Is Azrael mentioned in the Bible?

No. The Bible's death-dealing angels are unnamed, and ʿAzarʾel appears only as a man's name in Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah. Catholic teaching limits angel names to Michael, Gabriel and Raphael.

Is Azrael named in the Qur'an?

No. Surah as-Sajdah 32:11 speaks of "the Angel of Death, who is in charge of you," and the Moses hadith in Sahih al-Bukhari uses the same title. Ibn Kathir reports that the name Azra'il was attached to this angel in some later reports, citing Qatadah.

Is Azrael a bad angel?

Not in Islam, where he is an obedient angel carrying out God's command. The darker picture comes from elsewhere: the Talmud identifies its unnamed angel of death with Satan (Bava Batra 16a), and later Jewish sources call that figure Samael.

Does seeing or dreaming of Azrael mean someone will die?

No. Islamic teaching places the time of death with God (Qur'an 3:145), and no source has Azrael warn the living in advance. In Rumi's story of Solomon, Azrael's glance at a man was surprise, and running from it changed nothing.

Who Is Archangel Azrael in Death and Grief Tradition?

Q: Who is Archangel Azrael?

Azrael is the name Islamic tradition gives to the angel of death, who takes each soul at the time God has set. The Qur'an calls him only Malak al-Mawt (32:11); the name and the portrait of wings, eyes and a book of names come from later tradition.

Archangel Azrael is the angel of death in Islamic tradition, known in Arabic as ʿIzrāʾīl. The Qur'an itself never uses the name. Surah as-Sajdah 32:11 speaks of "the Angel of Death, who is in charge of you," and the fourteenth-century commentator Ibn Kathir notes that the name Azra'il was given to that angel only "in some reports."

From Islam the name travelled. A seventeenth-century Kabbalistic book links Azrael to the angel of Gehinnom, Guru Nanak uses it in a verse of the Guru Granth Sahib, and English-language angel books of the last few decades present Azrael as an archangel who comforts the dying and the bereaved. The Bible and the Talmud describe an angel of death but do not call him Azrael.

Quick Facts

Name meaning: From the Hebrew personal name ʿAzarʾel, "God has helped"; often given as "whom God helps"
Arabic name: ʿIzrāʾīl or ʿAzrāʾīl
Role: Angel of death in Islamic tradition, who takes each soul at the time God has decreed
In the Qur'an: Only by title, as Malak al-Mawt, "the angel of death" (Surah as-Sajdah 32:11)
In the Bible: Not mentioned; ʿAzarʾel appears only as the name of several men in Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah
Traditional imagery: A body covered with eyes and tongues, 4,000 wings, a book of names, and a leaf falling from a tree beneath God's throne
Modern devotion: Invoked for the dying and for grieving families in interfaith and New Age angel books, such as Doreen Virtue's Archangels 101 (2010)

Who Is Azrael, and Where Is He Counted as an Archangel?

In Islamic tradition Azrael is the angel who takes each person's soul at death, and Islamic tradition after the Qur'an counts him with Jibril, Mikail and Israfil as one of four archangels, a grouping the Qur'an itself never makes.

Christian calendars leave him out. The Orthodox Synaxis of 8 November honors Michael and the other named archangels, and Azrael is not among them. The grief-centered "Archangel Azrael" of modern prayer cards comes from the newest layer, the interfaith angel books of recent decades, and the gentleness those books give him is their addition to an older portrait that is vast and unsettling.

What Does Malak al-Mawt Mean in Death-Angel Tradition?

Malak al-Mawt is Arabic for "the angel of death," and it is the only name the Qur'an gives him. The title appears at Surah as-Sajdah 32:11: "Your soul will be taken by the Angel of Death, who is in charge of you. Then to your Lord you will be returned." The verse sets out a line of authority. God has put the angel in charge (wukkila) of people, and the souls he takes return to God rather than to him.

Other verses spread the same work more widely. Surah al-An'am 6:61 says that when death comes, God's messengers, meaning angels, take the soul, and an-Nahl 16:32 speaks of "the ones whom the angels take in death." Az-Zumar 39:42 then places the act with God himself: "Allah takes the souls at the time of their death." Ibn Kathir reads these verses together. In his commentary the angel of death is one specific angel with helpers, who draw the soul out of the body until it reaches the throat, where he takes it, and all of this happens by God's command.

The hadith keep the title as well. In Sahih al-Bukhari 1339 the angel of death is sent to Moses, who strikes him and damages his eye. The angel goes back to God, God restores the eye and offers Moses one more year for every hair his hand covers on an ox's back, and Moses chooses to die then rather than later. The angel in this report takes no step on his own: he carries the case back to God when Moses refuses.

