Azrael
The angel of the appointed hour
Curated byBestiarypediaCreated onUpdated on
Europe
+6Middle East(Israel, Iraq, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria, Palestine)Family Tree
The angel of death the Qur'an does not name
Azrael, or Izra'il in its Arabic form, is the name popular tradition and esoteric angelology give to the angel of death. It is best to begin with what almost everyone takes for granted and is not so: that name does not appear in the Qur'an.
What the Qur'an says is something else. In sura 32, verse 11, one reads: "Say: the angel of death, who has been charged with you, will take you, and then you will be returned to your Lord." There is an office there, malak al-mawt, "the angel of death", and there is no proper name. In fact the Qur'an names only two angels, Jibril and Mikal, in sura 2. The name Izra'il enters later, in the hadith literature, in the Qur'anic commentaries and above all in the stories of the prophets, and from there passes into common use.
In Hebrew the name reads as "God has helped". In classical rabbinic Judaism it is not canonical either: there the one who takes souls is the malakh ha-mavet, often identified with Samael. A kindred figure, Azriel, is documented in later kabbalistic literature. It was nineteenth-century Western occultism that took up the Arabic form, fixed it as the proper name of the angel of death and put it into the circulation it still has.
The office, and what tradition kept adding to it
His function is one and admits no initiative: to take the soul when the term God has fixed arrives, gently for the just and harshly for the unjust. The Qur'an insists that this term is neither advanced nor delayed by an instant, and everything else follows from that.
Of the ancient sources, the most quoted scene is that of the angel of death and Moses, recorded in the collections of Bukhari and Muslim: the angel comes for him, Moses strikes him and puts out his eye, God restores it and grants the prophet the choice of his moment. It is one of the very few times this angel acts as a character and not as an office.
The rest, which is precisely what gets repeated most, is later tradition and should be dated. That he has four thousand wings and a body with as many eyes and tongues as there are human beings in the world; that he keeps a register of every name; that beneath the Throne grows a tree whose leaves each bear a name, and that when a leaf falls that person has forty days left. None of this is in the Qur'an or in the canonical hadith collections: it comes from the stories of the prophets and from medieval devotional literature, which gave a body to a figure the sacred text had deliberately left faceless.
And it is worth saying what he does not do, because it is often ascribed to him: he neither judges nor weighs. The balance, the mizan, belongs to the Day of Judgement and is not his office. He gathers; the judgement comes afterwards and belongs to another.
From Izra'il to the hooded Death
The Western image of Azrael owes little to the tradition that gave him his name. The cloaked figure, the scythe and the pale horse do not come from Islam: the pale horse is from chapter 6 of Revelation, and the hooded Death with a scythe is an invention of late medieval Europe, of the age of plague and of the dances of death. When the two were laid over each other, an Islamic angel ended up resembling a character who was not him.
Literature did the rest. Longfellow gave him a poem in Tales of a Wayside Inn, published in 1863, which takes up a far older story: a man sees the angel looking at him in astonishment and flees to India, and the angel was astonished precisely because he had orders to take him in India that very night. The motif is already in the Talmud, with Solomon and the angel of death, and would be told again in the twentieth century with other names and another city.
Contemporary esoteric angelology links him to Scorpio and to Pluto, and invokes him as a compassionate companion in grief rather than as a threat. That attribution has a compulsory date: Pluto was discovered in 1930, so no earlier system could have assigned it to him. It is a good example of how an ancient figure goes on receiving new attributes, and of why it is always worth knowing which one is from when.
Also known as
Relics
Symbology
Element
Death
Number
7
Color
Black
Animals
Raven
Sigils:
Traits
Powers
Weaknesses
Behavioral
Resistances
Relations with other beings
Ally of
Rival of
Sibling of
In the Atlas
Travel the beings’ world of origin and the cosmos of their dimensions.
Mythologies
Esoteric and Kabbalistic traditions within Judaism, encompassing Merkabah mysticism from the Talmudic era, 13th-century Zoharic Kabbalah, 16th-century Lurianic Kabbalah, the 18th-century Hasidic movement, and various meditative, contemplative, and visionary practices aimed at ascending through spiritual worlds, invoking divine names, and achieving mystical union with the divine while unraveling the secrets of the creative universe.
Sources
The Quran
Muhammad (traditional revelation) · 632
Holy book of Islam, revealed to the prophet Muhammad in the 7th century. Beyond its religious message, it mentions angels such as Jibril and Mika’il, the jinn created from smokeless fire and figures like Iblis, and is a primary source for many beings of Islamic tradition.
Zohar
Moses de León · c. 1280
Fundamental thirteenth-century Kabbalistic work that expands the mythology of Lilith and her demonic descendants.
Sahih al-Bukhari
Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari · 846
Sahih al-Bukhari by Muhammad ibn Ismail al-Bukhari (d. 870 CE) is the most authentic collection of Sunni hadiths, compiling thousands of Prophet Muhammad's sayings classified, primary source for Sunna and jurisprudence.
Qur'an 32:11
Revealed text · 7th cent.
The only Qur'anic verse on the angel of death: "Say: the angel of death, who has been charged with you, will take you." It speaks of an office, malak al-mawt, and gives no proper name.
A Dictionary of Islam (Hughes)
Thomas Patrick Hughes · 1885
A nineteenth-century reference work in the public domain. Its entry "Izra'il" gathers what the Qur'an, the hadith and the commentaries say of the angel of death, and clearly distinguishes what comes from each layer.
Frequently asked questions
Does Azrael appear in the Qur'an?
The name, no. The Qur'an speaks of the "angel of death", malak al-mawt, in sura 32:11, but does not name him; it names only two angels, Jibril and Mikal. The form Izra'il appears afterwards, in the hadith, the commentaries and the stories of the prophets, and from there passed into popular use and into Western occultism.
Does Azrael weigh souls and decide their fate?
No, and it is the error most often ascribed to him. His office is to take the soul at the appointed term, nothing more. The balance, the mizan, belongs to the Day of Judgement and is a matter of another moment and another authority. He has no margin: tradition insists that the term is neither advanced nor delayed, and that he acts by decree and not by his own will.
Where do the four thousand wings and the tree of the Throne come from?
From later tradition, not from the Qur'an or the canonical hadith collections. The countless wings, the eyes and tongues numbering as many as there are people, the register of names and the tree beneath the Throne whose leaves fall forty days before each death come from the stories of the prophets and from medieval devotional literature. They are how piety gave a body to a figure the sacred text had left faceless.
Is Azrael the Death with the scythe and the hood?
No, though today the two are confused. That image is European and late medieval, from the age of plague and the dances of death, and the pale horse that usually accompanies it comes from chapter 6 of Revelation. The Islamic figure is another thing: an obedient angel with no will of his own, to whom tradition even came to ascribe compassion for the souls he gathers. The two were laid over each other in Western art and literature.
🔖Cite this entry▾
If you cite this article in an academic, journalistic or editorial publication, use any of these formats:
Bestiarypedia. (2026, August 16). Azrael. Bestiarypedia. https://bestiarypedia.com/en/beings/azrael
Free citation with attribution and canonical link for editorial, academic or journalistic use. Full commercial reuse or creation of derivative products requires prior agreement.
