Qur'an & Hadith

Hierarchies from this text

What this text attests · 12

Name here	Rank given	#	Powers described
'Ifrīt = The Ifrit	Of the jinn	—	An ifrit of the jinn offers Sulayman the throne of Sheba before he can rise from his place.
Ghūl = The Ghul	Of the jinn	—	Attested chiefly in hadith and pre-Islamic Arabic poetry; changes shape to mislead travellers in waste places.
Hārūt and Mārūt = Harut and Marut	Two angels	—	Teach at Babylon what separates a man from his wife, but only after declaring themselves a trial.
Iblis	Of the jinn	—	Refuses the prostration, is granted respite until the Day, and is permitted to tempt the descendants of Adam.
Israfil	Archangel	—	Holds the trumpet and awaits the command to sound it; named in hadith among the greatest angels.
Jibril = Gabriel	The Trustworthy Spirit	—	Brings down the revelation upon the Prophet's heart; described with six hundred wings.
Kirāman Kātibīn = Kiraman Katibin	Noble recorders	—	Write down what each person does; nothing is uttered but there is a watcher ready.
Malak al-Mawt = Azrael	Angel of death	—	Charged with taking souls at the appointed term; the personal name Azra'il belongs to later tradition, not the Qur'an.
Mika'il = Michael	Angel	—	Named alongside Jibril as an angel whose enemies are God's enemies; associated with provision and rain.
Munkar and Nakīr = Munkar and Nakir	Angels of the grave	—	Question the dead on their Lord, their religion and their prophet; the answers determine the state of the grave until resurrection.
Shaitan = Satan	The whisperer	—	A category as much as an individual; whispers in the breasts of humankind.
qarin = The Qarin	The companion	—	The associate assigned to a person, who prompts and who at the judgment says it did not compel; in the hadith material the Prophet's own is said to have submitted. The corpus holds the Qur'an and the hadith collections as one source row, so this figure reads as resting on a single text when it rests on two bodies of material — a limitation of the seeding rather than of the evidence.

What does it actually say?

The passages themselves, as this text gives them. Read them against what the other texts here say about the same figures — that comparison is the point.

Hārūt and MārūtTwo angels

“We are only a trial, so do not disbelieve.”

IblisOf the jinn

“He was of the jinn and departed from the command of his Lord.”