Where the angel of death appears in Islamic sources
Source	What it says	Name used
Qur'an 32:11	One angel of death, put in charge of people by God	Malak al-Mawt, a title
Qur'an 6:61 and 16:32	Angels, in the plural, take souls at death	None
Qur'an 39:42	God takes the souls at the time of death	None
Sahih al-Bukhari 1339	The angel of death is sent to Moses and returns to God for instructions	Malak al-Mawt, a title
Ibn Kathir's commentary, citing Qatadah	The angel of death has helpers and, in some reports, a personal name	Azra'il

The name Azrael enters only in the last row. The verses and the hadith describe an office held under God's authority, and the personal name, like the detailed portrait discussed further down, comes from the commentary and storytelling that grew around that office.

Where Does the Name Azrael Come From?

In form, the name Azrael is Hebrew. ʿAzarʾel, "God has helped," is the name of several men in the Hebrew Bible, in 1 Chronicles 12:6, 25:18 and 27:22, Ezra 10:41, and Nehemiah 11:13 and 12:36, among them a Levite musician in the roster of 1 Chronicles 25 and one of the players in the procession that dedicated Jerusalem's rebuilt wall. None of them is an angel. The usual translation "whom God helps" comes from this Hebrew root, ʿ-z-r (help) with El (God); the name itself says nothing about death.

Arabic writers spell it ʿIzrāʾīl or ʿAzrāʾīl, and the earliest figure Ibn Kathir credits with the name is Qatadah, a Basran scholar who died around 735. The sources cited here do not show how a Hebrew personal name became the name of the Islamic angel of death, so any confident account of that step is a guess.

Jewish use of the name came later and appears to have come back through Arabic. The Jewish Encyclopedia discusses Azrael under the heading "In Arabic Literature," as the name Muslims give the angel of death, and records one Jewish echo: the Kabbalistic book ʿEmeḳ ha-Melek, printed in 1648, is cited for linking him with the angel of Gehinnom.

The name also reached Punjabi devotional poetry. In a verse by Guru Nanak on page 953 of the Guru Granth Sahib, "Azraa-eel, the Angel of Death, shall be appointed to punish them." Guru Nanak borrows the Islamic name here; elsewhere Sikh scripture more often speaks of Yam and the messenger of death, and it builds no system of angels around either figure.

Is Azrael in the Bible or the Talmud?

No book of the Bible names Azrael, in the Jewish, Catholic, Orthodox or Protestant canon. The Bible does describe death-dealing angels, such as the angel of the Lord who strikes the Assyrian camp in 2 Kings 19:35, but it leaves them unnamed. Catholic teaching adds a limit of its own: the Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (2001, paragraph 217) discourages giving angels any names except Michael, Gabriel and Raphael, the three found in Scripture, so Azrael has no place in Catholic devotion.

Rabbinic tradition has a vivid angel of death but never calls him Azrael. The Babylonian Talmud (Avodah Zarah 20b) says he is "entirely full of eyes" and stands over a dying person's head with a drawn sword, a drop of poison hanging from its edge; the person opens his mouth in fright, the drop falls in, and death follows. In Bava Batra 16a Resh Lakish goes further: "Satan, the evil inclination, and the Angel of Death are one." Later Jewish sources, as the Jewish Encyclopedia's entry on Samael records, give that figure the name Samael and connect it with the poison on the sword.

Here the two traditions part most sharply. The Talmud can fold its angel of death into Satan, while the Qur'an presents an obedient angel acting on God's appointment. When Azrael is described today as a dark or fallen angel, the picture more likely comes from Samael's rabbinic reputation or from the European skeleton with a scythe, because the Islamic sources give Azrael neither trait.

Both traditions do share one story shape. The Talmud (Bava Batra 17a) counts Moses among six people over whom the angel of death had no power, since he died "by the mouth of the Lord," which the rabbis read as a divine kiss, and Sahih al-Bukhari has Moses strike the angel sent for him. In neither version does the angel decide when Moses dies.

What Does Azrael Look Like in Islamic Tradition?

The detailed portrait of Azrael comes from Islamic storytelling, and its scale is meant to overwhelm. Summarizing the Arabic sources, the Jewish Encyclopedia describes him as reaching from one end of the world to the other, with 70,000 feet and 4,000 wings, and a body covered with eyes and with tongues as numerous as the living creatures on earth. The eyes echo the Talmud's angel of death, who is also "full of eyes," though the Islamic portrait drops the poisoned sword.

Two other images carry the idea of an appointed time. In one, Azrael writes each person's name in a great book at birth and erases it at death. In the other, a leaf bearing a person's name falls from a tree beneath God's throne, and Azrael then has forty days to take that soul. Neither image comes from the Qur'an or the hadith cited on this page, and both put the decision somewhere other than with Azrael: the book and the tree record a death that has already been set.

The best-known Azrael story explains what kind of angel he is. When God is about to create Adam, he sends Jibril and then Mikail to bring clay; the earth asks God's protection from them, and they return empty-handed. The angel of death also hears the earth's plea but takes the clay anyway, from many places and colors, because he will not return without doing what he was sent to do. Ibn Kathir retells the story in his Stories of the Prophets and warns that much of it comes from Isra'iliyyat, material taken from Jewish and Christian sources.

