Munkar

Munkar is one of the two angels who, in Islamic tradition, appear before the dead man as soon as the people who buried him have walked away from the grave. The Qur'an never mentions them: the one who names them is al-Tirmidhi, in a hadith transmitted by Abu Hurayra which says that two black, blue-eyed angels come to the newly buried man, and that one is called al-Munkar and the other an-Nakir. Al-Bukhari and Muslim tell the same scene without naming them, so the episode is considerably older than the names.

The name does not describe what he does but what the dead man sees. Munkar comes from the Arabic root n-k-r, which covers both what is not recognised and what is to be condemned, and Hughes's dictionary renders it 'the Unknown': a figure the deceased has never laid eyes on and cannot place, and that bewilderment is part of the examination. Shia tradition adds a point that puts the whole pair in order: Munkar and Nakir are not personal names but names of office.

Which is why the tradition never treats them separately. No hadith says what Munkar does and what Nakir does on his own, or divides the questions between them: they appear together, speak together and leave together. The only thing that genuinely tells them apart is the name each one carries, and this entry is built around that.

The hadith that gives him his name puts a single question to the dead man, and it is none of the three usually repeated. The two angels ask what he used to say about that man, meaning Muhammad. The believer answers what he said while alive; the angels reply that they knew he would say so, and his grave is then widened seventy cubits by seventy and lit up for him. Then they tell him to sleep. He asks whether he may go back to his family and tell them, and they answer that he should sleep as a bridegroom sleeps, whom none but the dearest of his household wakes. The hypocrite, for his part, says that he heard people saying something, that he said the same, and that he does not know.

The three famous questions (who is your Lord, what is your religion, who is the man who was sent among you) come from a different hadith, that of al-Bara ibn Azib, recorded by Abu Dawud, and in that hadith the angels bear no names. The version everybody repeats, with Munkar and Nakir asking the three questions, is a splice of two separate reports: one supplies the names and the other supplies the questionnaire. It is not a grave mistake, but it is worth knowing which is which, because almost everything attributed to these two angels comes from the account that does not name them.

Munkar is not an archangel. The near angels of Islamic tradition are others (Jibril, Mikail, Israfil and the angel of death), and no source counts him among them: his is an office of the grave, not a post at court.

Nor does he weigh anyone's deeds. The scales belong to the Day of Resurrection, which is another moment and another tribunal; what happens in the grave is provisional and lasts only until the trumpet sounds. For the same reason the record of deeds is not his business: it is written by the Kiraman Katibin, the two scribes who attend the living, and it is read much later.

The iron mace is not his either. In al-Bara's hadith, the one who answers badly is struck by someone blind and deaf with a hammer that would turn a mountain to dust, and the report expressly distinguishes him from the two who ask. Loading Munkar with the mace, the scales and the book piles onto a single figure three offices that the tradition shares out among four.