Samarra.

His powers are narrow and absolute. He holds a register of humankind on which names are entered at birth and struck through at death, and he can neither enter nor strike one until he is told to. The common dead are gathered by his subordinates, the multitude of lesser death-angels that Surah 6 has long been read to mention, while prophets and the friends of God are attended by the archangel in person. Some are given notice. Nasir Khusraw left a testament claiming the angel had come to him in sleep to tell him the date was close.

The limits are the more interesting half. He has no discretion whatever, no knowledge beyond his orders, and no power to hurry or delay. A soul that resists can accuse him of acting on his own authority, and the tradition says he must then go back up and fetch proof that he was following instructions, which is a strange and rather bureaucratic humiliation for a being the size of a world. He can be punched in the face by an old man and has no recourse except to complain upward. And he ends. Bukhari records that on the Day of Resurrection death will be brought out in the shape of a black and white ram, shown to the people of the Garden and the people of the Fire until every one of them has recognised it, and then slaughtered where they can all see. Some scholars, as Christian Lange notes, have read that ram as the angel himself.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Azrael mentioned in the Quran?

No. The Quran refers to him only by the title Malak al-Mawt, the angel of death, and never gives him a personal name. The name Azrael is absent from the sound hadith collections as well; Ibn Kathir attributed it to Isra’iliyyat, material absorbed from Jewish and Christian sources, and scholars including al-Albani and ‘Umar Sulayman al-Ashqar rejected it.

Why did Azrael become the angel of death?

An account carried by al-Tabari, al-Tha’labi, al-Kisa’i and Ibn Kathir says God sent his archangels down to fetch clay from the earth for the creation of Adam. The earth pleaded with each of them, and Gabriel, Michael and Israfil all returned empty-handed. The fourth angel refused to come back without carrying out the command and took his handful, and the office of death was his reward.

What does Azrael look like?

The sources disagree with each other. Al-Qurtubi passes on a report giving him the shape of a blue-grey ram covered in eyes beyond counting, and he is credited with four thousand wings in two kinds, wings of mercy and wings of punishment made from iron rods, hooks and shears. Other reports make him so vast that the whole earth set on his shoulder would look like a bean dropped in an open field.

Is Azrael the Jewish angel of death?

No. Rabbinic Judaism has never used the name for its angel of death, who is Samael, described as covered in eyes and standing at the dying person’s pillow with a drawn sword and a bead of gall on the point. The name does appear on seventh-century Jewish Aramaic incantation bowls from Mesopotamia, but only in lists of protective angels, with no link to death.

Does Azrael himself die?

Yes. A hadith in Bukhari says that on the Day of Resurrection death will be brought out in the form of a black and white ram, shown to the people of Paradise and of Hell until all of them have recognised it, and then slaughtered so that eternity can begin. Christian Lange notes that some scholars have understood that ram to be the angel of death himself.