Azrael's images and their sources
Image	Source	What it stresses
Body covered with eyes and tongues	Arabic tradition, summarized in the Jewish Encyclopedia	No living creature is outside his notice
4,000 wings and 70,000 feet	Arabic tradition, summarized in the Jewish Encyclopedia	His reach covers the whole world at once
Book of names	Popular Islamic tradition	Births and deaths are recorded under God's authority
Leaf falling from a tree beneath the throne	Popular Islamic tradition	Each death is set before the angel acts
Drawn sword with a drop of poison	Talmud, Avodah Zarah 20b, for the unnamed angel of death	Death as a sudden act; absent from the Islamic portrait

None of these sources gives Azrael a color. A white or pale light attached to him in a modern angel guide has no older text behind it, and a doorway or threshold used to picture him, including the photograph below, is a modern image of crossing rather than one taken from these sources.

A worn stone doorway threshold with a plain white cloth folded on the sill and a dark open door beyond — A stone threshold with a white cloth folded on the sill. Doorway images of Azrael are modern; the older sources describe none.

How Does Azrael Compare with Jibril, Mikail, and Israfil?

Among Islam's four archangels, Azrael differs from Jibril and Mikail in how he is known. Jibril and Mikail are named in the Qur'an at 2:97-98, where Jibril is the angel who brought the revelation down to Muhammad's heart. Israfil, the angel of the trumpet, is in Azrael's position: the Qur'an describes the blast at the end of the world (39:68) without naming who sounds it, and his name comes from hadith.

Even the hadith treat the unnamed pair differently. The night prayer recorded in Sahih Muslim 770 addresses God as "Lord of Jibril, Mikail and Israfil," which gives Israfil a name from the Prophet's own words, while the angel of death stays a title in the Moses report. Of the four, Azrael is the one whose name rests on the latest evidence.

Islam's four archangels
Angel	Task in Islamic tradition	Named in the Qur'an?	Earliest source for the name
Jibril	Brings revelation to the prophets	Yes, 2:97-98	Qur'an
Mikail	Named beside Jibril	Yes, 2:98	Qur'an
Israfil	Sounds the trumpet at the end of time	No; the blast is at 39:68	Hadith, including Sahih Muslim 770
Azrael	Takes souls at death	No; the office is at 32:11	Later reports, credited to Qatadah by Ibn Kathir

Modern angel books that include Azrael, such as Doreen Virtue's Archangels 101, set him beside Raphael, the healing angel of the Book of Tobit. The two fit different moments. Raphael's story in Tobit ends in a cure and a safe return home, so a prayer to him asks for recovery; the grief role modern writers give Azrael begins after recovery is no longer expected, and a prayer that names him asks for a peaceful death or for comfort after one.

Does Azrael Predict Death?

No. In Islamic teaching the time of death belongs to God's decree, and Azrael only carries it out. The Qur'an says that no soul dies "except by permission of Allah at a decree determined" (3:145), and that when a people's appointed term (ajal) arrives, "they will not remain behind an hour, nor will they precede it" (7:34). No verse or hadith has the angel of death announce a death to the living beforehand, and the forty-day leaf of the folklore is notice given to the angel, not to the person.

Rumi turns this into a story in Book I of his Masnavi. A frightened man runs into Solomon's court because Azrael has looked at him hard, and he begs Solomon to have the wind carry him to India. Solomon does. Afterward Solomon asks Azrael why he glared at the man, and Azrael answers that he was astonished: God had ordered him to take that man's soul in India that same day. Rumi tells it to show that flight is useless and trust in God is better, and the story also shows that Azrael's look carried no warning the man could have acted on.

The same reasoning applies to a dream of Azrael, a card drawn in a reading, or his name turning up in a book during a relative's illness. The traditions that tell Azrael's story give none of these events the force of a notice, so reading one as a forecast adds a fear that the sources themselves do not support.

Can You Pray to Azrael for Someone Dying or Grieving?

The traditions give different answers. In Sunni Islam prayer (du'a) is addressed to God alone, and most scholars teach that Muslims do not call on angels for help, Azrael included. At a deathbed a Muslim family recites Qur'an and prompts the dying person to say the declaration of faith, following the hadith in Sahih Muslim 916, and on hearing of a death says, "Indeed we belong to Allah, and indeed to Him we will return" (2:156).

In Catholic tradition the angel tied to the hour of death is Michael. The offertory of the traditional Requiem Mass asks that "the standard-bearer, holy Michael" lead the souls of the dead "into the holy light." Azrael has no role there, in keeping with the Directory's limit on angel names.

Prayers addressed directly to Archangel Azrael come from modern interfaith and New Age devotion, where writers such as Doreen Virtue present him as a helper for the dying and for grieving families. A reader who prays in that way is working in that modern layer, not in Islamic practice, and the older material still shapes what such a prayer can honestly ask. It can ask for a peaceful death, for courage at the bedside, or for comfort after the funeral. It has no ground for asking Azrael to delay a death or reveal when one will come, since the tradition that gave him his name places that time with God.